I already have and am satisfied with Alexa, but HomePod interests me because of Apple's general stance towards privacy. Has there been extensive discussion on how Apple plans to differentiate Siri's data usage/sharing vs Google and Amazon?
But honestly, the main obstacle for me is Apple's lack of 3rd-party integration. For example, it appears that Siri can't be used to access Spotify. With Alexa, I can scope music requests with "Alexa, play some jazz from Spotify (as opposed to Amazon Music)". I can even configure Alexa to use Spotify by default -- e.g. prioritized over Amazon's own offerings.
I've a pretty large iTunes library from back in the day but I've completely stopped buying from iTunes (and haven't bothered to check out Music) because of lack of interoperability.
Totally agreed that preferring one form of service over another is a form of lock-in.
However, in favor of a certain music service:
- with iCloud Music Library, you can play all of your mp3 files on any device, Spotify-style;
- if you purchase an album from iTunes, you own it forever; this is not true of Spotify-streamable music. I've had some of my favorite albums disappear from Spotify, for example.
Long-term, iTunes, Apple Music, and iCloud Music Library seem like a better solution because they allow you to retain actual ownership/control of your own music collection, which helps a lot.
I feel exited about home assistants in the same way I am excited about home automation: the premise seems useful in a general way, but I struggle to think of use cases that have a meaningful effect on my lifestyle. Also - I can't shake the privacy concerns.
Putting aside the privacy concerns, the home automation + home assistant combo is actually pretty useful. It definitely beats fumbling through apps to do smart home stuff.
Since getting an Echo, I notice my wife constantly changing the temperature on the Nest because, well, it's so easy to bark out a command when you don't want to get up or don't have your phone handy.
Prior to getting an echo, I only used my Wemo switches for scheduling lights to come on and off when we were away. I use voice commands for turning groups on and off all the time now. Since it's dark when I take out the dogs in the a.m., I use a "good morning" routine that turns on my downstairs lights and tells me the outside temperature so I know which coat to wear. I'm surprised at how dependent I'm becoming on Alexa for otherwise mundane stuff.
Having said all of that, I guess I made the choice to value convenience/functionality over privacy. I see the Amazon/Google assistants as "Big Brother with benefits".
> I'm surprised at how dependent I'm becoming on Alexa for otherwise mundane stuff.
It's interesting that I had a similar experience with the AirPods I got as a gift. I would never have bought them myself, but now that I have them I keep discovering ways in which they solve a 'problem', however trivial, that I had in the past with wired earbuds/headphones, or offer a new use-case. I often find myself having one of the earbuds in throughout the day, and I wasn't too much of a headphone-user to begin with.
If they'd break, I'd probably buy new ones immediately, despite the price.
(Well, I'd research the possibility of cheaper bluetooth earbuds first)
I get the temperature from my Apple Watch 90% of the time but I have been using Alexa more and more now that I have Echo/Dot's everywhere because I don't put my watch on until the end of my morning routine. I'm growing quite fond of saying "Alexa, Good Morning" and my lights coming on, it giving me the temperature, and it playing the 2-3 "news brief"'s I've picked. I'm VERY close to removing a few daily short podcasts from my podcasting app (Overcast) because I just listen to them on Alexa now.
I find the Routines feature can be quite useful, especially if they are performing multiple tasks. I just added "start work" and "quitting time" to toggle my office lights. I wanted to use "work time" in place of "start work" but that sounded too much like "what time" to Alexa. Routines are also useful for controlling my TV and media devices with my Harmony Hubs (although don't get me started on how you have to use a third party service to control each additional Harmony Hub you have).
Yesterday I said "hey google, turn on the kitchen lights" because my hands were full and the switch was across the room. I wouldn't say it had a meaningful effect on my lifestyle, but it was useful at that moment.
That's my most common use of Alexa as well - turn on the lights, turn off the TV. Sometimes I will ask it to set a timer, but really it's a hub for my home automation. I would miss it if it was gone, but my life would go on.
If I were to look at the type of activities we use Alexa for in our household, most of our commands revolve around smart home, weather and lists/reminders. Once in a while we'll ask it to do a unit conversion or some search engine task, but that's few and far between.
>I struggle to think of use cases that have a meaningful effect on my lifestyle
My personal feeling about home assistants is that they aren't supposed to be "meaningful", at least not in any significant way. I recently bought a Google Home Mini and I only use it occasionally, but when I do it's very supplementary. Example being that I've been re-reading the Harry Potter books and I've come across British terms I didn't recognize, so I just ask the Mini what the term means and when it works (80% of the time, I'd say) it's pretty useful as a utility.
But I'm not going out of my way to use it in such a way that it replaces something significant in my life.
I have Google Homes in my house and I agree that after the initial feeling of huge usability it really doesn't achieve all that much. Chromecast integration is both wonderful and awful - I can say "OK Google, play <TV Show> on the living room TV" and it'll do exactly that... but if I want to pause it I have to talk over the show I'm currently watching.
All that said, I wonder what it would offer an elderly person. If my Grandma were still alive I'd be very tempted to rewire all her light switches to be wi-fi enabled and set them up with a Google Home/Alexa. I can see it being a huge, huge benefit to the old and frail.
I'd be interested to see how older people interacted with the device. I know someone who got their parent a device and they kept "Alexa" written on a post-it because they couldn't remember the device name.
It's a big shift in technology, but since it is voice interactive, rather than computer/smart phone, I think it does provide an ease of use for older people who might not be as technology savvy.
The HomePod is also capable of being used as a HomeKit hub, so I think Apple is actually trying to push the home assistant angle some more now that there is three options to get into HomeKit proper (beyond simple in-home toggling of devices and reading sensors) depending on what products you want to buy (Apple TV, leave-at-home iPad and now HomePod).
Personally I'm really hoping to see them expand Siri over the coming year(s), especially given how...dumb...she is right now - expanding what can be done with SiriKit and allowing additional Siri functionality to be installed directly on the HomeKit would make my mind up on buying one easy (I'll still probably get one for a nice speaker to play music with, though).
1) To work with only the tracks I have downloaded in my iTunes library. Currently I have to use a 3rd party music player because the stock music player won't respect my wishes in this regard.
2) To be able to turn Siri off
3) To sync with an existing audio system, so that I can play music through my home audio system in my living room, and HomePods in my bedroom and bathroom
4) To avoid the weird situation where latency causes music to not sound synced, so that if I'm listening in one room, I'm not hearing music from the other room with a half-second delay.
I am hopeful on all counts except for the first one. Apple seems dead set on forcing their idea of music enjoyment onto me. Then again, perhaps the behavior forcing me onto a third party player is/was just a bug.
Actually I'm hoping what HomePod can do: when I come home listening to Spotify/Audible/podcast on my earphone+iPhone, HomePad auto turn on when I walk into house, the song/audiobook/podcast I'm halfway listening to on my iPhone will automatically transfer to HomePod to continue playing.
When Bluetooth is in a good mood, it'll do that. I'll have music going on my Bluetooth headset, then my home receiver will come into range and the sound will jump over. Requires my receiver to be set to the Bluetooth channel, so if it's been on the TV channel I won't hear the music.
Also sometimes it just doesn't want to switch and I'll have to do it manually.
Not a big Siri fan myself but isn't the whole point of the Homepod to combine music + Siri? From Apple.com: „...It’s the ultimate music authority, bringing together Apple Music and Siri...“
so 1) (iTunes != Apple Music) + 2) don't really make sense
They don’t have to cripple the speakers as a music player to integrate siri; siri could just work with apple music for people who want to use it. Itunes certainly manages to mix and match just fine!
For your first point is this from a Mac or iOS device? At least on my iPhone there's a Downloaded Music section that I use just to play anything I already have. Not sure if there's an equivalent for Mac's iTunes, though.
It's not that Apple doesn't have solutions to my problem, they just don't work very well. I used to get on with the checked songs feature in iTunes, but the software would regularly lose the checks. Given that those checks were effectively "my music library," this means that Apple would arbitrarily alter my library. After loading up iTunes enough times where my library suddenly all became checked, I had to find another solution.
Setting Music on my phone to only play downloaded music worked... until it didn't. Suddenly getting a gap between songs (while one was downloading) and then hearing a song that I took off my library 4 years ago was jarring enough and it happened frequently enough that I couldn't find an alternative player fast enough.
Apple doesn't understand just how central music is to my life. It used to, but I think they got so caught up in chasing the gold pot at the end subscription music rainbow that they let what made them so huge in the first place go straight into the shitter.
Overnight, they went from the only company that gave a damn, to the only company that didn't. And it happened right after Apple Music.
I wound up buying a cheap AmazonBasics Bluetooth device to transmit music to my receiver. It works well enough. I suppose I could get on with Sonos, but I don't want to replace my current working system with all-new hardware.
>Coming this year in a free software update, users will be able to play music throughout the house with multi-room audio.
Interesting that a key feature that the competition already has won’t be shipping at launch. I wonder if this is related to the Homepod’s previous delays.
The changes in AirPlay 2 will be a little more than that. To make it work more like Sonos, it requires that the receiving device buffer a lot more of the audio to make it resilient from wi-fi instability, and it probably requires some changes to that devices are synced up at all times. And I sure hope they're doing something with latency.
As I understand it, Sonos can do some of these things because their audio is transmitted over a proprietary wireless connection, so it's not competing with Internet traffic. I use AirPlay today over ordinary home wi-fi, and it's awfully unreliable — stutters all the time, sometimes doesn't play, long pause before audio will start, etc. — and larger buffers would certainly help here.
My AirPlay experience is a lot better. From my Mac I can play music simultaneously in my living room and kitchen very reliably. From my phone I can play to either speaker, however the kitchen unit (Airstream S200) stutters when I move the phone into a known poor signal area at the back of the kitchen.
There’s about a 2-3 second buffer with current AirPlay. It warns you of this when use use the a GarageBand app.
Try enabling IGMP snooping on your router and see if that helps.
Apple has been pretty up-front from the start that they don't want to make the best possible home assistant, they want to make a really incredible speaker that has home assistant stuff built-in.
Whether the "incredible speaker" part is true remains to be seen since the thing hasn't released yet but you can look at a lot of the features and they're very music-focused.
It's more competing with a Sonos than it is with an Alexa in my mind, the Siri stuff is just lagniappe.
Incredible by what standards? It's not even stereo. Nowhere does it mention perhaps the most important metric for audio quality, namely RMS audio power output. The tiny size alone pretty much guarantees that the amplifier will suck.
I'm very confident that e.g. a combination of Klipsch R-15M speakers, Yamaha R-S202 amplifier and a Chromecast Audio will knock its socks off. And that's a setup which you can order on Amazon today, it costs exactly the same, and it can do perfect multi-room out of the box.
I think you've answered your own question: who would know to buy 3 separate products, glue them together, make it work, as opposed to buying 1 product from apple, that works right out of the box?
Well, if you can't be arsed to do some research, follow instructions and combine N things to make something really good, and think it's better to buy ready-made things, you can stick to eating microwave meals while I'm having slow roast tenderloin with butternut squash and sweet potato mash. But don't try and tell me yours is better.
The current breed of class D amps are shockingly small and and have pretty decent audio specs(thd, rms, etc). Unless you are expecting a 50lb analogue >500w audiophile quality amp, I’m not why you would assume the size == low quality.
You're not the target audience, obviously. Although you and I realize that what you're talking about is simple to do, for us ... it's not as simple for many other people.
So the idea of just having a single device that automatically integrates with your phone, etc. is appealing to many people.
Although presumably with Airplay 2 you would still need your phone to play the music from, where with Sonos, once it was playing, you wouldn't need your phone as the speakers themselves would have the music. Though that might not be useful for your use-case.
We don't know for certain yet, but the AppleTV will opt to play music from iCloud as opposed to streaming from the AirPlay device if possible. You'd hope this functionality has been extended to the HomePod.
My wife has listened to a lot more music this last week now that she can just say "Alexa, play some ozzy osbourne" or whatever. We've had an Airplay system forever. Never used.
I avoid anything with proprietary protocols, mostly out of principle, but also as I occasionally write a Python script to control these things. I wrote a script to use a €30 Chromecast Audio as an alarm clock, for example. It uses the DLNA standard.
It's connected to my existing nice hifi and speakers. I have a choice of clunky 3rd party apps, and some not-so-clunky.
It's possible the HomePod's clever design is as good as they claim, but I'd guess the same money spent on normal hifi speakers will give better sound.
> but the Airplay2 support will be baked into the OS so I don’t need to use a clunky 3rd party app
Do not expect everything smooth sailing with Apple software. Currently when I AirPlay video to AppleTV, I can not use the remote controller to pause and play as there will be no sound. I suspect one reason for the HomePod delay is due to bugs.
Apple typically isn't the most innovative. People just feel that way about them because in the past they get things right. This will probably be like Apple Watch where its true value is subtle and only apparent once you own a bunch of other Apple stuff and use them in conjunction with one another. In this specific case since Amazon and Google are so far ahead & haven't stumbled, Apple's only real advantage now is privacy; it currently has no incentive to monetize your data.
Apple's main real advantage is lots of the high-disposable-income market is heavily invested in their ecosystem. The big ecosystems are real competitors, but the individual offerings within them are rarely direct competitors because the utility of the individual offerings depends on degree of pre-existing investment in the ecosystem.
In effect Jobs (or maybe the unnamed middle manager to managed to convince him it was a good idea) managed to make the fruit logo a status symbol, in large part thanks to allowing the iPod and iTunes to work on Windows...
Yeah I see Apple more as primarily a fashion company that integrates a lot of tech into their products; not far from say Rolex, with the main differientator being that Apple keeps updating their technology stack.
For this reason, Apple will probably be one of the few western 'tech' companies who will most likely always have a foothold in places like China.
Apple has had the MSMs attention for so long it is silly. I have seen articles about Apple products in places that normally could not care less to cover consumer electronics or computers.
Basic thing is that Apple has long been the go to computer for doing media production, and thus the people writing for MSM is more likely to notice Apple news than other tech news because it affects them directly. And thanks to the typical fan myopia, if it affects them it affects the world...
I don’t think it’s particularly intended to be innovative. The thing is, the existing options aren’t that great either for various reasons. This might be pretty good if you are in the apple ecosystem.
It's “innovative” because it serves people who are already fully invested in the Apple ecosystem, rather than either the Google or Amazon ecosystem, or not being deeply attached to many of those ecosystems.
Amazon already has a better sounding Echo and so does Google so I am not seeing a value prop from HomePod. This round has been clearly won by Amazon with Google inching very close and based on reviews, Google assistant seems way better than other assistants in general. Since Siri uses Google search now, it may only be slightly better than Alexa.
Too late and too little by Apple, they missed this boat. Cortana seems pretty fun on the surface but is nowhere to be seen in this AI race. Guess Microsoft got their strategy wrong yet again.
Amazon already has a better sounding Echo and so does Google so I am not seeing a value prop from HomePod.
Google and Amazon could project a 3D hologram of the band as the song plays, and I still wouldn't let one of those things in my house. From my POV, it boils down to two camps: "I'll trade some privacy (for arbitrary and ever-changing values of "privacy") for better sound" vs. "I'll listen to a tinny 1" speaker as long as it isn't spying on me". You sound like you're in the former, myself in the latter.
Besides, you don't know if the competition sounds better or not, at least not until February 9th.
Too late and too little by Apple, they missed this boat.
In an age where "no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame" is a meme, I'm surprised you'd let that one slip. OTOH, even someone like myself whose only debate is "buy two, or try just the one out first?" has to allow that there's yet no guarantee that this isn't iPod Hi-Fi 2.0.
Apple definitely missed the boat on this. Unless their speakers are leaps and bounds better in some way, I don't see many people switching.
Once someone has a couple of Amazon Echos, for example, why would they add a Google Home or Apple HomePod? I don't think anyone wants to have to configure several devices to have to do the same things (turn lights on/off, etc.)
I have a Sonos Player 1 in my room, and I play Spotify on it (Spotify can dectects it). The setup is a headache but the music quality is quite good but it keeps disconnecting even though I have really Wifi connection (I wish the device supports Bluetooth as an alternative). I still recommend it to my friends but I always warn them about the unstable connection.
> HomePod can also be used as a speakerphone with iPhone for crisp and clear audio quality.
I hope this means I can play anything from my iPhone like car because that’s a dealbreaker if I can’t Spotify or podcasts.
That being said, I hope there is a way to test HomePod live at Apple store. I don’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars for something turns out to be bad. My Sonos was a gift from my company so I didn’t have to worry about it (fwiw... not realky important, but I work for a music company, my boss owns two, and he said it was :) so I guess I should believe him right?)
My 2 big things with home automation devices (and we can argue if this is really one of those) is:
1) Full voice coverage (I shouldn't have to redirect my voice or scream for it to hear me in any room).
2) Enough devices that talk to it so that it is habit-forming to use it for lights/tv/etc
I can see the HomePod doing 2 as that's more about what you have aside from the HomePod but I'm worried about #1 due to the price tag.
If I have a 3 bedroom house and a large enough Kitchen/Living Room we are talking about 5 devices. For HomePod that is $1,750. For ALL Echo's it's $500. If you were smart and did a mix of say 2 Echo's and the rest Dot's: $320 (At the $40/dot price point, I picked mine up at $30/ea). That is a HUGE price difference. The Dot's were so cheap that I stuck a few in bathrooms as well for even better coverage and it's awesome.
I was (and still am) looking forward to HomePod but at $350 I just can't really afford it. I have a series 1 echo, 2 dots Smartthings Hub, 3 bulbs, 2 power outlets, and 1 wall switch. In total I paid somewhere in the range of $400 TOTAL for all of that. HomeKit approved devices have been, on average, more expensive (and yes I understand why) than their Smartthings counterparts. I love being able to control the majority of lights I need to switch on/off with just my voice and having Alexa in every room makes life easier for setting alarms/reminders/music/lights/etc.
I'm not saying I will never buy a HomePod but for me: control > sound quality. And when price IS an issue you can't beat the Amazon ecosystem.
PS: Also writing skills and the like for Alexa is pretty easy from my experience
Will be interesting to see a feature comparison with all of the other existing voice-controlled speakers out there. Seems like a couple of recent blogs posts linked on HN were saying that Apple was starting already behind the competition in this space.
Apple is rarely first to market for anything. They didn't release the first mp3 player, they released the best one. They didn't come out with the first smart phone, first tablet, or first smart watch, either. They rarely shine in feature-to-feature comparisons, either. The iPhone did less than the blackberries it destroyed. It just did the important things better.
It will be interesting to see how the Homepod plays out. If it's successful, it almost certainly won't be because it out-features the competition. And they almost certainly haven't lost because they weren't first to market.
More like the most marketed one. I recall reporters going out and asking teens at the mall about their media players. And most could not name the company behind it but new they had to have the one with the fruit logo because that was the "fashionable" one to have.
Similarly, check the cases and covers for phones etc. The only ones with a big ass window on the back to show off the logo is the ones meant for iphones.
I agree with everything you said about Apple’s MO.
But this thing is expensive. Siri almost seems grafted on (they wouldn’t even let people try it at the announcement) to a speaker that was already in development.
I wonder if this will be the iPod HiFi 2.0. Sounds great, too expensive, no one cares.
I’m curious about it but have no real interest in it as a speaker or assistant.
I don't necessarily agree. I was shopping around for multi-room audio solutions, namely Sonos. I don't think the Homepod price is that out of whack compared to Sonos or Google Home Max. And this is coming from someone who generally finds Apple products way overpriced.
1) Don't know. But not all of Apple's other markets are as huge as iPhone/iPad/Mac Laptops (i.e., Apple TV, Mac Pro).
2) In fairness, Amazon Echo did not do multi-room at launch either. I tend to think Apple fans won't have a problem waiting for that feature update. I'm not an Apple fan myself any more, but in general, when they do a feature, they do it right.
Why the sentiment is right, their products always offered a very perceivable leap in some areas. But what "important thing" does the HomePod better? It feels like a late me-too for people who are locked in the ecosystem (i.e. Apple Music).
HomePod costs $349. I know Apple products are pricy but 3.5x is insane. I have a (Google) Home mini and its fun - it isn't really that useful but ok for $30-50.
While history has proof that Apple is able to extract higher prices, I feel this product will fail at this price point.
It's also different price models. Google plans to make more money on the things you do with your Home mini. Apple has to price total cost for product since they are less likely to make money after the purchase.
You really can't compare a HomePod and a Google Home Mini. As an owner of the latter I know that the sound quality is absolute crap - I never play music through it. Meanwhile, that's the whole reason to get a HomePod. It's better compared to expensive Sonos speaker setups.
Is this supposed to compete more with Sonos, or with Google Home / Alexa? I can't tell.
I have a Sonos setup for my home and I absolutely love it. The sound quality is great, and the Play:1 speakers are less than half the price of the HomePod.
The SiriKit and HomeKit SDKs will apparently have HomePod APIs. Primary control of the device still has to be done from an iOS device as far as I know.
There's no direct control of the device; i.e. apps are not run directly on the device. Rather, developers leverage SiriKit for a limited set of actions.
By the chosen people, whom have had developmental access bestowed upon them by the grace of Apple.
Seriously though; there is little to no chance that this will not be another locked down device with which Apple will try to monetize your home to the fullest possible extent.
Or: people who paid Apple's $99 developer fee? Hardly a group of "chosen people". This would make sense if you were talking about something like CarPlay, but there's no discrimination here other than the one I mentioned.
Too late to the game IMHO. A three year lead has let Alexa integrate itself into hundreds of products. And if you want a better speaker just buy the Sonos version.
"The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. won’t be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business….The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant."
Not that this speaker looks like a huge game changer, but coming out of the gate late is something Apple has proven adept at.
How can you release a music player when your music ecosystem is completely broken? iTunes is so bad I have to pay for an app (Waltr) to put music on my phone.
And Apple music sounds like garbage. I don't need a high-quality speaker to stream garbage.
But honestly, the main obstacle for me is Apple's lack of 3rd-party integration. For example, it appears that Siri can't be used to access Spotify. With Alexa, I can scope music requests with "Alexa, play some jazz from Spotify (as opposed to Amazon Music)". I can even configure Alexa to use Spotify by default -- e.g. prioritized over Amazon's own offerings.
I've a pretty large iTunes library from back in the day but I've completely stopped buying from iTunes (and haven't bothered to check out Music) because of lack of interoperability.