bill42
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M2 Mac mini review roundup: Tiny, but mighty
Upping the specs to mid level to match how I always buy new Macs, this Mac Mini alone would cost about $2000, and that's without a monitor. As an Apple snob who has not purchased a non-apple screen since my 21 inch Sony CRT for my 840AV back in 1991, I would want to buy an Apple screen. All we have available is a Studio Display starting at $1600. I would prefer an iMac like my current 27" iMac from 2012, but the only iMacs available today have a screen just a bit too small for my taste. I really wish Apple would just make a new 27 or 30" iMac. It would be half the price of a Mac Mini with Studio Display, and it would sell like mad, just like the old 27" iMacs did when they dominated the graphics world.
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Apple again said to cut HomePod orders on poor sales performance
I would buy two of them or maybe three if you could use voice commands to tell the home pods to play any songs in your main computer's iTunes library. Alas that only works if you pay a monthly subscription to Apple Music. No thanks Apple.SendMcjak said:
Apparently, a fairly small number of people who actually bought one.zone said:... If this was not an Apple product people would be saying how great it is!
HomePod is a well-engineered product with fairly poor market fit + a terrible launch strategy.
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Apple closing Simi Valley store with no replacement ahead of 'iPhone 8' launch
Don't forget that Apple stores are the most profitable physical retail stores of any company in the USA. The most profitable single store in the country is the 5th ave NYC store.karmadave said:At some point, I believe Apple will need to revisit it's retail strategy. Large malls are declining, in many areas, as online takes a larger share of consumer's wallets...
(Not in a mall but still not an online store) Even in our large malls in NY however, the apple stores are always the most crowded stores in the mall typically. If you want an appointment at the Genius Bar, you are going to have to pic a time a week in advance or more during weekend hours. I am most familiar with my local store near me in Manhasset Long Island, which gets zero out-of-town tourists, and it seems more crowded than ever, even on weekdays.
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Apple invention appears to detail HomePod's adaptive acoustics
Who wouldn't want to hear a jazz song that sounds like alive band? You'll never hear an acoustic bass being strung without a good set of speakers.Metriacanthosaurus said:
To some people's taste. For many people, room-pounding bass is not a desire, or even a positive.bill42 said:
Sadly at this size it will be lacking adequate bass to fill a decent sized room.Metriacanthosaurus said:With no exaggeration, the Home Pod appears to be the best home speaker money can buy. -
Apple invention appears to detail HomePod's adaptive acoustics
robin: I am as excited as anybody to hear what Apple has created and I will buy one on preorder the day it goes on sale. You can indeed get some decent bass out of long throw woofers with long enclosures and I have some speakers like this but looking at the "woofer" in the apple speaker it looks like it will be loud as opposed to deep-sounding. I have a pair of tower speakers with multiple 8 inch woofers that reproduce live music pretty well, but even then I need my subwoofer to move enough air to reproduce the bass in hiphop music or the canons in the 1812 orchestra. The HomePod is going to be great for what it is but lets not even slightly entertain the idea that it will sound as good as dedicated high end audio speakers costing 10 times the price. It is being aimed at replacing the average small speaker system and in that realm it will surely succeed.robjn said:
Serious bass can be generated from a four inch woofer so long as it moves at the right frequency and generates sufficient pressure.bill42 said:
Sadly at this size it will be lacking adequate bass to fill a decent sized room. Sonos and other competing sound systems with optional subwoofers will blow the audio quality of the HomePod out of the water. That being said I think the HomePod will surely be the best smart speaker that listens to and responds to voice commands with support for smart home systems. Perhaps that is what you meant to say.Metriacanthosaurus said:With no exaggeration, the Home Pod appears to be the best home speaker money can buy.
Large speakers generate a more pressure since they have a bigger diaphragm surface area and they also tend to have a lower natural frequency. You get a boomy sounding bass when you are listening to large enclosure resonate but this is not a true reproduction of the source.
In this case Apple are generating a lot of pressure by means of high displacement. The combination of high displacement and a small back volume can result in high pressure = loud sound.
There is an old myth that a speaker enclosure needs to be as big as the wavelength it is generating. Since bass frequencies might have a wavelength more than ten meters long - no speaker is big enough. The fact is that the back volume can be small and we don't want to listen to the resonance of the enclosure we want to listen to the resonance of the diaphragm.
This patent shows that Apple have found a way to tightly control a driver by measuring and adjusting to external factors that effect the radiating impedance.
It's going to be interesting to see a tear down of the HomePod. There might be more microphones than the six Apple has shown us. I'm curious as to whether each of the tweeters has an integrated microphone in the back or if this technique is applied only to the woofer.
There is much more to HomePod DSP than this one patent covers. Those six external mics are being used to do a lot of different stuff!
