HomePod at launch lacks stereo linking and multiple-room support, features coming 'later t...

1246

Comments

  • Reply 61 of 101
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    foggyhill said:
    The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.

    There are things you can't do via "da cloud".

    I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.

    1) As @rogifan_new ;stated, Alexa Skills are all in the “cloud.” The same goes for Alexa’s (and Siri) “brain” being updated.

    2) There are device-level updates that get pushed to the Echos, and those are sent “via ‘da cloud’” just like  all those Apple OS updates we saw today.
    gatorguy
  • Reply 62 of 101
    mjtomlinmjtomlin Posts: 2,673member

    launfall said:
    Another half-assed Apple product that they couldn’t get right on launch.  Apple is beginning to look more and more like a company that with the hundreds of thousands of employees they have can’t work on more than one product at a time, get new products out on time, and then throws them at the public at a premium price in an unfinished state.  Time for Tim Cook to go. He had his chance, now turn the company over to someone who understands the marketplace. 

    First of all, Apple doesn't have hundreds of thousands of employees. Second, a vast majority of their employees are retail staff, not engineers. Also there's probably only several hundred who work in Apple's audio department - the same team that put out the AirPods. The issue is not with the HomePod, but rather AirPlay 2. This also affects the AppleTV which was shipped without multi-room audio as well. This is mainly a software feature, that can be added later. As it ships, the HomePod will satisfy most people's needs.

    This type of over-reaction is juvenile, but alas, to be expected in this day and age.
    fastasleep
  • Reply 63 of 101
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    Soli said:
    foggyhill said:
    The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.

    There are things you can't do via "da cloud".

    I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.

    1) As @rogifan_new ;stated, Alexa Skills are all in the “cloud.” The same goes for Alexa’s (and Siri) “brain” being updated.

    2) There are device-level updates that get pushed to the Echos, and those are sent “via ‘da cloud’” just like  all those Apple OS updates we saw today.
    I was commenting about the analyst quoted in the articles comparing server side services and device bound services as if they are one and the same.
    That's what Rogifan was ragging me about and that's what I was talking about.
  • Reply 64 of 101
    mjtomlinmjtomlin Posts: 2,673member
    lukei said:
    HomePad without these features is pretty disappointing. Will buy when they have them. 

    Until now will stick with my Bowers and Wilkins A5 and A7. 

    Was really looking forward to getting multi room audio. 

    Multi-room audio only works with other AirPlay 2 devices. So all your old AirPlay devices will not be available for multi-room playback, unless the manufacturer provides a firmware update.
  • Reply 65 of 101
    foggyhill said:
    foggyhill said:
    The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.

    There are things you can't do via "da cloud".

    I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.

    So Alexa’s skills don’t improve via the cloud? They only improve via software update to device?
    Man, Wth are you even saying, how does Airplay2 (a systems level service) compare to essentially scripting (those "skills").

    Have you even touched code!!!

    That's what guy was making a comparison with;a false equivalence to make a point.

    There are some things you can't run remotely and the things that will be missing that required real time, very tight coordination between devices (with tons of communication back and forth) is one of them.

    I’m not sure which guy you’re referring to. I’m referring to Ben Bajarin.
  • Reply 66 of 101
    Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:

    Christina Warren (@film_girl1/23/18, 11:37 AM
    Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
    To which pro-Apple analyst Ben Bajarin responded:
    I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features. 

    Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software. 
    I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
    Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.

    I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
    What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
  • Reply 67 of 101
    Soli said:
    foggyhill said:
    The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.

    There are things you can't do via "da cloud".

    I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.

    1) As @rogifan_new ;stated, Alexa Skills are all in the “cloud.” The same goes for Alexa’s (and Siri) “brain” being updated.

    2) There are device-level updates that get pushed to the Echos, and those are sent “via ‘da cloud’” just like  all those Apple OS updates we saw today.
    According to Ben Bajarin a lot of the Siri updates come via OS updates (like what we got today) vs Amazon and Google who are updating their voice assistants weekly via the cloud.
  • Reply 68 of 101
    Btw John Gruber is also scratching his head over the HomePod product rollout. Mostly that so much of it is still a mystery and $349 is a lot to spend not knowing a lot about the product. And features promised when HomePod was first announced are still not ready.

    https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/01/23/homepod-shipping
  • Reply 69 of 101
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,328member
    I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that the vast majority of commenters who are mindlessly dinging Apple for feature delays have never contributed directly to the release of a brand new product that is implementing a new technology and a new protocol, like AirPlay 2, for the very first time. If you think it's easy or you think that you can simply throw a bunch of smart people at the problem and assign a release date with 100% certainty then you are living in a cartoonish fantasy world. It's one thing to get a new product or new feature working in a lab where 90% availability looks pretty damn good - until you realize that to release it to millions of people who will be using it every day, and without a lab full of developers standing in the wings, requires an availability on the order of 99.9% just to be considered "good" but not necessarily "great." What they really want is beyond 99.9%.

    Beyond the technical challenges, people and teams who work on new product development also have to contend with the pressure to announce, promises made to customers, revenue timing expectations, development costs, last minute snafus, partner dependencies, component availability & cost, and many other human and team dynamics involved with high pressure situations. People and teams that are good at new product development know that the thickness of their skin will be tested, that they are going to take a whole lot of arrows, and that they absolutely cannot waver in their commitment to quality despite the intense pressure to ship. Not all developers, even the A-grade big brained ones, are good at new product development. Good new product developers/teams must have equal parts intellectual capability, hard skills, and intestinal fortitude. "Yes men" need not apply. 

    If you are getting all bent out of shape with hair on fire because Apple is releasing later than the executives promised or that some features are being delayed then you would probably be a lousy new product developer. Thankfully Apple has some great new product developers and great new product development teams who will drive this product to its first release with a very compelling feature set. The HomePod will only improve as the features that are not yet ready for prime time are finished to the quality levels suitable for release. Apple will take the arrows for the product and feature release delays but they cannot tolerate knowingly letting products or features out the door that are not ready for release at the required quality levels. I'm totally cool with Apple's approach.
    tmayStrangeDayswilliamlondonfastasleep
  • Reply 70 of 101
    kevin keekevin kee Posts: 1,289member
    mtbnut said:

    Looking at it from a business perspective, it makes no sense to have it sit there and wait. 
    I thought waiting until something is perfect was Apple's MO. 
    Which they did, that's why they missed the holiday sales, apparently they have perfected it now. There was no mention that it would be compulsory to get more than one of this device for you to enjoy its function fully, was there? Besides Airplay 2 can be pushed via software, it's not like it's something of 'must have'. You don't even need it for HomePod to work.
  • Reply 71 of 101
    Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:

    Christina Warren (@film_girl1/23/18, 11:37 AM
    Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
    To which pro-Apple analyst Ben Bajarin responded:
    I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features. 

    Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software. 
    I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
    Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.

    I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
    What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
    Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t. 

    OOPS: err, I’m thinking of the other Ben on his show, Ben Thompson. n/m
    edited January 2018
  • Reply 72 of 101

    dewme said:
    If you are getting all bent out of shape with hair on fire because Apple is releasing later than the executives promised or that some features are being delayed then you would probably be a lousy new product developer. Thankfully Apple has some great new product developers and great new product development teams who will drive this product to its first release with a very compelling feature set. The HomePod will only improve as the features that are not yet ready for prime time are finished to the quality levels suitable for release. Apple will take the arrows for the product and feature release delays but they cannot tolerate knowingly letting products or features out the door that are not ready for release at the required quality levels. I'm totally cool with Apple's approach.
    Yep. It’s just angry entitlement of the silliest order. The vast majority of HP customers will only have one anyway so all this outrage and teeth gnashing is amusing drama. Same old act by the usuals and their “concern”. 
    williamlondon
  • Reply 73 of 101
    Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:

    Christina Warren (@film_girl1/23/18, 11:37 AM
    Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
    To which pro-Apple analyst Ben Bajarin responded:
    I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features. 

    Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software. 
    I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
    Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.

    I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
    What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
    Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t. 
    Huh? I don’t think Ben Bajarin has ever been on Gruber’s podcast.
  • Reply 74 of 101
    Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:

    Christina Warren (@film_girl1/23/18, 11:37 AM
    Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
    To which pro-Apple analyst Ben Bajarin responded:
    I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features. 

    Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software. 
    I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
    Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.

    I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
    What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
    Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t. 
    So if someone's an Apple cheerleader, they get Apple, and if someone complains about Apple, they don't get Apple? Technically speaking, Ben Bajarin is not an Apple analyst but a consumer electronics industry analyst and he's been pro-Apple for many years. Rene Ritchie, as great of a guy as he is, is not exactly objective.
  • Reply 75 of 101
    Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:

    Christina Warren (@film_girl1/23/18, 11:37 AM
    Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
    To which pro-Apple analyst Ben Bajarin responded:
    I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features. 

    Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software. 
    I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
    Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.

    I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
    What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
    Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t. 
    So if someone's an Apple cheerleader, they get Apple, and if someone complains about Apple, they don't get Apple? Technically speaking, Ben Bajarin is not an Apple analyst but a consumer electronics industry analyst and he's been pro-Apple for many years. Rene Ritchie, as great of a guy as he is, is not exactly objective.
    Note there’s a mixup, Ben Thompson is the frequent Gruber guest. 

    But no you’ve completely missed the point. It isn’t the complaining about what Apple does that exposes Ben Thompson, it’s the clear lack of understanding why Apple does what it does. Some people, typically PC or MS guys (now happily Androiders) just don’t get the things Apple values in product design. Listening to hours of Ben Thompson speak makes it pretty clear he’s in that same bucket. He just doesn’t get Apple and makes typical “But I’m a power user and I wish it did this!” types of crits. Cool dude, get a knockoff and have at it. 
    edited January 2018
  • Reply 76 of 101
    StrangeDays said:
    [...] APFS works awesome on my Mac, my AW3 kicks ass, my X kicks ass, my ATV kicks ass, my AirPods kick ass, etc..
    I'm happy with most of my Apple products, but I disagree with your assessment of the Apple TV. There are massive holes in its capability, inconsistency in how it handles material from different sources, it can sometimes be a little confusing as some operations take the interface to unexpected windows/states, and features that were in older versions of the hardware are missing from the new one.

    I'm not saying "it sucks" -- it doesn't -- but I wouldn't say it kicks ass. It still needs some serious massaging. I would not recommend it to most people as a general-use entertainment hub (specific Apple-centric applications and/or skilled/knowledgable users notwithstanding).
    williamlondon
  • Reply 77 of 101
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    foggyhill said:
    foggyhill said:
    The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.

    There are things you can't do via "da cloud".

    I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.

    So Alexa’s skills don’t improve via the cloud? They only improve via software update to device?
    Man, Wth are you even saying, how does Airplay2 (a systems level service) compare to essentially scripting (those "skills").

    Have you even touched code!!!

    That's what guy was making a comparison with;a false equivalence to make a point.

    There are some things you can't run remotely and the things that will be missing that required real time, very tight coordination between devices (with tons of communication back and forth) is one of them.

    I’m not sure which guy you’re referring to. I’m referring to Ben Bajarin.
    Yes, and I reiterate his comment was beyond idiotic.

    Apple's Siri has a tighter integration with the OS (and all other ecosystem parts, like functioning from the Apple Watch, thus needs some system update for certain functions), other functions like that relating to vocabulary, language, topic areas or covering essentially any stateless backend services can be done in the back-end without any systems update.

    The fact that Siri functions so cleanly all across devices means it cannot just be done on the server side, there are some local dependencies to some updates.

    And that's not looking on how his dumbass comment relates to the Homepod. That's where it doesn't make sense.

    The Homepod basic feature function is adapting to the environment according to the sound it plays (that's the main selling feature), not Airplay2 (which will serve not just the homepod but the entire ecosystem so they have to do it right), or even better collaboratively serving a sound (adapting as a group or speakers to the room, which would be quite complex since info on the room acoustic would be transfered from one speaker's POV to the next, but they'll get there eventually: no one can do that right now at any price in multi-speaker environment btw). 

    Airplay 2 would probably be a bigger seller to power users who would buy a group of them sight unseen. That's certainly not the average Apple Homepod buyer but probably constitute a good chunk of the high end; the kind of people who buy maxed out Iphone X.

    These people are likely the most gung ho buyers of Apple products already and will still buy one of the Homepod, if it offers all that Apple says it does, they'll still buy a few eventually (so, the sale is deferred and will occur anyway).
    edited January 2018
  • Reply 78 of 101
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    Soli said:
    foggyhill said:
    The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.

    There are things you can't do via "da cloud".

    I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.

    1) As @rogifan_new stated, Alexa Skills are all in the “cloud.” The same goes for Alexa’s (and Siri) “brain” being updated.

    2) There are device-level updates that get pushed to the Echos, and those are sent “via ‘da cloud’” just like  all those Apple OS updates we saw today.
    According to Ben Bajarin a lot of the Siri updates come via OS updates (like what we got today) vs Amazon and Google who are updating their voice assistants weekly via the cloud.
    I know Apple likes to present their new Siri commands and features with major OS updates, but I don't think that's the case since so much of Siri is still server-based. I know things are changing as they move to AL and ML in the A-series chip, but that's still very minor. I bet if I disabled data on my iPhone and tried to use Siri to start a timer, set an alarm, or call a contact—just like we could do before Siri was introduced as these are requests that only need to stay local to the device—that it would fail*.

    Personally, I think it's one of the biggest follies of Siri compared to Alexa (as I've described many times over the years). Not only is Amazon adding new things you can do, but they also send you an email every Friday to give you things to try, which include new Skills (Alexa's 3rd-party apps). I use Siri every day but there are probably tonnes of great Siri commands I could be using but I don't know what they are, or I tried them when they were first launched but the experience was subpar that I have completely forgotten they exist.

    * Doing update so I can't check at this moment.
    edited January 2018
  • Reply 79 of 101
    bluefire1bluefire1 Posts: 1,301member
    Will pre-orders begin at 3am Friday morning?
  • Reply 80 of 101
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge
    -or- 
    HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
    edited January 2018
Sign In or Register to comment.