I’m with Gruber right now. Though I think it remains to be seen if audiophiles will choose this over proven brands in the space.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/01/24/boris-schlossberg-claim-chowder HomePod is one of the most interesting new Apple products in years, insofar as I really don’t know how it’s going to sell. If most people see it as a direct competitor to Amazon Echos and Google Home dinguses, HomePod might be in trouble, because it’s a lot more expensive and has fewer features. But Apple has been positioning it as, first and foremost, a high-quality music player. The Siri-as-personal-assistant/smart-home-controller is secondary to audio quality. If there’s a market for that, HomePod could clean up. $350 is a low price in the audio world.
Glad to see you’ve come around to what we’ve been saying. Shame you had to wait until after Gruber said so first.
What bothers me: I will not be able to play my CD-ripped songs in iTunes with the HomePod... like I can through the Apple TV to my sound system when my Mac is on, iTunes booted, and on the network. Not being able to do that with the HomePod is a deal-killer.
If you want to pay $20 a month for Apple Music, fine, but I don't want to pay for that when all my extensive music collection is playable through my Mac and AirPlay. (The HomePod will also know about any digital songs/albums that were bought from Apple via the iTunes Store.)
I want to be able to say to Siri, "Play Whatever-Album in iTunes." Perhaps my needed feature will come in a future firmware upgrade.. but that is not mentioned in this article... nor anywhere else that I have read.
Too bad... I was ready to buy a HomePod.
It's an AirPlay speaker. Why wouldn't you be able to play your CD-ripped songs in iTunes.
Edit - oh, through Siri? Yeah, not so much.
Can one use a competing smart speaker (Google Home Max) to playback from their local iTunes library? Can one ask a competing smart speaker to playback from their Apple Music library or iCloud Music Library? OK so it seems some things are derived only from tight ecosystem integration. Since the others don’t do it either I fail to see why this suddenly became a deal breaker for our hypothetical buyer.
@djgeoffe For me, the value prop is non-existent. Siri doesn't have the ecosystem or willingness to spy on you to be smart enough. And it wont work with third-party music services. A Sonos One is cheaper and works with Alexa and also works with the sonos app for apple music, spotify, etc
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.
HomePod is only mysterious if you’re still hoping it has secret features Apple hasn’t announced; reality is it’s just a straightforward, ‘boring’ product that does just what it says on the marketing page (and, 8 months later, still unable to ship with all features advertised)
If HomePod were a mesh-network AirPort replacement, I would be all over it. As it is, it's just another outlet-taker-upper, and I've run out of outlets ߘ⦬t;br>
On the HomePod audio point, lots of products and services tried to sell on sound quality alone and none sold in high volume. MP3s confirmed to us consumers are fine with good enough audio. The value has to be in Siri/personal assistant for Apple’s long term strategic ambitions.
Typical techie echo chamber crap. See AirPods, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc... It's the same techies POV you have indulged in in the past so I'll say the same thing again -- it doesn't matter. Apple doesn't make products for Marco Arment's Techie Echo Chamber of Doom, Worry, and Concern (tm). They make stuff for normals.
Infamous slashdot techies complaint about the iPod and why it was doomed:
“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame”
And why would a ‘normal’ pay $349 for a HomePod when they can get a Sonos, Google Home or Echo for cheaper? Normals won’t know jack shit about this product. Hence why I said Apple needs to get positive reviews out there fast. Reviews that tell ‘normals’ why shelling out $349 for an iPhone accessory is worth it.
1. Apple's not going to beat Google or Amazon on price. "normals" will probably take one of them but Sonos probably isn't really a widely known product except with some audiophiles.
2. This will either be an Apple TV level sells (hobby) for Apple is Apple doesn't really support and extend it. Or if they keep adding features for the next 3 years like they did with the Apple Watch and then it will probably be a very successful product. Hopefully they will do a sound bar/sub-woofer and maybe a bigger unit.
3. People have to realize that the HomePods would have been delayed at least some because of the time Apple had to spend on Spectre and Meltdown for all their OSes.
4. The missing stereo pairing and AirPlay 2 Support will be there by WWDC. Hopefully they will reveal more extensibility at WWDC - i.e. APPS for HomePod .
5. Apple really needs to expand SIRI greatly. They should have 10,000 working on this. They need a new Campus just for SIRI. Its they future (or Alexa will end up the Future).
I just wanted to clarify that Ben Bajarin isn't really against the HomePod. In fact he said the sound quality was phenomenal and having professed a little knowledge in the professional audio engineering domain, he said it is phenomenal what Apple had managed with it.
I think off late he is just of the opinion that the Assistant part of it should roll out sooner and with a lot more functionality.
What bothers me: I will not be able to play my CD-ripped songs in iTunes with the HomePod... like I can through the Apple TV to my sound system when my Mac is on, iTunes booted, and on the network. Not being able to do that with the HomePod is a deal-killer.
If you want to pay $20 a month for Apple Music, fine, but I don't want to pay for that when all my extensive music collection is playable through my Mac and AirPlay. (The HomePod will also know about any digital songs/albums that were bought from Apple via the iTunes Store.)
I want to be able to say to Siri, "Play Whatever-Album in iTunes." Perhaps my needed feature will come in a future firmware upgrade.. but that is not mentioned in this article... nor anywhere else that I have read.
Too bad... I was ready to buy a HomePod.
Try iTunes Match. $25 a year. It may work for that, not sure though.
I’m with Gruber right now. Though I think it remains to be seen if audiophiles will choose this over proven brands in the space.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/01/24/boris-schlossberg-claim-chowder HomePod is one of the most interesting new Apple products in years, insofar as I really don’t know how it’s going to sell. If most people see it as a direct competitor to Amazon Echos and Google Home dinguses, HomePod might be in trouble, because it’s a lot more expensive and has fewer features. But Apple has been positioning it as, first and foremost, a high-quality music player. The Siri-as-personal-assistant/smart-home-controller is secondary to audio quality. If there’s a market for that, HomePod could clean up. $350 is a low price in the audio world.
Glad to see you’ve come around to what we’ve been saying. Shame you had to wait until after Gruber said so first.
Come around to what? I’ve never argued that HomePod wasn’t going after Sonos. I’m just not convinced there’s a big market there. Also, of course it’s going to be compared to Amazon Echo and Google Home because Amazon and Google are Apple competitors. Much more so than Sonos is. I’m with Gruber that we don’t know how it’s going to sell.
What bothers me: I will not be able to play my CD-ripped songs in iTunes with the HomePod... like I can through the Apple TV to my sound system when my Mac is on, iTunes booted, and on the network. Not being able to do that with the HomePod is a deal-killer.
If you want to pay $20 a month for Apple Music, fine, but I don't want to pay for that when all my extensive music collection is playable through my Mac and AirPlay. (The HomePod will also know about any digital songs/albums that were bought from Apple via the iTunes Store.)
I want to be able to say to Siri, "Play Whatever-Album in iTunes." Perhaps my needed feature will come in a future firmware upgrade.. but that is not mentioned in this article... nor anywhere else that I have read.
Too bad... I was ready to buy a HomePod.
It's an AirPlay speaker. Why wouldn't you be able to play your CD-ripped songs in iTunes.
Edit - oh, through Siri? Yeah, not so much.
Can one use a competing smart speaker (Google Home Max) to playback from their local iTunes library? Can one ask a competing smart speaker to playback from their Apple Music library or iCloud Music Library?
Yes, I believe you can but you'd have to try it and see if it works well enough for you as it's still somewhat limited to standard/basic requests but usable. If you have Google Assistant installed on your iPhone you'll find a fairly recent addition of Apple Music to the list of default music services. I think you could also use IFTTT to set up your Apple calendar and reminders to work with Google Home. https://support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7381505?hl=en-AU
I just wanted to clarify that Ben Bajarin isn't really against the HomePod. In fact he said the sound quality was phenomenal and having professed a little knowledge in the professional audio engineering domain, he said it is phenomenal what Apple had managed with it.
I think off late he is just of the opinion that the Assistant part of it should roll out sooner and with a lot more functionality.
I don’t think anyone is questioning whether HomePod will sound great. If you read Ben’s Twitter feed from the last day or so he seems pessimistic. Just a sample:
Most Amazon and Google smart speakers sold are believed to be of the $30 variety. If they collectively sold 20M over the year, throwing in a percentage of the higher priced units, you get a market of about $800M (maybe stretching to $1B, with some other vendors, for a total market). In the grand scheme of Apple, that isn't a much of a market. Apple might sell as many AW bands in a year nowadays.
The reasons of course are well known and discussed - both Amazon and Google just want to get their voice assistants out there, for obvious (and different by vendor) purposes.
The point is that the current home smart speaker market, is it is, is notworth anything in its current form, from a consumer electronics perspective. Apple has no need to play in that specific space, since they have (still & by far) the leading voice assistant by use & device availability, and that is growing significantly faster than the home smart speaker market.
So Apple is coming at if from the point of adding value around Apple Music & home audio (initially), while augmenting a bit their overall voice assistant (more music capability, expanding its ability to be used). If the techie discussions around the audio capability are true, Apple might be able to actually significantly impact the home audio market over time.
I think Ben Bajarin is not looking at this the right way: - For Apple, the voice assistant battle is being fought primarily with iPhone (including CarPlay) and wearables (Apple Watch having believed sold more units than smart speakers in last 3 years, at almost 10x the ASP). - HomePod is to add value & delight users in the realms of (in order) Apple Music, home audio, Siri extension, and building out the home entertainment strategy (longer term).
I fully agree that Siri needs more (significantly visible) improvements, from microphones on devices to speech recognition, to context awareness. But that doesn't change any of the above.
My guess, after reading several websites, is that the current version of Airplay doesn't have the timing accuracy necessary to make stereo work accurately with multiple speakers (stereo would probably work fine right now with just a single HomePod speaker, but Apple won't agree to implement stereo until it works with two at the same time, otherwise the public would get confused.) We will have to wait for Airplay 2 before that feature is available. Stereo on a single speaker isn't likely much of an issue because the HomePod simulates stereo fairly well through its software which splits different sounds into different speakers (wall facing vs front facing, for example.)
What confuses me is how will multiple Homepods know where my TV is? If I place one HomePod in each corner of my entertainment room, how will they know which ones are the front ones and which ones are the back ones, or for that matter which ones are left and which are right? Does it determine that based on the location of my voice in the room? That would make a lot of sense. In that case if I sat two feet in front of the TV it might reverse the left/right and front/back orientation of the speakers. But of course nobody sits directly in front of the TV. I hope Apple has that voice-location detection-algorithm patented.
Comments
Can one use a competing smart speaker (Google Home Max) to playback from their local iTunes library? Can one ask a competing smart speaker to playback from their Apple Music library or iCloud Music Library? OK so it seems some things are derived only from tight ecosystem integration. Since the others don’t do it either I fail to see why this suddenly became a deal breaker for our hypothetical buyer.
2. This will either be an Apple TV level sells (hobby) for Apple is Apple doesn't really support and extend it. Or if they keep adding features for the next 3 years like they did with the Apple Watch and then it will probably be a very successful product. Hopefully they will do a sound bar/sub-woofer and maybe a bigger unit.
3. People have to realize that the HomePods would have been delayed at least some because of the time Apple had to spend on Spectre and Meltdown for all their OSes.
4. The missing stereo pairing and AirPlay 2 Support will be there by WWDC. Hopefully they will reveal more extensibility at WWDC - i.e. APPS for HomePod .
5. Apple really needs to expand SIRI greatly. They should have 10,000 working on this. They need a new Campus just for SIRI. Its they future (or Alexa will end up the Future).
I just wanted to clarify that Ben Bajarin isn't really against the HomePod. In fact he said the sound quality was phenomenal and having professed a little knowledge in the professional audio engineering domain, he said it is phenomenal what Apple had managed with it.
I think off late he is just of the opinion that the Assistant part of it should roll out sooner and with a lot more functionality.
Wallet open and ready.
https://support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7381505?hl=en-AU
The reasons of course are well known and discussed - both Amazon and Google just want to get their voice assistants out there, for obvious (and different by vendor) purposes.
The point is that the current home smart speaker market, is it is, is not worth anything in its current form, from a consumer electronics perspective. Apple has no need to play in that specific space, since they have (still & by far) the leading voice assistant by use & device availability, and that is growing significantly faster than the home smart speaker market.
So Apple is coming at if from the point of adding value around Apple Music & home audio (initially), while augmenting a bit their overall voice assistant (more music capability, expanding its ability to be used). If the techie discussions around the audio capability are true, Apple might be able to actually significantly impact the home audio market over time.
I think Ben Bajarin is not looking at this the right way:
- For Apple, the voice assistant battle is being fought primarily with iPhone (including CarPlay) and wearables (Apple Watch having believed sold more units than smart speakers in last 3 years, at almost 10x the ASP).
- HomePod is to add value & delight users in the realms of (in order) Apple Music, home audio, Siri extension, and building out the home entertainment strategy (longer term).
I fully agree that Siri needs more (significantly visible) improvements, from microphones on devices to speech recognition, to context awareness. But that doesn't change any of the above.
What confuses me is how will multiple Homepods know where my TV is? If I place one HomePod in each corner of my entertainment room, how will they know which ones are the front ones and which ones are the back ones, or for that matter which ones are left and which are right? Does it determine that based on the location of my voice in the room? That would make a lot of sense. In that case if I sat two feet in front of the TV it might reverse the left/right and front/back orientation of the speakers. But of course nobody sits directly in front of the TV. I hope Apple has that voice-location detection-algorithm patented.