The sense I get re: HomePod criticism is that people believe that Apple has built a better/the best home audio speaker at the price point, but that Apple is missing the boat on a larger connected home strategy. It's a matter of whether you favor a macro or micro POV.
Basically, Apple is making Sonos more affordable, while Amazon is making a bet that there is a new platform to be built/won in the form of voice and they're going to push hard into it with a bunch of low-cost appliances.
Apple's approach is fool-proof, but fairly limited. It could be worth a couple billion a year, but at their scale that hardly matters.
Amazon's approach is contingent on changing customer behavior and the development of an app ecosystem, but if it works it could be massive. I wouldn't be surprised if all this focus on voice doesn't eventually lead them back into making smartphones that tie into the hardware/services ecosystem they're developing. Apple could, of course, start making HomePod minis once the use cases are hashed out by Amazon.
At the end of the day, it's important to judge the product on its merits. It may not jibe with your macro view of the tech industry, but that's not the most relevant axis upon which to review a single product offering.
I think Apple understands the market better than Amazon. Amazon believes that non-phone voice assistants are a big and growing market. However, everyone I know with an Alexa uses it primarily as a speaker, not an assistant.
I’m reminded of Microsoft and Xbox. Microsoft saw the Xbox as a strategic way to get a computer into the living room. But all of these years later, Xbox is still primarily used for gaming by gamers.
I think Amazon will find that Alexa will primarily be used as a speaker and not an assistant for quite some time, corporate strategy be damned.
Yes, Xbox is fairly sophisticated (at least last time I used it for such) as a TV computer, but using the controller is a horrible experience to me. AppleTV, with all it's flaws, is a far superior experience for me as far as a TV add-on.
I think nostromo's point is that Apple knows when a hobby is a hobby.
Homepod will distort/control the "voice controlled assistant" market by Apple's sheer size.
Also I agree with Apple's approach to privacy. I'm still not convinced I need a Homepod, but if i were to get a voice enabled speaker I'd get that.
Alexa skills sound nice, but I've yet to hear of a meaningful usage of them that isn't just "a slightly nicer way to do X". For the price of my privacy, I'm not ready to buy that.
Yes, the digital assistant doesn't do anything for me either. I'd probably turn that off if I could. Also, I have one I carry around in my pocket that I rarely use.
I bought it for the sound and the algorithm they are using inside it to distribute sound with the x tweeters and y mics and all that. I think it's something that hasn't been done before, or I've never owned something that's done that. It might be over hyped, but I hope not.
It feels like HomePod is there to server users and the Echo is there to sell to users. Google's device is there doing what Google does - ingest all the data.
I’m happy to let Amazon labor under the illusion that I want to use their crummy Alexa platform for anything other than music and timers, if it means they’ll sell me a voice-controlled speaker for $40 that I can connect to an existing pair of high-quality speakers. (On the Google side you’d need a Chromecast audio—-not happening.)
Since I can check my history of Alexa commands, I can see that I haven’t said anything that Homepod couldn’t do in like, months. But, $40.
Do you think the DAC in the Echo is good enough for high-quality speakers?
I have to admit, I'm a sucker for things like Apple's claim that their device measures the room acoustics and adjusts itself for better sound. I don't know if it's true, but I kind of want one in my office now.
Frankly, Amazon has a headstart giving it a little bit of a skill moat against Google, but for you not to mention Google Assistant at all is ludicris to me.
Voice controlled smart assistants is Google's bread and butter, and Amazon is only tangentially connected to that world while Apple is a hardware company looking in.
Both of these companies will have to "re-invent" themselves to compete with Google, and again, Amazon's speed into the market has given them an artificial moat with certain skills, but I think it's inevitable that Google's voice recognition and assistant will be far superior to what Amazon and Apple can ultimately produce.
I already get a lot of eyeballs from Alexa users when they see what Google Assistant does, that's only going to escalate as Google gets more and more serious about leveraging their very unique skills and data into a moat that Amazon and Apple will struggle to compete with.
Apple isn't making a more affordable Sonos, the HomePod is £319/$349, the Sonos Play One (with Alexa) is £199/$199 and you can get two for £349/$349. So it's more expensive than a Sonos One however it's probably got better sound quality. The more comparable sound quality Sonos Play:3 (no Alexa) is £249/$249, still cheaper. Only the Play:5 is more expensive at $499/$499.
I would bet that Sonos has a "smart" Alexa enabled version of both the Play:3 and Play:5 in the works. When they launched the "One" they launched it at the same price point as the old Play:1 and dropped its price point by £50, again I would bet the same will happen.
Apple needs to make the "smartness" of Siri the selling point to win over Sonos customers...
> I would bet that Sonos has a "smart" Alexa enabled version of both the Play:3 and Play:5 in the works.
I know it's not the same, but there's a Sonos skill now, so I can control, and play music on, my Play:5 using my Echo Dot.
However, I cannot stream all music on the Sonos. There are either license restrictions or arbitrary Amazon limitations on what songs I can stream from the Amazon Prime catalog.
I think the GP was referring to competition and resulting price pressure. The Apple device sounds better; Sonos has dropped prices, with journalists interpreting this as a bid to shore up their sales -- sounds "almost" (?) as good while costing somewhat less.
I have two 1st gen Echos, and I think Amazon's moat is laughably overrated (and is being drastically overhyped in the early Homepod reviews). Surveys show that people are using these things for nothing more sophisticated than Siri 1.0 - timers, songs, weather, "what time is it" - which squares with our experience. We have some connected devices, but Gruber is right - at the moment, they require such stilted grammar that our phones will be the center of our connected home for the forseeable future.
The smart home stuff is very frustrating for me. I'll say "Alexa turn on the bathroom light" and it will respond that there's no device with that name. A natural follow up question is "Alex what devices do you know about".
I'm happy to have our Echos, but we mostly use it exactly as you describe - for timers, music, and weather. We also use a grocery list app that lets us say "Alexa add peanut butter to the shopping list". That's kind of nice to have in the kitchen.
I don't think the HomePod will be very successful in our little tech bubble (although the large amount of disposable income helps) but I do think it will find a decent level of consumer success. Apple Music is now more popular in the U.S. than Spotify, so that ought to draw some people to it at least. Personally, I've got AirPods because they're very convenient (I'd almost buy them for the automatic pause/play alone), but I still use Spotify and more conventional speakers with a Chromecast Audio. In terms of audio quality, that's a vastly superior option at roughly the same price.
I thought it was growing faster than spotify (which makes sense because it has less market share and thus its prospective market share is bigger) but is still smaller?
> couple billion a year, but at their scale that hardly matters.
With all due respect to Everett Dirksen:
"A couple billion here, a couple billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money."
To me it seems like it is an important part of broadening the income base, so Apple is no longer as dependent on a single product category, and often enough a single product. Each "well this isn't so important"-product that rakes in a few billion a year in revenue is fantastic.
HomePods represent modern-day Apple quite poignantly: great hardware and truly awful software.
I find Apple Music awful. It has a terrible UX on both mobile and Desktop that I've tried and failed to get used to several times now. From what I recall, simple behaviors like buffering the next song in local cache hardly worked (or weren't even implemented).
There have been plenty critiques of Siri, the large one being in my mind: the 3rd party development support is super limited, especially if you compete directly with Apple in any capacity (e.g. Spotify). Crippling consumer choice as a way of coercing consumers to your inferior products is such an awful part of the Apple ethos.
I refuse to use Apple Music as well, preferring instead to maintain a library of music local to my iPhone. It's more than unreasonably difficult to manage, it's insane.
Apple refuses to allow you to migrate music tracks from one phone to another. They demand that you re-download them from iTunes. But iTunes as music library management software is utterly unreliable and can't be trusted.
As a result, whenever I buy a new iPhone, I manually make a list of all the music on my current phone, by literally typing out song names and artists into a text editor. Software tools to do this have proven unreliable.
I then, on the new phone, download every single track individually.
I then run down my checklist and make sure that every single track is accounted for.
I've been collecting ideas in my head for a phone music player that allows you to safely store your library externally. I doubt I could ever get it into the App Store, unfortunately, but at least it would fix my personal problem.
This is either satire, or I'm concerned about your sanity. Reading and re-reading your process leaves me baffled.
I would recommend just about any other process – including, not using iTunes, or not using an iPhone. The amount of effort you're investing seems far too great for the reward you reap: parity.
I've read that the average number of songs in a library is somewhere around 7000. Assuming you're quite efficient at 1) manually recording every song in a text file, 2) re-downloading the song, and 3) verifying that song has been downloaded, maybe it would take you 60s / song.
That's 116 hours dedicated to this process, or nearly 5 full days non-stop. Seriously, the opportunity cost (even at a minimum-wage salary) is more than a new iPhone costs brand new. This is very peculiar, indeed.
I have around 550 tracks in my library. Last time I had to do it, it took me a few days of after-hours work. More time was spent trying to avoid actually doing manual copying by trying out different software tools than in just doing it the hard way. I won't make that mistake next time.
I was hating life at the time, but after it was all said and done I didn't consider the hassle worth the drastic step of switching platforms.
I have a much, much, much larger library of tracks that I don't keep in active rotation. Apple's inability to provide me with a reliable way to keep those two libraries separate is the source of my frustration.
I've considered stopping buying iPhones, but the user experience of Android phones is just nowhere close. Polish matters in a small, complicated device.
I may have to eventually because I don't use MacBooks anymore. After spilling liquid on one twice in a year I decided I needed to wean myself off of them. I thoroughly love MacBooks, but developing the habits to use one safely has eluded me. Without a OSX device, music management on an iPhone is truly impossible. As it is right now, I will need to use my work machine in order to move my library next time.
If I really have to, I suppose I could acquire a Mac Mini.
An alternative to your method is to store the list of songs in a playlist. In iTunes (desktop), make a playlist that contains the songs you want to sync over. When your phone is connected, drag the playlist over to the phone. When you get a new phone and want to transfer the songs over, just plug in your new phone and drag the playlist over.
That requires me to keep two copies of my music library manually synced, the playlist and the phone library. If I buy a track, I need to remember to add it to the playlist.
I prefer one big inconvenience that I can get out of the way all at once to throwing sand into my daily habits.
I think you're wrong. Or you consider the step of adding a song to your sync playlist harder than checking for every song manually when changing phones? I find that hard to believe.
If you select a playlist to be synced you only need to maintain that playlist on the Mac. Any change will be synced to the iPhone.
You could also create a smart playlist with conditions that cover any song / album you'd like to include. But at that point why not snyc the whole library?
I either misunderstand you or you are making this way more complicating than it is.
My workaround is not complicated, it's just time consuming. I usually skip years, I went from 6+ to 7+, skipped the 6s, I'm skipping this round of iPhones and possibly the next round too. So it's not something I have to do often.
> Or you consider the step of adding a song to your sync playlist harder than checking for every song manually when changing phones? I find that hard to believe.
I tried briefly. I don't always buy new music when I'm sitting next to my laptop. I usually buy music on my phone, immediately after I've Shazam'ed the track. If I don't remember to add it to the playlist later, then it goes unadded, and the next time I sync the playlist, it'll be gone.
I only get the urge to manage my music playlist when I'm listening to it. I usually don't have my laptop handy when I'm listening to it.
You're not misunderstanding and I'm not making this more complicated than it is. Apple simply refuses to make music library management reliable and easy by allowing me to move files from one phone to another, or by allowing third party apps to manage the music library, necessitating a workaround. It's that simple.
There is only one source of truth for my music library, the actual files on my phone. I don't want two sources of truth to manage, especially one that's in a totally different place from where I do my listening. My music library needs to live in one and only one place. I can accept syncing, but I need to be able to manage the process on my phone.
Ok, I think I read in another comment of yours that your talking about 550 tracks in collection? At such a low number I'd skip the playlist management and just sync the whole collection. At that point it's a non-issue as everything gets synced witout the need for any action on your side.
I only buy lossless music from third party stores and physical sources and therefor only use iTunes for music management (without problems I might add), not for buying. However if you often buy from your iPhone I'd guess it's even easier - shouldn't your album/song already be on the phone immediatelly after purchase while any other changes get synced whenever you're in the same network as your laptop?
After having been burned by iTunes numerous times over the years, I just don't trust it anymore with my music. Easily the most unreliable piece of software I've ever used.
Use VLC on iOS to manage audio/video files on your phone. Once VLC is installed on your phone, you can add files to and share files from it via AirDrop (among other methods). It’s very convenient.
I use a large local music colelction too and it's much easier to get your music to a new phone:
- Get an iPhone that has enough storage to store your entire music collection. Sicne mine is lossless that phone doesn't exist, but luckily iTuens has an option to transcode to a lossy format on the fly before syncing to your iPhone.
- Alternatively and if storage is a concern, just put everything you'd like to sync in a playlist and only sync this palylist.
Dude, there are loads of third-party music apps out there, including plenty that let you copy music to your phone any way you please—from a USB drive, from SFTP, etc. Check out nPlayer for a power-user media player.
Personally I keep my personal music in Plex, and my Plex server is available to me at any time. I can locally sync whatever music I like. I’d gladly use iCloud Music library but I’m well north of 100k tracks.
I actually sort and organize my music and its metadata with Swinsian.
I’d strongly recommend you look into synology NAS products. Their music and movie phone apps allow you to stream your home library from anywhere, assuming you don’t mind using data. You can also download to your phone if you’d prefer not to stream. Really smooth software, just requires some port forwarding on your router. I’m a big fan.
It doesn't allow you to actually use the phone's dedicated music storage, does it? I would rather not be handcuffed to one music player if I can avoid it.
I use it on an iphone. I haven't tried to access that music through another music app ... I think what the synology app does is carve out storage space to be used for downloaded music based on the configuration you give it. For instance, if you're okay with 10 gigs of storage being used for music storage, it will do that, either in archival formats live .wav or .flac or in transcoded .mp3 and other compressed formats. You wouldn't really be handcuffed to the player if you wanted to switch in the future ... all the music is still yours and is housed on your NAS (with RAID for redundancy and preferably some off-site back-up as well).
As someone else mentioned, VLC does the job as well (I use VLC for movie playback on my phone and love it). Synology is just really nice and easy to use, so I prefer it for music.
> I've been collecting ideas in my head for a phone music player that allows you to safely store your library externally. I doubt I could ever get it into the App Store, unfortunately, but at least it would fix my personal problem
The HomePod - at least in its current first software iteration - seems to be targeted at a very specific audience. As Gruber and a few other reviewers clearly point out, it currently makes sense mainly if you are using Apple Music or the iCloud Music library. In that respect, it mirrors the roll-out of the Apple Watch. That has not stopped the Apple Watch to be successfull - and I know a few first-day adopters which were extremely happy with their Apple Watch. Because despite of its limitations, it did exactly what they needed it to do.
With the HomePod, it seems to be a similar story. I am eagerly awaiting the HomePod becoming available in Germany, because I am fufilling the criteria listed above. For me, the sound quality is the relevant thing, and that seems to be there.
For expanding the possible user base, Apple has of course to continue working on the software and enable more sources for the music played on the HomePod.
Right, you can use any audio source via AirPlay. But with more limitations to Siri interaction than Apple Music and of course requiring the device to stream from. Which to me is acceptable too, but it is important to point out in a review.
Curious to know how the intended market for Homepod use/play music. I'd problably buy the Homepod for the audio quality, I don't use Siri. I would open Spotify on one of my macs or iPhone/iPad and Airplay to the Homepod.
I personally cannot imagine myself asking Siri(or alexa/google) to play music because I usually don't know what I want to listen to while working, so I need to find it, visually, play some bits, and then settle on something. Ofcourse, N=1, but that would be my use-case.
As a fellow german I also didn't have the chance to listen to a HomePod yet so this is speculation, but as an audio enthusiast I'm baffled by the idea of using it for its sound quality. Aren't there countless better options? Entry level bookshelfs like Dali's Zensor series or Elac's Debut B5/B6 come to mind.
Don't get me wrong - I'm confident that Apple made a great speaker...for its size. And that's my concern - it seemed they have created a 4 inch speaker that sounds like a 6 or 7 inch speaker, which is impressive, but there's already a wide range of affordable, great speakers operating in true stereo in that category. I can understand that effort if it was a mobile speaker, but it's not and I simply don't see the value of the slightly smaller footprint compared to a traditional bookshelf speaker, which is still rather small, when used at home in a fixed position.
I would have liked them to put that effort into a larger speaker and see if they can really give much more expansive options a run for their money.
Do you think the processing of room acoustics might make a big enough difference that the speaker sounds as good as or better than more expensive options?
I'm wondering if it's a similar situation to the iPhone camera? The iPhone's camera sensor (AFAIK) isn't exceptional. It's their software that holds the magic. Could that be the case here - the speaker isn't exceptional, but the processing is?
> Do you think the processing of room acoustics might make a big enough difference that the speaker sounds as good as or better than more expensive options?
That's the important question, which I obviously can't answer yet. However judging by early reports, even by audio enthusiasts, it seems to be an incredible speaker for its size and DSP is indeed one of the features that can really make difference in modern speaker design.
But then again it's a 4 inch speaker and I'm wondering if they have limited their potential with such a small form factor. If it sounds as good as other, slightly larger, yet affordable bookshelf speakers that's impressive, but those speakers have been widely available (and work with any source) for a long time.
So to stay with your analogy, I worry that Apple has managed to turn a needlessly small sensor into a competetive camera and wonder what they could have done if they used a decently sized, already competetive sensor with the same software magic.
Well, maybe it's just a price thing. A bigger speaker would probably have cost too much.
And while I agree that with speakers like Dali Zensors or Denon MC41s affordable solutions exist.. you'd still need an amp with airplay, calibration etc.
Also you can't just put stereo speakers on your table in the middle of the room.
If there would be a good spot for them something like the airSOUND AS 30 (active speakers) would be an alternative. Plus subwoofer you'd be at the same price point.
Yes, that's probably all true. I just wanted them to aim slightly higher, but let's not forget that this needs to have appeal to the masses that already consider a $300 speaker expensive. Most audio people see that as the minimum to get anything worthwhile and I'd have loved to see what Apple can do with larger, more expensive speakers.
> They have to appeal to the portion of the masses that are Apple customers and for them, $300 isn't terribly expensive.
Maybe, but as indicated before I think if that’s the case and sound quality is the focus those customers could very likely do a lot better with a pair of bookshelfs.
It seems to fit into a strategy of getting more money out of an ecosystem built around the iPhone now that there's not room left in the market for them to continue rapidly growing iPhone sales.
I ordered one for a sound bar for the Apple TV. I originally ordered two, but after reading the syncing won't be available until AirPlay 2, I cancelled one and will order the second once AirPlay 2 comes out (and assuming I like it).
The private issues are concerning, but the way Apple approaches privacy, it's less concerning to me. That may be foolish of me, but Apple seems to be the most interested in security (and has the least to gain from taking your data).
FWIW, I bought a Bose sound bar (the wide one) and wasn't overly impressed with it, particularly at $500. I'm hoping the "radar" technology of the HomePod will deliver a better single point surround sound. The technology sounds compelling.
The privacy thing is a little overblown by people that don't understand the technology.
Google Home, Amazon Echo, and all others do the same thing, they are continuously "listening" but only within the device itself. Audio is looped through an on-device audio processor which looks for the wake-word. If the wake-word is found that audio is sent to the cloud, but otherwise it just loops back over itself wiping out the previous audio sample. This can be easily verified with network monitoring or by reading about e.g. Qualcomm's Smart Audio Platform or competitors.
The next major privacy objection is typically "what if it gets hacked?!" Which, while impossible to address, ignores the smart elephant in your pocket. Which too has an always on speaker accessible to baseband as well as the primary OS.
Don’t be quick to assume that people just don’t understand the technology – it could be that their concerns are based on understanding history.
Apple doesn’t run an advertising and sales business and they’ve made privacy a major selling point. That gives many people reason to believe they won’t quietly change functionality in an update or start selling data from the cloud services backing these systems.
You can see this happening in the mobile space where Apple has been proactive about privacy concerns and Google has generally waited for public outcry or impending regulations before cleaning up their app store.
I think the worry isn't that they are listening to everybody all the time. I think it's more about the potential for abuse by Amazon, their employees, or law enforcement.
If the police approach Amazon with a court order saying they want to the microphone turned on in Someone1234's home, what do you think Amazon will do?
>What company do the police get to tap my computer?
Comcast, TWC, etc. Record everything over the wire since the patriot act and store it. Search with a FISA warrant. They could pay a private company to infiltrate it.
One can point out potential privacy/security flaws in one device while still recognizing the are other privacy/security flaws in other devices (smartphones, in this case).
I've never seen privacy/security minded individuals not acknowledging the latter.
To me, the biggest concern is taking my conversation and putting it up for sale on Amazon ad network. Already hate it when websites track me with ads about a search I did. Will be infinitely worse if now you get hoards of ads for something embarrassing you said and Alexa heard it.
Except the noise cancelling headphones. They were pretty much the best for a long time, and still pretty good today. I chose them after a personal shoot out of 3 NC headphones due to comfort and build quality.
>> Usually you buy Bose for the looks and the prestige, not for the sound quality.
Well people wouldn't buy Bose if they sounded bad. I don't think anyone who buys Bose hasn't been told they can get better sound for the money, but Bose does a few things well that can make them an easy purchase decision. They sound pretty good to the average person (to the non-audiophiles I know, they sound great), they look nice, they're well made and they're easy to set-up/use. In other words, the tradeoffs are worthwhile to their prospective buyers.
Bose is like the Starbucks of speakers -- they're the "premium mediocre" choice.
These might be tired cliches now but I've always known the joke of Bose's slogan: "Better sound through marketing" and of course the acronym "Buy Other Stereo Equipment".
Apparently, I didn't get the memo. I always bought Infinity speakers, but someone years ago convinced me Bose was good, so I gave them a try. They weren't.
I was thinking about getting it as an Apple TV speaker but however, after reading the reviews I found that it will drop the connection if you play something from another source. It would need to reconnect as an audio output. Can anybody confirm it?
I was using a speaker connected to an Airport Express as an Apple TV speaker over AirPlay for a while, but it made pausing and restarting video take a couple of seconds so I rigged an HDMI audio splitter instead. Will AirPlay 2 fix that?
also, resiliance to temporary network interference, as it sends large buffers faster than the audio plays, rather than a real time stream with a 2 second buffer (airplay 1.)
I live in a 900sqft apartment. I could not see having a $350 that doesn't integrate with a a TV because my space is only really big enough for one audio source.
Am I alone in this? How much space does a home need before it has multiple rooms where an expensive audio setup makes sense? Wouldn't the single user limitation be an issue at that sized home?
I'm sure it depends on how much of a music person you are and your budget, but I like having a good quality speaker in my bedroom. Granted, I think a decent portable speaker is ideal for apartment life - something to provide better direct sound in the kitchen or bathroom if the mood strikes.
I sleep, read, and change clothes in my bedroom. No reason for a quality sound system there. I understand that other people might "hang out" in the bedroom more.
I suspect Homepod is just the first in a series of products. I would not be surprised if Apple releases a soundbar type solution (maybe even with a built in Apple TV) in the future.
I think Audio Quality is all about taste, just like how lots of people said Beats ( before they were acquired by Apple ) were great. My god they were absolutely awful and disgusting by my standard.
You will have to listen to it yourself and make a judgement. But given how i like most Apple's product sounded, and the changes / improvement they have made to the recent Beats, I think those speaker will likely well worth $350.
Although I really wish they open up AirPlay Video for TV manufacture. Or actually make a God Damn Apple TV Set. I dont understand how I cant use my speaker for my TV.
I have heard from many people that Beats sound good. Most of the time, the comparisons come up against your average $10-20 headphones, using modern pop, alternative, and electronica.
I've also simply accepted that many people just don't care that much about the quality of their headphones, largely because their preferred music doesn't require high fidelity; their music rewards heavy bass and doesn't punish muddled mids. My own preference for headphones directly reflects my choice in music: you just can't listen to classical music on crappy headphones, as entire groups of instruments can be lost to the mud and the bass.
I've had a Google Max for a couple months. It sounds great (bass is insane) and plays well with Spotify, not to mention the available actions, home controls, etc. I do have an iMac, iPhone, MacBook, etc., but I can't see myself buying a HomePod. I'm just not sure what the value is (over Max) especially when I prefer Spotify to Apple Music. I've noticed a lot of reviews and tweets avoiding the comparison of Max to HomePod - seems most are comparing HomePod to Echos and Homes.
There are some reviews which compare it to the Max and the HomePod seems to compare well to it. But most reviews agree, that if you want to regularly use the HomePod with music from outside of Apple Music or your iCloud music library, then the HomePod might not be the ideal speaker for you - at least in the current software configuration.
IMO for most people even a Harmon Kardon Invoke (the Cortana speaker) is a better option. There's not much demand for them, so what was originally a $200 device is selling for $100 now. And it's a pretty decent speaker.
I completely forgot about this product over the past week until just now. I would have loved to order one, but since there is no development ecosystem, I don't see myself buying this at the moment.
Watch apps were definitely an interesting release. The first version of the Watch was extremely underpowered with a very limited SDK. I also think that Apple was trying to figure out what the Watch was for until version 3. Now it's actually useful.
As far as being deliberate, Apple has kinda always had botched software release since the iPhone. Steve Jobs touted web apps that you would bookmark as the way to build initial iOS apps until Apple released an SDK for the second iPhone. The iPad's software is finally coming into form with iOS 11. The Watch struggled for the first two versions. They seem to be on a pattern of — Try stuff, keep what works, throw away what doesn't.
Watch apps sucking at first was entirely Apple’s fault since the implementation was terrible.
Now that the hardware is faster and watch apps can be more standalone there are lots of good ones: Carrot Weather, Fantastical, Drafts, Authy, and 1Password spring to mind
I remember when the iPhone came out, and developers saw it as an opportunity to make some money (and possibly some retire now money). I was in that bandwagon and made some decent buy a car money. The apps were overall good quality, and definitely not scammy, IMO. It didn't last though, the big scam type companies with large budgets and big backers took over years ago by winning the race to the bottom. I think that probably bled into the watch platform, and will probably be a problem for any new Apple platform. (I don't own an Apple Watch, so I'm just guessing that's what happened).
I don't know, but I hope so. I worked at Amazon when the Alexa was released and one of the things people love about Alexa are the custom skills. I've heard that the store is a bit of a mess, but they have some cool integrations.
By a certain definition, they are. They obviously can't run springboard or UIKit, but they share the same underlying technology; that is how they can run Siri and have a very tight integration with your phone.
They're certainly tiny computers, but has it ever been established (or even seriously speculated?) that they're running xnu? That's the minimum hurdle they'd have to clear for me to feel at all comfortable with the statement that they "run iOS".
Gruber, like him or hate him, has really hit the nail on the head when attempting to elucidate Apple's thinking towards HomePod.
> First, “What if we turned ____ into a small advanced computer?” is arguably Apple’s mantra for entering new product categories.
> The difference between HomePod and Amazon Echo isn’t that they’re in different product categories. [...] The difference is in the priorities behind the devices. [...] HomePod’s first priority is clearly audio quality. That’s why it costs $350. Amazon has placed a higher priority on price
I think Apple's philosophy towards products is "What does a user want to do, and how can we uniquely enable that through design and hardware." Apple has seen that people really want to play music in their home, and with HomePod they have a unique hardware solution and premium experience.
That's why I think Gruber is correct in his thinking re: Apple Music exclusivity:
> It is unclear at this point whether third-party “Hey Siri” playback support is the way Apple wants HomePod to be, simply something they haven’t gotten around to yet, or still up in the air internally (like native apps on iPhone back in 2007). Some people seem convinced that HomePod doesn’t support external services through “Hey Siri” out of competitive spite with Spotify. I would say that’s certainly possible, but I’m not convinced. [...] my gut says they’ll make the most money by making HomePod more useful, even if that means opening up an SDK that allows for competitors to Apple Music.
HomePod might not be a success, and it definitely has some shortcomings. But, given Apple's ability to iterate and change, I probably wouldn't bet against the HomePod being successful at some point in the future.
I think, if anything, some of HomePod's most glaring shortcomings are actually Siri's architectural shortcomings. There is a different Siri on each device, with different capabilities. That seems like one of the biggest technical challenges making SiriKit advancements non-trivial.
>> HomePod might not be a success, and it definitely has some shortcomings.
Well, it is early days. I wouldn't judge HomePod's success until it's been around for a year or more. Let's not forget all the criticism of the original iPhone. Apple's MVP products tend to be open to criticism on release, but over time, as they add wishlist functionality, silence a lot of the critics too.
>This means you can’t connect HomePod to anything to use it as a “normal” speaker. [...] HomePod is very much a “skating to where the puck is going to be” product.
I kind of agree that most modern playback devices feature wireless technology anyway, but Bluetooth audio is still crap and AirPlay requires an Apple device. Gruber seemingly welcomes every removal of ports on Apple devices with the puck quote. The problem is that in recent years, Apple doesn't replace them with newer, open standards but retracts to their proprietary garden that slowly looses appeal as the time goes by.
> HomePod is very much a “skating to where the puck is going to be” product, and Apple has believed for years that when it comes to personal audio, the puck is heading toward a wireless world.
That puck better be headed towards 'connecting with TV/XBox/PC' because who wants to have multiple speakers in a house for different services? Especially considering better speakers take more space.
Does Apple expect everyone to buy a separate TV for Netflix, HBO, and NBC?
Speakers are one-item-serves-all. HomePod needs connectivity options to connect to your TV/Xbox/PC. Otherwise it'll have very limited utility as a Siri assistant.
Also, fixed consumer electronics devices should always be wired. You're just increasing the noise floor for your other devices in your house if they're not.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks that? I have a sound bar for my TV -- I still need speakers elsewhere, and I wouldn't want my room speakers to be bound to my TV or necessarily the overhead of having to manage pairings of speakers. HomePod should fit in my bedroom quite nicely, so I'm looking forward to it.
Everyone saying the thing is doomed, or Siri is useless… I dunno, maybe I don't use Alexa to the fullest but I pretty much ask Alexa the weather and to turn my lights on and off and I find Apple Music better than Amazon Music. It will also integrate with my notes/reminders, timers and calls seamlessly.
I'm sure Alexa integrates with all of this at some level, but I'm willing to bet that for people into Apple's ecosystem Siri (despite lacking the thousands of questionably useful skills) will work pretty well for a lot of people.
Siri has a lot of room to improve, but I don't think that HomePod is somehow useless because it doesn't have my roommate's Alexa fart skill. The main thing will be getting support for third party entitlements over time -- they can't let that languish forever, but I think for the moment they've got more breathing room than people think.
I also trust Siri a lot more than I trust Alexa/Google with listening all the time or being used by others in the house given the nature of business models.
The huge, constantly evolving bluetooth speaker market (see Amazon, Sonos, Bose, etc) is evidence that there's a healthy market for audio devices separate from the home theater. It's great having decent music quality in the kitchen, bedroom, office, bathroom, etc. TV speakers might be capable of providing good music for a dinner party if you're in a small apartment, but it's not ideal for a lot of house layouts.
> I’ve seen a lot of commentary along the lines up “Well, of course Apple is promoting HomePod’s audio quality, because Siri sucks compared to Alexa and Google Home as a voice assistant.” I would argue that’s not true across the board, but it’s inarguably true that Alexa and Google Home are far better than Siri at certain things, and if those things are important to you, you probably aren’t even reading this review, because you know HomePod isn’t for you.
"This product is perfect, if it isn't perfect for you is because this product isn't for you"
> The harder decisions are choosing between HomePod, the Alexa-equipped Sonos One, and Google’s Home Max. Based on my side-by-side listening experience — admittedly, in a demo set up and conducted by Apple, but in a residential room that I would describe as very typical in terms of its size and acoustics — HomePod does sound better.
> THE NOTCH: It offends me. It’s ungainly and unnatural. Clearly, the ideal of an “all-screen” design — to use Apple’s own words — has no notch at all. This is not that. But what I dislike more than the notch isn’t the notch itself but that Apple is fully embracing the notch in software. I really wish their software design rendered the “ears” with black backgrounds while using apps. I’d be fine with embracing the notch on the home screen and lock screen.
> It’s the front-facing equivalent of the camera bump. It offends me because it’s not just imperfect but glaringly, deliberately imperfect. But — again, exactly as with the bump — I understand why it’s there. I don’t like it but it wouldn’t keep me from buying the phone.
One can be a fan, yet also critical. The best ones probably are given fans also tend to know the ins and outs better than most. Disqualifying Gruber's analysis because he's often a dick and likes Apple just means you're pre-judging information from one of the people who knows Apple best.
I'm not sure that meets the criteria of objective criticism. He's working hard to justify a design decision that he doesn't personally like, and makes sure that you know he feels you should buy the phone.
John Gruber is one of Apple's biggest critics and also their largest fanboi. Everything he writes about Apple needs to be taken with a grain of salt because it's written by someone who is 100% committed to their ecosystem.
Basically, Apple is making Sonos more affordable, while Amazon is making a bet that there is a new platform to be built/won in the form of voice and they're going to push hard into it with a bunch of low-cost appliances.
Apple's approach is fool-proof, but fairly limited. It could be worth a couple billion a year, but at their scale that hardly matters.
Amazon's approach is contingent on changing customer behavior and the development of an app ecosystem, but if it works it could be massive. I wouldn't be surprised if all this focus on voice doesn't eventually lead them back into making smartphones that tie into the hardware/services ecosystem they're developing. Apple could, of course, start making HomePod minis once the use cases are hashed out by Amazon.
At the end of the day, it's important to judge the product on its merits. It may not jibe with your macro view of the tech industry, but that's not the most relevant axis upon which to review a single product offering.