Not sure why some folks are working themselves into a lather about a product that few ordinary consumers fully understand. It's not like people are sitting around wondering how they can possibly get through one more day, much less a couple more months (OMG!!!), without being able to talk to their speakers. If there's not a clear need or demand (outside of hard core Apple geeks) why does it being delayed by a couple of months really matter? Amazon's been pushing these things out for years with the expressed purpose of getting people to buy more crap on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah they throw out some toy apps and gadgetry to make you feel a little better about having an Amazon sales dude listening in on your household conversations, but the "why" part of Echo's existence is exactly to make it easier for you to buy more stuff more often on Amazon. Apple is very big on "whys" but I'm not totally clear on the "why" for HomePod. I think it might be about music and the attention to detail they've given to HomePod bears this out to some degree. But there has to be more because Apple could simply build a kickass speaker system if audio quality was their only goal.
I believe the HomePod is just one more piece of the puzzle for Apple to advance towards an Apple product & services enabled ambient intelligence (AmI) environment. Apple's primary computing devices are quickly (or slowly depending on your expectations) migrating from stationary -> mobile -> handheld -> worn -> ? (embedded?) while still scaling upwards in processing and sensory capabilities. The sum of computing/intelligence is what matters, not just the computing/intelligence of single devices. The "why" of Apple's product initiatives is to move you, the customer, towards an AmI environment that is is structured around the things that matter to you in your life, like music, interaction, and knowledge discovery. All built around Apple and Apple partner products & services - of course. Everything Apple does must complement their ecosystem.
What Amazon is doing is somewhat similar, but the end game for Amazon is not an AmI environment structured around you and your life experiences, but an AmI environment structured around a global marketplace/bazaar for discovering, acquiring, and consuming products (and everything on the supply side as well). And there's nothing wrong with Amazon's approach. At all. It's a great thing for buyers and sellers and fills a huge consumer need. It's probably an easier goal for Amazon to achieve than what Apple is trying to do because Amazon is further along, is incredibly focused, has a salient vision, and is damn good at what they do - at scale. Apple has loftier goals that are more abstract, softer, emotional, and and human centric. All that intersection of art and science stuff. Not that Amazon doesn't understand human emotions, like greed, lust, and retail therapy, but that's another story.
When all is said and done, the HomePod slipping a couple of months is like a few pixels being delayed in a much bigger picture that Apple is painting. It also make no difference in Apple's "response" to whatever Amazon and Google are doing with smart speakers. Apple is playing an entirely different game.
This post deserves a medal. Absolutely spot on. I don't believe anything else needs to be said on this topic. Nice job.
Now regarding the HomePod. Yes, doesn't make a difference for me that it is delayed. I wasn't waiting for it, wasn't considering it as a gift for anyone this Xmas, heck I'm not even sure I want it at this point (and until this news broke quite honestly I even forgot about the HomePod). Apple will have to convince me later via their advertising/marketing campaign. It may be something I'll have to just wait and see...
But Apple is a smart company. They know what they are doing. I'm not worried.
If it's delayed, that has to mean they haven't even started manufacturing yet. And yet from the previews, it seemed totally designed. So something must be wrong with it and I'll ask the question I've asked before: sales and marketing aside, what exactly is it that everyone else at Apple actually does? It seems like an awful lot of employees for the relatively few products and operating systems that Apple has.
Numbers can be deceiving. While there are roughly 120,000 employees at Apple, there are only a couple dozen designers. Maybe multiply that by 5-10 for hardware engineers and then on a quick search it looks like there are 16-20 software engineers. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Garuntee for NPD like home pods there are only a couple dozen people working on this total knowing Apple. If something isn’t up to their insanely high standards, guess what? It’s not going to ship. Shit happens.
im just curious what the issue is.
And they are all working in Tim Cook's garage. Thanks for the laugh of the day.
Not sure why some folks are working themselves into a lather about a product that few ordinary consumers fully understand. It's not like people are sitting around wondering how they can possibly get through one more day, much less a couple more months (OMG!!!), without being able to talk to their speakers. If there's not a clear need or demand (outside of hard core Apple geeks) why does it being delayed by a couple of months really matter? Amazon's been pushing these things out for years with the expressed purpose of getting people to buy more crap on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah they throw out some toy apps and gadgetry to make you feel a little better about having an Amazon sales dude listening in on your household conversations, but the "why" part of Echo's existence is exactly to make it easier for you to buy more stuff more often on Amazon. Apple is very big on "whys" but I'm not totally clear on the "why" for HomePod. I think it might be about music and the attention to detail they've given to HomePod bears this out to some degree. But there has to be more because Apple could simply build a kickass speaker system if audio quality was their only goal.
I believe the HomePod is just one more piece of the puzzle for Apple to advance towards an Apple product & services enabled ambient intelligence (AmI) environment. Apple's primary computing devices are quickly (or slowly depending on your expectations) migrating from stationary -> mobile -> handheld -> worn -> ? (embedded?) while still scaling upwards in processing and sensory capabilities. The sum of computing/intelligence is what matters, not just the computing/intelligence of single devices. The "why" of Apple's product initiatives is to move you, the customer, towards an AmI environment that is is structured around the things that matter to you in your life, like music, interaction, and knowledge discovery. All built around Apple and Apple partner products & services - of course. Everything Apple does must complement their ecosystem.
What Amazon is doing is somewhat similar, but the end game for Amazon is not an AmI environment structured around you and your life experiences, but an AmI environment structured around a global marketplace/bazaar for discovering, acquiring, and consuming products (and everything on the supply side as well). And there's nothing wrong with Amazon's approach. At all. It's a great thing for buyers and sellers and fills a huge consumer need. It's probably an easier goal for Amazon to achieve than what Apple is trying to do because Amazon is further along, is incredibly focused, has a salient vision, and is damn good at what they do - at scale. Apple has loftier goals that are more abstract, softer, emotional, and and human centric. All that intersection of art and science stuff. Not that Amazon doesn't understand human emotions, like greed, lust, and retail therapy, but that's another story.
When all is said and done, the HomePod slipping a couple of months is like a few pixels being delayed in a much bigger picture that Apple is painting. It also make no difference in Apple's "response" to whatever Amazon and Google are doing with smart speakers. Apple is playing an entirely different game.
This post deserves a medal. Absolutely spot on. I don't believe anything else needs to be said on this topic. Nice job.
Now regarding the HomePod. Yes, doesn't make a difference for me that it is delayed. I wasn't waiting for it, wasn't considering it as a gift for anyone this Xmas, heck I'm not even sure I want it at this point (and until this news broke quite honestly I even forgot about the HomePod). Apple will have to convince me later via their advertising/marketing campaign. It may be something I'll have to just wait and see...
But Apple is a smart company. They know what they are doing. I'm not worried.
No it’s not. He says the purpose is to buy more stuff from Amazon and that all other features are just gimmicks, yet none of the dozen+ people I know with Echos have ever used it to buy anything. He also says that there is an Amazon employee spying on you even when you haven’t used a wake word to allow the device to record and analyse your request. It’s all bullshit to claim that a product they haven’t used Isn’t useful to customers, pathetic to make up a conspiracy theory, and shows a lack of cognition to ignore all the microphones (and camera) that are throughout your home, work, car, and even on your person that could be recording withiut your knowledge, not to mention what you do with these devices.
I wonder how many people are satisfied with these devices. I don't know anyone that has one or will admit to owning one. I'm not one that wears self fashioned aluminum hats all day but I'm still not sold on always "on and listening" hardware.
I wonder how many people are satisfied with these devices. I don't know anyone that has one or will admit to owning one. I'm not one that wears self fashioned aluminum hats all day but I'm still not sold on always "on and listening" hardware.
No sold in what way? That a device with a microphone that is described as listening for a wake word must also be recording everything you do, while all the other devices around you aren't simply because you haven't consider it even though it's just as likely with any hackable device with an internet connection and input HW? Or you're not sold on how a hands-free, virtual personal assistant or CE can be a benefit? Because the range of ignorance in this thread is extensive.
We now know that when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world, it was held together with spit and duct tape, and there was a high probability of spectacular failure during the demo. It was the ultimate in showmanship featuring an unready product. Then there was considerable delay between that demo and the actual release of the device. Then there was a price drop later (and refund of the difference to the first buyers) because they guessed wrong on the price point. Even then, the iPhone didn’t really take off until there were upgrades to include a GPS and the App Store that everyone now thinks always existed.
The HomePod introduction was far more low-key than that, but the context is perhaps important for those in this thread who have offered the perennial if unenlightened Tim is not Steve observations. Apple introduced the HomePod when they did just to throw down a marker. Everybody else is already selling voice controlled home speakers. We have now been made aware that Apple will be selling one, too. The already announced features indicate that it will be a better speaker than what the competition is offering. So if you like Apple stuff and already appreciate the continuity across devices, it’s probably worth waiting for the HomePod just based on that announcement.
We also know from the iPhone intro (and others) that Apple doesn’t get into a new product category just to offer an Apple flavored version of what everyone else alreay has. The iPhone was a recombination of a number of things that were already on the market, producing a device that created an entirely new product category. There were already PDAs, Blackberrys, GPS devices and other things out there, yet somehow the iPhone came out and the makers of all those other things that were supposedly way ahead of Apple now found themselves either playing catch-up or failing to do so.
That’s likely to be true of the HomePod as well. Is it just going to be an Apple-flavored Amazon Echo or Google Home or Sonos speaker? I suppose that could be all it will be, but if I were making a bet, that wouldn’t be it. The introduction earlier this year was just to let people know that it’s coming and it will be better than the competition. If that was all it was going to be, however, we’d probably already have it. The real question is what else it will do. The answer is likely to have a lot to do with home networking and with HomeKit integration, and possibly other things we haven’t imagined. The delay likely has to do with those other unannounced things, and making sure to get them right.
Not sure why some folks are working themselves into a lather about a product that few ordinary consumers fully understand. It's not like people are sitting around wondering how they can possibly get through one more day, much less a couple more months (OMG!!!), without being able to talk to their speakers. If there's not a clear need or demand (outside of hard core Apple geeks) why does it being delayed by a couple of months really matter? Amazon's been pushing these things out for years with the expressed purpose of getting people to buy more crap on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah they throw out some toy apps and gadgetry to make you feel a little better about having an Amazon sales dude listening in on your household conversations, but the "why" part of Echo's existence is exactly to make it easier for you to buy more stuff more often on Amazon. Apple is very big on "whys" but I'm not totally clear on the "why" for HomePod. I think it might be about music and the attention to detail they've given to HomePod bears this out to some degree. But there has to be more because Apple could simply build a kickass speaker system if audio quality was their only goal.
I believe the HomePod is just one more piece of the puzzle for Apple to advance towards an Apple product & services enabled ambient intelligence (AmI) environment. Apple's primary computing devices are quickly (or slowly depending on your expectations) migrating from stationary -> mobile -> handheld -> worn -> ? (embedded?) while still scaling upwards in processing and sensory capabilities. The sum of computing/intelligence is what matters, not just the computing/intelligence of single devices. The "why" of Apple's product initiatives is to move you, the customer, towards an AmI environment that is is structured around the things that matter to you in your life, like music, interaction, and knowledge discovery. All built around Apple and Apple partner products & services - of course. Everything Apple does must complement their ecosystem.
What Amazon is doing is somewhat similar, but the end game for Amazon is not an AmI environment structured around you and your life experiences, but an AmI environment structured around a global marketplace/bazaar for discovering, acquiring, and consuming products (and everything on the supply side as well). And there's nothing wrong with Amazon's approach. At all. It's a great thing for buyers and sellers and fills a huge consumer need. It's probably an easier goal for Amazon to achieve than what Apple is trying to do because Amazon is further along, is incredibly focused, has a salient vision, and is damn good at what they do - at scale. Apple has loftier goals that are more abstract, softer, emotional, and and human centric. All that intersection of art and science stuff. Not that Amazon doesn't understand human emotions, like greed, lust, and retail therapy, but that's another story.
When all is said and done, the HomePod slipping a couple of months is like a few pixels being delayed in a much bigger picture that Apple is painting. It also make no difference in Apple's "response" to whatever Amazon and Google are doing with smart speakers. Apple is playing an entirely different game.
This post doesn’t have enough exposure, so I’ll leave it in full. You’re dead on in your interpretation. Remember, when Steve Jobs was asked about Siri at D# (whatever one it was; I think it was the last one before he died). Everyone was up in arms because Apple was being “hypocritical” by horning in on Google’s domain after Google stole the iPhone’s software wholesale. And so Mossberg asked Steve about Siri being a “search company”, but… oh! I found the clip.
We forget how far ahead Steve thought (5 years) and how far he refused to think because things change too quickly (more than 5 years). I can imagine Steve, somewhere around 2009, getting all excited about the possibilities of soft AI in Apple products and connecting the ecosystem. I bet he threw out every idea under the sun (just talking internally with his people and not intending any or all of them) in the first brainstorming sessions. I can imagine him being furious about then-connected devices (which haven’t changed much now)–“IF I’M GOING TO PLUG MY FUCKING COFFEE MACHINE INTO MY NETWORK, I EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO USE IT FLAWLESSLY!”–and being unwilling to accept Apple making any of them unless they’re done right. HomePod may be the last of the ideas that the team was tossing around which Steve had been convinced to take past the preliminary stages. It’s not something we’ll ever know, but in five or six years’ time if Apple’s quality and direction start falling off in a measurable way, we’ll have a pretty good idea of when the last Steve ideas came out.
Apple's problem is software. It is ridiculous hundreds of millions of iPhone users have to install and updates new iOS weekly. Monthly may be a more reasonable period. I refuse to install iOS 11 because I hate the constant reminder from Apple to install new OSs which are mainly to fix bugs and some are not ever related to my phone.
I have four Sonos play fives and I love them. I am really looking forward to a HomePod because they are supposed to sound as good or better, and the Sonos sound great. I think the biggest mistake if what I’ve heard is true is the fact that they won’t play Spotify or Pandora or any of the other music services. I have Apple Music and love it, others don’t. Seems to me that’s a 50% decrease in sales right there no matter how good they sound. Why Apple, why?
Exactly. Who would buy a $350 dumb-as-rocks-Siri-controlled speaker when you can just hook up a $30~$50 Dot to a nice sound system.
Your implication is that the HomePod will be a poor to middling sound system at best. I suspect you will need to reassess that once you hear it for yourself.
From a review: “The HomePod was able to fill a large room very well and sounded great no matter what angle I was listening from, which Apple says is possible because the HomePod is smart enough to intelligently tune itself and balance the audio to match any room or position you put it in. It sounded even better when playing in stereo while synced with another HomePod.”
I have four Sonos play fives and I love them. I am really looking forward to a HomePod because they are supposed to sound as good or better, and the Sonos sound great. I think the biggest mistake if what I’ve heard is true is the fact that they won’t play Spotify or Pandora or any of the other music services. I have Apple Music and love it, others don’t. Seems to me that’s a 50% decrease in sales right there no matter how good they sound. Why Apple, why?
Sonos carries many products, and at least several that exceed the HomePod in audio performance and cost. Even the Sonos One with Alexa built-in may outperform the HomePod, but we’ll have to wait for independent testing.
what doesn’t get stated when people talk about these devices is what they can connect to in terms of both HW and SW. I hope Apple allows for extra speakers to be connected. I hope Apple creates an App Store that beats Alexa Skills. I hope allows Spotify, SiriusXM, and other services; and I don’t mean by using AirPlay from the iPhone.
If it doesn’t offer Spotify and SiriusXM I’m likely out, but as of right now I plan to buy two units, assuming they can be used as wireless Apple TV speakers.
Siri is still too much of a toy at the moment, and this will show up when she’s inside a device that’s not that different from the competition, instead of having her shortcomings masked by a superior phone.
If they are still tweaking the Siri interface I suspect it has less to do with improving Siri’s intelligence and more to do with enhancing the ability of Siri to detect and parse a single voice command across a crowded noisy room.
Not sure why some folks are working themselves into a lather about a product that few ordinary consumers fully understand. It's not like people are sitting around wondering how they can possibly get through one more day, much less a couple more months (OMG!!!), without being able to talk to their speakers. If there's not a clear need or demand (outside of hard core Apple geeks) why does it being delayed by a couple of months really matter? Amazon's been pushing these things out for years with the expressed purpose of getting people to buy more crap on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah they throw out some toy apps and gadgetry to make you feel a little better about having an Amazon sales dude listening in on your household conversations, but the "why" part of Echo's existence is exactly to make it easier for you to buy more stuff more often on Amazon. Apple is very big on "whys" but I'm not totally clear on the "why" for HomePod. I think it might be about music and the attention to detail they've given to HomePod bears this out to some degree. But there has to be more because Apple could simply build a kickass speaker system if audio quality was their only goal.
I believe the HomePod is just one more piece of the puzzle for Apple to advance towards an Apple product & services enabled ambient intelligence (AmI) environment. Apple's primary computing devices are quickly (or slowly depending on your expectations) migrating from stationary -> mobile -> handheld -> worn -> ? (embedded?) while still scaling upwards in processing and sensory capabilities. The sum of computing/intelligence is what matters, not just the computing/intelligence of single devices. The "why" of Apple's product initiatives is to move you, the customer, towards an AmI environment that is is structured around the things that matter to you in your life, like music, interaction, and knowledge discovery. All built around Apple and Apple partner products & services - of course. Everything Apple does must complement their ecosystem.
What Amazon is doing is somewhat similar, but the end game for Amazon is not an AmI environment structured around you and your life experiences, but an AmI environment structured around a global marketplace/bazaar for discovering, acquiring, and consuming products (and everything on the supply side as well). And there's nothing wrong with Amazon's approach. At all. It's a great thing for buyers and sellers and fills a huge consumer need. It's probably an easier goal for Amazon to achieve than what Apple is trying to do because Amazon is further along, is incredibly focused, has a salient vision, and is damn good at what they do - at scale. Apple has loftier goals that are more abstract, softer, emotional, and and human centric. All that intersection of art and science stuff. Not that Amazon doesn't understand human emotions, like greed, lust, and retail therapy, but that's another story.
When all is said and done, the HomePod slipping a couple of months is like a few pixels being delayed in a much bigger picture that Apple is painting. It also make no difference in Apple's "response" to whatever Amazon and Google are doing with smart speakers. Apple is playing an entirely different game.
This post deserves a medal. Absolutely spot on. I don't believe anything else needs to be said on this topic. Nice job.
Now regarding the HomePod. Yes, doesn't make a difference for me that it is delayed. I wasn't waiting for it, wasn't considering it as a gift for anyone this Xmas, heck I'm not even sure I want it at this point (and until this news broke quite honestly I even forgot about the HomePod). Apple will have to convince me later via their advertising/marketing campaign. It may be something I'll have to just wait and see...
But Apple is a smart company. They know what they are doing. I'm not worried.
No it’s not. He says the purpose is to buy more stuff from Amazon and that all other features are just gimmicks, yet none of the dozen+ people I know with Echos have ever used it to buy anything. He also says that there is an Amazon employee spying on you even when you haven’t used a wake word to allow the device to record and analyse your request. It’s all bullshit to claim that a product they haven’t used Isn’t useful to customers, pathetic to make up a conspiracy theory, and shows a lack of cognition to ignore all the microphones (and camera) that are throughout your home, work, car, and even on your person that could be recording withiut your knowledge, not to mention what you do with these devices.
There can be a legitimate point about certain tech companies gathering data (through devices) to sell products in ads. Amazon does that and so does Google. It's not a secret. - When a customer buys a heavily discounted product (or gets a free service) the product is being subsidized and it's known that Google and Amazon are mining customer's data to subsidize their products. * So an Amazon speaker in one's home is listening and when the user tells the Echo speaker something, Amazon collects that information and will decide if that can be used to make them money with ads / to sell products. - Does a person want that kind of tech in their home? Some don't care about privacy or if their information is a product to be gathered for ads. That's their choice of course. * Personally I do care and I would never have an Amazon speaker in my home.
Not sure why some folks are working themselves into a lather about a product that few ordinary consumers fully understand. It's not like people are sitting around wondering how they can possibly get through one more day, much less a couple more months (OMG!!!), without being able to talk to their speakers. If there's not a clear need or demand (outside of hard core Apple geeks) why does it being delayed by a couple of months really matter? Amazon's been pushing these things out for years with the expressed purpose of getting people to buy more crap on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah they throw out some toy apps and gadgetry to make you feel a little better about having an Amazon sales dude listening in on your household conversations, but the "why" part of Echo's existence is exactly to make it easier for you to buy more stuff more often on Amazon. Apple is very big on "whys" but I'm not totally clear on the "why" for HomePod. I think it might be about music and the attention to detail they've given to HomePod bears this out to some degree. But there has to be more because Apple could simply build a kickass speaker system if audio quality was their only goal.
I believe the HomePod is just one more piece of the puzzle for Apple to advance towards an Apple product & services enabled ambient intelligence (AmI) environment. Apple's primary computing devices are quickly (or slowly depending on your expectations) migrating from stationary -> mobile -> handheld -> worn -> ? (embedded?) while still scaling upwards in processing and sensory capabilities. The sum of computing/intelligence is what matters, not just the computing/intelligence of single devices. The "why" of Apple's product initiatives is to move you, the customer, towards an AmI environment that is is structured around the things that matter to you in your life, like music, interaction, and knowledge discovery. All built around Apple and Apple partner products & services - of course. Everything Apple does must complement their ecosystem.
What Amazon is doing is somewhat similar, but the end game for Amazon is not an AmI environment structured around you and your life experiences, but an AmI environment structured around a global marketplace/bazaar for discovering, acquiring, and consuming products (and everything on the supply side as well). And there's nothing wrong with Amazon's approach. At all. It's a great thing for buyers and sellers and fills a huge consumer need. It's probably an easier goal for Amazon to achieve than what Apple is trying to do because Amazon is further along, is incredibly focused, has a salient vision, and is damn good at what they do - at scale. Apple has loftier goals that are more abstract, softer, emotional, and and human centric. All that intersection of art and science stuff. Not that Amazon doesn't understand human emotions, like greed, lust, and retail therapy, but that's another story.
When all is said and done, the HomePod slipping a couple of months is like a few pixels being delayed in a much bigger picture that Apple is painting. It also make no difference in Apple's "response" to whatever Amazon and Google are doing with smart speakers. Apple is playing an entirely different game.
This post deserves a medal. Absolutely spot on. I don't believe anything else needs to be said on this topic. Nice job.
Now regarding the HomePod. Yes, doesn't make a difference for me that it is delayed. I wasn't waiting for it, wasn't considering it as a gift for anyone this Xmas, heck I'm not even sure I want it at this point (and until this news broke quite honestly I even forgot about the HomePod). Apple will have to convince me later via their advertising/marketing campaign. It may be something I'll have to just wait and see...
But Apple is a smart company. They know what they are doing. I'm not worried.
No it’s not. He says the purpose is to buy more stuff from Amazon and that all other features are just gimmicks, yet none of the dozen+ people I know with Echos have ever used it to buy anything. He also says that there is an Amazon employee spying on you even when you haven’t used a wake word to allow the device to record and analyse your request. It’s all bullshit to claim that a product they haven’t used Isn’t useful to customers, pathetic to make up a conspiracy theory, and shows a lack of cognition to ignore all the microphones (and camera) that are throughout your home, work, car, and even on your person that could be recording withiut your knowledge, not to mention what you do with these devices.
There can be a legitimate point about certain tech companies gathering data (through devices) to sell products in ads. Amazon does that and so does Google. It's not a secret. - When a customer buys a heavily discounted product (or gets a free service) the product is being subsidized and it's known that Google and Amazon are mining customer's data to subsidize their products. * So an Amazon speaker in one's home is listening and when the user tells the Echo speaker something, Amazon collects that information and will decide if that can be used to make them money with ads / to sell products. - Does a person want that kind of tech in their home? Some don't care about privacy or if their information is a product to be gathered for ads. That's their choice of course. * Personally I do care and I would never have an Amazon speaker in my home.
There's no argument that the Echo is always recording everything. That's an unfounded conspiracy theory by people that don't understand technology.
Comments
This post deserves a medal. Absolutely spot on. I don't believe anything else needs to be said on this topic. Nice job.
Now regarding the HomePod. Yes, doesn't make a difference for me that it is delayed. I wasn't waiting for it, wasn't considering it as a gift for anyone this Xmas, heck I'm not even sure I want it at this point (and until this news broke quite honestly I even forgot about the HomePod). Apple will have to convince me later via their advertising/marketing campaign. It may be something I'll have to just wait and see...
But Apple is a smart company. They know what they are doing. I'm not worried.
The HomePod introduction was far more low-key than that, but the context is perhaps important for those in this thread who have offered the perennial if unenlightened Tim is not Steve observations. Apple introduced the HomePod when they did just to throw down a marker. Everybody else is already selling voice controlled home speakers. We have now been made aware that Apple will be selling one, too. The already announced features indicate that it will be a better speaker than what the competition is offering. So if you like Apple stuff and already appreciate the continuity across devices, it’s probably worth waiting for the HomePod just based on that announcement.
We also know from the iPhone intro (and others) that Apple doesn’t get into a new product category just to offer an Apple flavored version of what everyone else alreay has. The iPhone was a recombination of a number of things that were already on the market, producing a device that created an entirely new product category. There were already PDAs, Blackberrys, GPS devices and other things out there, yet somehow the iPhone came out and the makers of all those other things that were supposedly way ahead of Apple now found themselves either playing catch-up or failing to do so.
That’s likely to be true of the HomePod as well. Is it just going to be an Apple-flavored Amazon Echo or Google Home or Sonos speaker? I suppose that could be all it will be, but if I were making a bet, that wouldn’t be it. The introduction earlier this year was just to let people know that it’s coming and it will be better than the competition. If that was all it was going to be, however, we’d probably already have it. The real question is what else it will do. The answer is likely to have a lot to do with home networking and with HomeKit integration, and possibly other things we haven’t imagined. The delay likely has to do with those other unannounced things, and making sure to get them right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzyZwHrgHGM
We forget how far ahead Steve thought (5 years) and how far he refused to think because things change too quickly (more than 5 years). I can imagine Steve, somewhere around 2009, getting all excited about the possibilities of soft AI in Apple products and connecting the ecosystem. I bet he threw out every idea under the sun (just talking internally with his people and not intending any or all of them) in the first brainstorming sessions. I can imagine him being furious about then-connected devices (which haven’t changed much now)–“IF I’M GOING TO PLUG MY FUCKING COFFEE MACHINE INTO MY NETWORK, I EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO USE IT FLAWLESSLY!”–and being unwilling to accept Apple making any of them unless they’re done right. HomePod may be the last of the ideas that the team was tossing around which Steve had been convinced to take past the preliminary stages. It’s not something we’ll ever know, but in five or six years’ time if Apple’s quality and direction start falling off in a measurable way, we’ll have a pretty good idea of when the last Steve ideas came out.
From a review: “The HomePod was able to fill a large room very well and sounded great no matter what angle I was listening from, which Apple says is possible because the HomePod is smart enough to intelligently tune itself and balance the audio to match any room or position you put it in. It sounded even better when playing in stereo while synced with another HomePod.”
https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/06/homepod-review-sound-quality-audio-quality-hifi/amp/
what doesn’t get stated when people talk about these devices is what they can connect to in terms of both HW and SW. I hope Apple allows for extra speakers to be connected. I hope Apple creates an App Store that beats Alexa Skills. I hope allows Spotify, SiriusXM, and other services; and I don’t mean by using AirPlay from the iPhone.
If it doesn’t offer Spotify and SiriusXM I’m likely out, but as of right now I plan to buy two units, assuming they can be used as wireless Apple TV speakers.
- When a customer buys a heavily discounted product (or gets a free service) the product is being subsidized and it's known that Google and Amazon are mining customer's data to subsidize their products.
* So an Amazon speaker in one's home is listening and when the user tells the Echo speaker something, Amazon collects that information and will decide if that can be used to make them money with ads / to sell products.
- Does a person want that kind of tech in their home? Some don't care about privacy or if their information is a product to be gathered for ads. That's their choice of course.
* Personally I do care and I would never have an Amazon speaker in my home.