I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
As soon as you mention a rumor ( Apple Car ) a failure you're whole post became nonsense.
Here is a list of the months and what countries Homepod has rolled out to..
I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
Nope, you're wrong. People love to compare this to the iPod Hi-Fi, but it's not. The HomePod falls squarely in the service delivery category and, as such, compares more to the first Apple TV ($299 for the 40GB and $399 for the 160GB, then they discontinued the 40GB and cut the 160GB to $229; it was on the market for three and a half years) in that they're using it to see how they want to move forward. They aren't worried about sales right now, they're interested in how it gets used. And, unlike the first Apple TV, there's a lot of flexibility with this device (there's no pressing need for updated specs, or to branch a proper version of the OS), Apple isn't futzing around with music service (as it has with video), and they can leave this on the store as an upsell after they reveal an Echo Dot-like "HomePod mini" (I just hope anything like that has an optical out). I think we're going to hear some interesting stuff in June about audioOS (and, yeah, I think an App Store is a given with either audioOS 13 or 14).
If there was a radio app I would buy one in an instant - I read the recent AppleInsider article on streaming radio using it and I facepalmed...
No reason to give up on access to iHeart or others, I'd expect to see a similar list of third parties on homePod the you see on CarPlay. It will simply be more controlled because this is not a general compute device and is instead an appliance. Maybe we will get something around WWDC?
I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
We heard this for two years after the Apple Watch was released, that it was a failure, was going to be cancelled soon, wasn't sold in most countries around the world.
And yet, here we are.
Related to this, if as few as six million sold, which is on the low end of analysts estimates for its first year of availability, that, by itself is a $1.5 billion market plus.
So we have gone from the 1 billion you quoted me a week or two ago to 1.5 billion now? If wishes were horses pigs would fly. The fact is that they miscalculated what people want or did not create the case for why people need it. Or charged to much. Or something else. Oh, and it uses Siri which is, well Siri. No amount of theorizing a minimum number changes this. I look forward to the case for 2 billion next ... (I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time! Apple really shines on v3 or 4 so will take a look at it in a few years).
I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
We heard this for two years after the Apple Watch was released, that it was a failure, was going to be cancelled soon, wasn't sold in most countries around the world.
And yet, here we are.
Related to this, if as few as six million sold, which is on the low end of analysts estimates for its first year of availability, that, by itself is a $1.5 billion market plus.
So we have gone from the 1 billion you quoted me a week or two ago to 1.5 billion now? If wishes were horses pigs would fly. The fact is that they miscalculated what people want or did not create the case for why people need it. Or charged to much. Or something else. Oh, and it uses Siri which is, well Siri. No amount of theorizing a minimum number changes this. I look forward to the case for 2 billion next ... (I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time! Apple really shines on v3 or 4 so will take a look at it in a few years).
Interesting article, and brings up a lot of great points.
However, everyone seems to be avoiding the elephant in the room...
Siri is beyond terrible, still. I used to say that homepod is basically only useful as a glorified homekit command base (and an excellent airplay speaker if there are no connection issues), but in reality, I usually prefer to get my phone out of my pocket, hold down the power button for siri, and give a command; seems faster that way. Another reason I use my phone is to avoid hearing siri's obnoxious colloquialisms, which somehow are still not customizable. The most obnoxious example is when I'm just about to fall asleep and I say "goodnight" to enable my goodnight scene, and siri comes back with some obnoxious, thing like, "the scene is set," or something like "sleep tight." I forget a lot of them because for months I've just hit the goodnight button from the control panel to avoid all that. So, aside from not even getting homekit commands right..
Music is impossible to use through the current interface for anything more complicated than "play playlist ____", and even then siri gets it wrong often. The last time I tried to use siri, I stated the exact name of one of my playlists, and it started playing some random, apple made playlist, filled with music that I never listen to (I won't mention which genres bc some ppl on AI tend to get triggered very easily). As another poster mentioned, and as I've thought for a while, a backup, visual interface would solve a ton of problems.
Siri is just plain stupid. I've listed dozens of examples before on AI of problems with basic, day-one promised functionality, which represent only a tiny fraction of the problems I run into all the time (dictation, response speed, context awareness, lack of editing, …..). My latest example.. I set a scene called "wind down" to dim and redden the lights ~1 hour before bedtime (triggers melatonin release), and siri keeps referring to it as the weather phenomenon, not 'wind' as in 'wind down.' Do people at Apple ever use siri?? I cant be the only person to set a 'wind down' scene, right?
Apple had years worth of head start on voice interface, and siri is still terrible and obnoxious even with basic use cases. How do ppl at Apple continue to believe that adding features on a broken system is going to help anything? And their answer was the 'shortcuts' app?? What the ___ is wrong with Apple?? Where's the urgency to fix some of Apple's more glaring errors? (FWIW, I'm not an 'apple is doomed' person. Apple is doing fantastic, just has a few glaring and long term issues.)
Perhaps the biggest loss of Steve's absence was his ability to motivate others from a sense of moral authority (through his emotional dedication to the products), which gave him the ability to instill a sense of urgency and purpose in others. I feel a tangent coming on..
Yes, the HomePod at least needs a feature akin to Echo skills. Locking out third parties is a shame and a hindrance.
It is possible you are correct, or then again, maybe not. The echo and the homePod have two main functions.
1) Play music, answer questions, set timers etc..... In this area, HomePod is great and shortcuts can bridge some of the gap. But Echo's skills give it an advantage and there are definitely things that HomePod will lack without something like skills in this area.
2) Act as your smart home hub.
This is where most people see the skills for echo because it is what links your smart devices to your echo through cloud services and this is what makes Echo compatible to some degree with anything built by anyone. But at some point you will have to ask if that is what you really want? And this is something HomePod doesn't need because it has HomeKit. This means that devices don't have or need to log into services to be setup or used. They don't have to have some middleware to translate from this thing to that. If you are designed for Homekit, you auto register with the AppleID of the home owner and make all of your services available to all devices in the homekit household. There is no translation layer, things just work with each other. From a security standpoint and an ease of use it it night and day. The only downside is, you have to pick homeKit products which is getting easier and easier. This could still be an issue for early adopters who went down another path or for those who want devices that are not yet available with homekit compatibility (doorbells!). But we are still early days into home automation so this will not be a problem for most people.
Also, Apple needs to step up it's game to allow vendors to expose more of their data to other devices but this gets better with each release of iOS.
People who mock the HomePod probably don't own one. I own two, and paired, they're quite simply the best speakers I've ever owned, not suffering by comparison even with a couple of $1K each audiophile monsters I bought back in the day. For a small room, say 25 x 25 feet, they're ideal. Neutral, distortion free even at high volumes, and they talk to you besides. What more could you want? (Well, as TV/movie speakers, they can shake loose furniture parts, and resonant stuff on shelves, but not the walls, ceiling or floors, so maybe they're not for everybody. If you're an apartment dweller, though, who doesn't expect to experience nuclear explosions with total verisimilitude, it's hard to imagine doing any better.
And directly to the point of the post, William Gallagher is a smart guy, a knowledgeable guy and a nice guy, too. Apple should listen to him.
I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
We heard this for two years after the Apple Watch was released, that it was a failure, was going to be cancelled soon, wasn't sold in most countries around the world.
And yet, here we are.
Related to this, if as few as six million sold, which is on the low end of analysts estimates for its first year of availability, that, by itself is a $1.5 billion market plus.
So we have gone from the 1 billion you quoted me a week or two ago to 1.5 billion now? If wishes were horses pigs would fly. The fact is that they miscalculated what people want or did not create the case for why people need it. Or charged to much. Or something else. Oh, and it uses Siri which is, well Siri. No amount of theorizing a minimum number changes this. I look forward to the case for 2 billion next ... (I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time! Apple really shines on v3 or 4 so will take a look at it in a few years).
The truth is, we'll never know. It isn't a failure by any stretch, though.
It has an estimated $216 cost. Odds are they made very little on the HomePod. The other thing is that smart speakers are a delivery device for services. The fact that Apple is allowing Apple music on Echo devices shows that it was a failure for Apple and that there won't be a HomePod mini coming.
William, I appreciate the wishful thinking but as is often the case with new Apple products, people sometimes don’t really grasp what the designers had in mind. I don’t work for Apple and just a consumer of their products, but based on everything I’ve read from Apple marketing, the HomePod is an incredible way to enjoy music. I do own one and will say that it is incredible (bass especially) but i also own a set of $2000 speakers and they sound better but only a little bit. Also, since it tied to Apple Music, it’s a way to keep people paying for that. The Siri integration is a nice to have in my book. Most people carry their phone wherever they go so why do I need something listening in every room when I have my phone with me?
The HomePod is a speaker with incredible sound first and home assistant second. Echo and Dot, Home are vehicles to collect data about you first, assistant second and quality speaker distant third. This isn’t a bash on those products (which I also own), it’s just clear to me the intention of them.
I dont really understand the need to shout out an order for more water or bread. I do most of my shopping online and that experience is fine. As for games, to each his own. It could be fun but games and apps on the phone are way better.
It was a thoughtful article but in my opinion, Apple is doing a great job with this product. We just need to see it for what it is.
HomePod need’s an HDMI port to make it more marketable. They’re sticking a TV App on everything else. Not sure about HomePod Apps but I’ve been thinking about ecosystem-wide apps or cross-device extensions. Say I have Keynote or PowerPoint on my iPad and AirPlay to an AppleTV. I want improved animation performance which would be best with localised code/content on the ATV. Rather than download the PowerPoint App, my iPad instructs the Store the download a small ‘extension’ to which it hands off the workload. The user sees little but maybe app functionality across devices. Xcode could handle multi-device targets and the App Stores should be aggregated (though appear independent).
I like your piece. I was always expecting something to take advantage of the power the HomePod has inside. I think it will play well in the service focused Apple. I'm ready fo some new features and an App Store for it. They sound amazing and it can hear (actually heard me down the hall and in another room) way better than Alexa. Yes I have those too thanks to getting them free with almost every purchase I had at Best Buy and Amazon this Christmas. I have three HomePods and want one more for my office. Then I swear I'll be done collecting them. LOL!
I think Apple will be very conservative about what else can run in background what could hamper its performance and so its user experience. And safety. Maybe next version?
I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
We heard this for two years after the Apple Watch was released, that it was a failure, was going to be cancelled soon, wasn't sold in most countries around the world.
And yet, here we are.
Related to this, if as few as six million sold, which is on the low end of analysts estimates for its first year of availability, that, by itself is a $1.5 billion market plus.
So we have gone from the 1 billion you quoted me a week or two ago to 1.5 billion now? If wishes were horses pigs would fly. The fact is that they miscalculated what people want or did not create the case for why people need it. Or charged to much. Or something else. Oh, and it uses Siri which is, well Siri. No amount of theorizing a minimum number changes this. I look forward to the case for 2 billion next ... (I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time! Apple really shines on v3 or 4 so will take a look at it in a few years).
The truth is, we'll never know. It isn't a failure by any stretch, though.
It has an estimated $216 cost. Odds are they made very little on the HomePod. The other thing is that smart speakers are a delivery device for services. The fact that Apple is allowing Apple music on Echo devices shows that it was a failure for Apple and that there won't be a HomePod mini coming.
I mostly blame Siri. The reviews rave about the sound, but nearly all end up calling it a ‘dumb speaker’ compared to the competition. The good news is it can be updated as Siri improves (something Apple is finally working on due to recent hires in AI and experts from Google). Secondly, anyone using a music service other than Apple Music was/is out of luck. Apple has seemed to partially address that compatibility. I do not own one - It’s a shame because I am the exact target customer for this product, someone that really appreciates good quality sound (and a musician). Is it too late? Is the product’s reputation forever tainted? A lower price will help - but fixing Siri is the real issue.
I‘m pretty sure that Apple will kill the product soon which is an utter shame! they haven‘t even bothered to sell it in most countries around the globe...looking at recent fails including the laptop keyboards, charging mats, Apple car etc it seems as if Apple is more interested in debt funded share buybacks and financial engineering then its customers
We heard this for two years after the Apple Watch was released, that it was a failure, was going to be cancelled soon, wasn't sold in most countries around the world.
And yet, here we are.
Related to this, if as few as six million sold, which is on the low end of analysts estimates for its first year of availability, that, by itself is a $1.5 billion market plus.
So we have gone from the 1 billion you quoted me a week or two ago to 1.5 billion now? If wishes were horses pigs would fly. The fact is that they miscalculated what people want or did not create the case for why people need it. Or charged to much. Or something else. Oh, and it uses Siri which is, well Siri. No amount of theorizing a minimum number changes this. I look forward to the case for 2 billion next ... (I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time! Apple really shines on v3 or 4 so will take a look at it in a few years).
The truth is, we'll never know. It isn't a failure by any stretch, though.
It has an estimated $216 cost. Odds are they made very little on the HomePod. The other thing is that smart speakers are a delivery device for services. The fact that Apple is allowing Apple music on Echo devices shows that it was a failure for Apple and that there won't be a HomePod mini coming.
No Apple had already allowed Sonos to connect to Apple Music, there's little point in barring support on Amazon devices and we already know Google Assistant support is coming soon. As a service that generates monthly subscriber revenue Apple has every incentive to branch out to other devices. Their actions have nothing to do with the success or failure of HomePod.
I picked up one on sale for $250 at Best Buy last November on Black Friday. It seemed like everyone had it on sale last holiday season and you could easily get it for the same price on Amazon and other resellers. I actually use it far more than I anticipated and am very impressed with the device. In the mornings I listen to to NPR by saying “Play NPR” or my local public radio station by saying “Play the radio station KERA.” I listen to music of course on it and I also like to listen to the Marketplace podcast in the evenings while I exercise. I have a feeling that Apple is just getting started in this space and even better is to come. But I do also think that the $250 I paid is about the right price.
I want the patio version. Love the one we have in the master bath. Perfect for getting ready in the morning. Just wish it knew the difference between my voice and that of my wife. It would be a bit more helpful then.
Comments
six million * $250 = $1.5 billion
six million * $200 = $1.2 billion
The truth is, we'll never know. It isn't a failure by any stretch, though.
However, everyone seems to be avoiding the elephant in the room...
Siri is beyond terrible, still. I used to say that homepod is basically only useful as a glorified homekit command base (and an excellent airplay speaker if there are no connection issues), but in reality, I usually prefer to get my phone out of my pocket, hold down the power button for siri, and give a command; seems faster that way. Another reason I use my phone is to avoid hearing siri's obnoxious colloquialisms, which somehow are still not customizable. The most obnoxious example is when I'm just about to fall asleep and I say "goodnight" to enable my goodnight scene, and siri comes back with some obnoxious, thing like, "the scene is set," or something like "sleep tight." I forget a lot of them because for months I've just hit the goodnight button from the control panel to avoid all that. So, aside from not even getting homekit commands right..
Music is impossible to use through the current interface for anything more complicated than "play playlist ____", and even then siri gets it wrong often. The last time I tried to use siri, I stated the exact name of one of my playlists, and it started playing some random, apple made playlist, filled with music that I never listen to (I won't mention which genres bc some ppl on AI tend to get triggered very easily). As another poster mentioned, and as I've thought for a while, a backup, visual interface would solve a ton of problems.
Siri is just plain stupid. I've listed dozens of examples before on AI of problems with basic, day-one promised functionality, which represent only a tiny fraction of the problems I run into all the time (dictation, response speed, context awareness, lack of editing, …..). My latest example.. I set a scene called "wind down" to dim and redden the lights ~1 hour before bedtime (triggers melatonin release), and siri keeps referring to it as the weather phenomenon, not 'wind' as in 'wind down.' Do people at Apple ever use siri?? I cant be the only person to set a 'wind down' scene, right?
Apple had years worth of head start on voice interface, and siri is still terrible and obnoxious even with basic use cases. How do ppl at Apple continue to believe that adding features on a broken system is going to help anything? And their answer was the 'shortcuts' app?? What the ___ is wrong with Apple?? Where's the urgency to fix some of Apple's more glaring errors? (FWIW, I'm not an 'apple is doomed' person. Apple is doing fantastic, just has a few glaring and long term issues.)
Perhaps the biggest loss of Steve's absence was his ability to motivate others from a sense of moral authority (through his emotional dedication to the products), which gave him the ability to instill a sense of urgency and purpose in others. I feel a tangent coming on..
1) Play music, answer questions, set timers etc.....
In this area, HomePod is great and shortcuts can bridge some of the gap. But Echo's skills give it an advantage and there are definitely things that HomePod will lack without something like skills in this area.
2) Act as your smart home hub.
This is where most people see the skills for echo because it is what links your smart devices to your echo through cloud services and this is what makes Echo compatible to some degree with anything built by anyone. But at some point you will have to ask if that is what you really want? And this is something HomePod doesn't need because it has HomeKit. This means that devices don't have or need to log into services to be setup or used. They don't have to have some middleware to translate from this thing to that. If you are designed for Homekit, you auto register with the AppleID of the home owner and make all of your services available to all devices in the homekit household. There is no translation layer, things just work with each other. From a security standpoint and an ease of use it it night and day. The only downside is, you have to pick homeKit products which is getting easier and easier. This could still be an issue for early adopters who went down another path or for those who want devices that are not yet available with homekit compatibility (doorbells!). But we are still early days into home automation so this will not be a problem for most people.
Also, Apple needs to step up it's game to allow vendors to expose more of their data to other devices but this gets better with each release of iOS.
And directly to the point of the post, William Gallagher is a smart guy, a knowledgeable guy and a nice guy, too. Apple should listen to him.
I appreciate the wishful thinking but as is often the case with new Apple products, people sometimes don’t really grasp what the designers had in mind. I don’t work for Apple and just a consumer of their products, but based on everything I’ve read from Apple marketing, the HomePod is an incredible way to enjoy music. I do own one and will say that it is incredible (bass especially) but i also own a set of $2000 speakers and they sound better but only a little bit. Also, since it tied to Apple Music, it’s a way to keep people paying for that. The Siri integration is a nice to have in my book. Most people carry their phone wherever they go so why do I need something listening in every room when I have my phone with me?
The HomePod is a speaker with incredible sound first and home assistant second. Echo and Dot, Home are vehicles to collect data about you first, assistant second and quality speaker distant third. This isn’t a bash on those products (which I also own), it’s just clear to me the intention of them.
I dont really understand the need to shout out an order for more water or bread. I do most of my shopping online and that experience is fine. As for games, to each his own. It could be fun but games and apps on the phone are way better.
It was a thoughtful article but in my opinion, Apple is doing a great job with this product. We just need to see it for what it is.
Not sure about HomePod Apps but I’ve been thinking about ecosystem-wide apps or cross-device extensions. Say I have Keynote or PowerPoint on my iPad and AirPlay to an AppleTV. I want improved animation performance which would be best with localised code/content on the ATV. Rather than download the PowerPoint App, my iPad instructs the Store the download a small ‘extension’ to which it hands off the workload. The user sees little but maybe app functionality across devices. Xcode could handle multi-device targets and the App Stores should be aggregated (though appear independent).