Just so I understand: if you have a drive of music on the same network you connect the $349 HomePod to, you have to then pay $25/year to let the HomePod have access to it? Is that about it?
Only with Siri yes. I don't see why you can't just use your library without paying $25 and without using Siri to play your music. Basically, just using HomePod as a AirPlay speaker and you control what song plays yourself manually on your phone. I would assume if you had a play list and started playing it, then it would just keep playing that playlist. You just wouldn't be able to ask Siri to play the song(s) or playlist(s) for you.
OK. So I need to go upstairs to the computer, set it up to play what I want, then go back to the other room to listen? And if the volume isn't right, I need to go back to that computer, reset it, and go from there. That's how this works? Or pay $25/year for functionality with Siri?
Fairly, I have a surplus iPod I could set next to it and stream free stuff. I guess the "all works together" moniker is now "it all works together for a fee."
Am I missing something? Why won’t the controls work?
Speaking of the controls on Apple's audio devices, I gotta wonder why Apple is so resistant to providing dedicated track skip buttons? I suppose there is some justification for it on headphones where space for controls is limited (though Sennheiser managed to add them in the same format as the Beats Solo just by putting them on the front/back axis of the rocker that the Beats don't use at all), but why leave them off devices with plenty of room for them, like the Pill and HomePod?
The double- and triple-click thing is not at all intuitive, and I find myself constantly getting the timing wrong, so I either pause when I'm trying to skip (or vice-versa) or skip when I'm trying to back up.
For me it's more of a quibble than a full-on bitch, but I would welcome dedicated skip forward and skip back buttons, like every other dogdamn audio device on the freakin' planet! Especially if holding them down instead of tapping provided FF/REW capability that is completely absent from those devices now.
The reason is consistency.
Most people skip forward rather than skipping back, so putting skip back on the triple tap makes sense.
Being able to just tap anywhere on the surface to skip forward or back, as opposed to dedicated buttons? I don’t have a problem either way. The only thing I would say is that having no buttons gives them options for changing the control surface later on. How about a finger-slide to scrub forward and back?
This isn't true. Unless something's changed recently, they've always been separate services. Apple Music has some features similar to iTunes Match, but lacks others, such as DRM-free download of the music you match. I subscribe to both, because I'm dumb and use Match as a backup for all my music, so I can delete it from my local hard drive, but could always, in theory, download it from the cloud at some point in the future.
Wrong on both counts.
The matched track is DRM free.
Match cannot be used as a backup. It is a syncing engine, not a backup device. If you accidentally delete an unmatched track from one machine then it’ll be deleted from all the others.
I'm sure that a lot of these question will get answered in due course but from the information I've read, there is no way my 23Gb of Music is going up to the cloud and then back again just so that I can listen to it. I can do that already via my iPod and my HiFi system. Apart from the fancy dynamics with the sound, I fail to see the point in this device. I'm sure it will sell but ... {remains totally unconvinced}
My iTunes music library is ~585GB and iCloud Music Library doesn't give me any grief. It's not like I have to sit and wait for half a terabyte of music to download when I want to just stream an album, and it won't be like that with the HomePod either. Anything you purchased on iTunes will automatically be available. Anything you ripped isn't going to the HomePod via Siri unless you sign up for Match or Apple Music, but you can use it as an AirPlay device directly from your device with the audio all day if you want.
The way the Apple TV 4K all but ignores my locally-stored video content leaves me feeling less than optimistic about the HomePod being able to work well with a Homeshare library, but it would be nice if it did.
Use an app to play your video content on the Apple TV. I use Air Video HD and am very happy with it. Maybe there will be apps for the Home Pod that add to its capabilities.
I use Infuse from the App Store. It lets you add external hard drives that are connected to your Mac as “share drives” within the app. Once you have that set up yo can access and play the content on your shares ( external hd’s ). What I like is that it uses the ATV4 itself to do the transcoding on the fly as you watch your video. So no matter what format you have your videos saved in it will be able to play them back.
I had originally used air video hd, but found out my little Mac mini had a hard time transcoding multiple videos at the same time. We have 5 atv’s In the house....
I also use Infuse on the ATV and Serviio on my Mac mini as a DLNA server. Works great! Never bothered trying to shoehorn content into iTunes.
If you have a track that is not in Apple’s catalogue then Siri will still index it if you have iTunes Match OR Apple Music. If you have neither service then tracks can be played remotely from your device, and in this case the controls on top of the HomePod should allow you to change volume and skip tracks.
If you have a track that is not in Apple’s catalogue then Siri will still index it if you have iTunes Match OR Apple Music. If you have neither service then tracks can be played remotely from your device, and in this case the controls on top of the HomePod should allow you to change volume and skip tracks.
This isn't true. Unless something's changed recently, they've always been separate services. Apple Music has some features similar to iTunes Match, but lacks others, such as DRM-free download of the music you match. I subscribe to both, because I'm dumb and use Match as a backup for all my music, so I can delete it from my local hard drive, but could always, in theory, download it from the cloud at some point in the future.
This was discussed here about a month ago. I looked into it at that time and found that about a year ago, things did in fact change.
According to Apple and the very helpful iMore article, Apple Music includes "all the benefits of iTunes Match" (and it seems without attaching DRM, like it used to):
Thanks for clarifying! I didn't realize it had changed not-so-recently.
I currently have an offline backup, but deleted all the actual files from my main computer. I thought only Match could realize that I did, at some point in the distant past, have an MP3 of the file, so I can download it DRM-free at any point. I guess Apple Music does the same now.
I guess the only advantage of keeping Match is that I could easily cancel Apple Music and not worry about losing access to my matched or cloud uploaded music on all my devices, including HomePod (though apparently signing up again would regain access). Not sure that hypothetical is worth the yearly fee though.
I have Apple Music but I usually download the tracks onto my iPhone so I can access my music without internet if needed and it saves on download usage. If I were to summon Siri to play a track on the HomePod will it automatically play the already downloaded track from my iPhone or redownload it from iCloud music library? It would be nice if it were seemless and I wouldn’t have to manually connect to Airplay to play songs from my phone.
Comments
Most people skip forward rather than skipping back, so putting skip back on the triple tap makes sense.
Being able to just tap anywhere on the surface to skip forward or back, as opposed to dedicated buttons? I don’t have a problem either way. The only thing I would say is that having no buttons gives them options for changing the control surface later on. How about a finger-slide to scrub forward and back?
Wrong on both counts.
The matched track is DRM free.
Match cannot be used as a backup. It is a syncing engine, not a backup device. If you accidentally delete an unmatched track from one machine then it’ll be deleted from all the others.
Or via the Remote app.
I currently have an offline backup, but deleted all the actual files from my main computer. I thought only Match could realize that I did, at some point in the distant past, have an MP3 of the file, so I can download it DRM-free at any point. I guess Apple Music does the same now.
I guess the only advantage of keeping Match is that I could easily cancel Apple Music and not worry about losing access to my matched or cloud uploaded music on all my devices, including HomePod (though apparently signing up again would regain access). Not sure that hypothetical is worth the yearly fee though.