Future HomePods could feature touch-sensitive fabric for more controls
Instead of the HomePod solely being controllable by taps on the top touch area, Apple is working on touch-sensitive fabric to allow users to control the speaker anywhere.
Apple's current HomePod plus (right) detail from the patent regarding how controls could be added to the fabric covering
Apple's current HomePod is most often controlled via Siri, but it comes with a touch-sensitive display that allows for basic play/pause, and volume controls. A new patent suggests that this will be added to, or conceivably replaced, by touch controls built into the fabric sides of the speaker.
"Fabric-Covered Electronic Device with Touch Sensor," US Patent No 20200073511, details how it could be possible to register a user's touch on any device that includes fabric. Potentially this could even be used for products such as a smart battery cover for an iPhone.
The patent attempts to include every possible application of touch-embodied fabrics, ranging from "a laptop computer," and "a wristwatch device," to "a pendant... [or] a device embebdded in eyeglasses," and so on. However, the specifics of the patent continually refer to audio speakers.
"Electronic devices such as audio devices may include fabric," explains Apple's patent application. "As an example, the housing of a speaker may be covered with a layer of fabric. Openings may be provided in the fabric to allow sound to be emitted from within the device."
However, the patent is about more than how many holes there must be in the fabric to allow sound to be played. It's also about usability.
"It may be challenging to enhance the functionality of a speaker," continues the patent. "For example, it may be difficult to integrate input and output devices into a speaker with a fabric layer. If care is not taken, the user may find it cumbersome to provide input to and receive output from the speaker."
The aim appears to be that a HomePod user will be able to touch any side of the speaker to perform at least basic volume control. This could be more convenient than having to reach the top of the speaker, for instance if the user has positioned the HomePod atop shelves.
Apple's system could utilize "conductive strands in the layer of fabric," or have a touch-sensitive substrate underneath the fabric. In either method, audio playback controls may be shown on the side of the speaker either though areas lit from within, or from markings on the fabric.
One possible new speaker covering is this "Warp-knit fabric"
"Light-emitting components and/or fabric with different visual characteristics may be used to mark where the touch-sensitive regions of the fabric are located," says the patent. "The touch-sensitive regions may be shaped as media control symbols."
The patent is credited to five inventors, namely Zhengyu Li, Elvis M. Kibiti, Ming Gao, Qiliang Xu, and Chen Zhang.
Zhang was recently named on a patent regarding touchscreen MacBooks, while Xu is credited as an inventor on a patent for haptic feedback on the Apple Pencil.
Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod or HomePod mini. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider Daily," and you'll get a fast update direct from the AppleInsider team.
Apple's current HomePod plus (right) detail from the patent regarding how controls could be added to the fabric covering
Apple's current HomePod is most often controlled via Siri, but it comes with a touch-sensitive display that allows for basic play/pause, and volume controls. A new patent suggests that this will be added to, or conceivably replaced, by touch controls built into the fabric sides of the speaker.
"Fabric-Covered Electronic Device with Touch Sensor," US Patent No 20200073511, details how it could be possible to register a user's touch on any device that includes fabric. Potentially this could even be used for products such as a smart battery cover for an iPhone.
The patent attempts to include every possible application of touch-embodied fabrics, ranging from "a laptop computer," and "a wristwatch device," to "a pendant... [or] a device embebdded in eyeglasses," and so on. However, the specifics of the patent continually refer to audio speakers.
"Electronic devices such as audio devices may include fabric," explains Apple's patent application. "As an example, the housing of a speaker may be covered with a layer of fabric. Openings may be provided in the fabric to allow sound to be emitted from within the device."
However, the patent is about more than how many holes there must be in the fabric to allow sound to be played. It's also about usability.
"It may be challenging to enhance the functionality of a speaker," continues the patent. "For example, it may be difficult to integrate input and output devices into a speaker with a fabric layer. If care is not taken, the user may find it cumbersome to provide input to and receive output from the speaker."
The aim appears to be that a HomePod user will be able to touch any side of the speaker to perform at least basic volume control. This could be more convenient than having to reach the top of the speaker, for instance if the user has positioned the HomePod atop shelves.
Apple's system could utilize "conductive strands in the layer of fabric," or have a touch-sensitive substrate underneath the fabric. In either method, audio playback controls may be shown on the side of the speaker either though areas lit from within, or from markings on the fabric.
One possible new speaker covering is this "Warp-knit fabric"
"Light-emitting components and/or fabric with different visual characteristics may be used to mark where the touch-sensitive regions of the fabric are located," says the patent. "The touch-sensitive regions may be shaped as media control symbols."
The patent is credited to five inventors, namely Zhengyu Li, Elvis M. Kibiti, Ming Gao, Qiliang Xu, and Chen Zhang.
Zhang was recently named on a patent regarding touchscreen MacBooks, while Xu is credited as an inventor on a patent for haptic feedback on the Apple Pencil.
Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod or HomePod mini. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider Daily," and you'll get a fast update direct from the AppleInsider team.
Comments
This makes no sense to me:
More convenient how? If you're close enough to reach the side, aren't you close enough to reach the top? It's not like the HP is a dimensional behemoth. It's a small device that can be held in one hand. If the HP is on a high shelf, you're still reaching just as high to touch the side. At that point wouldn't a Siri command make more sense? Control center command from iPhone or iPad?
Haptic fabric would seem a kinda meh addition to the HP
Instead of having to hit a button the entire surface becomes a 3 dimensional touchpad.
There's a difference between choosing something that is immensely popular with zero delay, and throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it. Airplay is too unreliable and laggy to use the HP with any video output. No problem with a 1/8" jack.
It never makes sense until you see it.
I personally would love this innovation and HomePod needs some updating with a cheaper version!
I’ve never attempted to look at the light when issuing siri commands. I just give them and let the devices sort it out, as they’re designed to do via their peer communication that was described some time ago. As I recall HP has rank over iOS devices if nearby.
I'd be willing to bet if there's another HP speaker it will not be "garden restricted".
Nonsense. We use dual HPs for video stream audio output every day. That’s our primary use case. There is no lag. This is done via ATV native apps as well as iOS device beaming to the ATV.
The only issue I run into is with the very poor YouTube app, ported from some other platform, which breaks ATV platform conventions, and also fails to use the HPs unless I manually select them first. All other apps work as expected.
The HomePod is a device created to support Apple Music and the use of HomeKit devices. Having one or two or a few placed strategically in the home allows for greater use of their music service through a high-quality speaker, and it also makes it possible to consistently operate HomeKit light switches and whatnot, even when you've left your iPhone on the charger or in your purse. The HomePod was never intended to simply compete in the bluetooth speaker market, or the wired static speaker market, and Apple surely has little interest in entering that fray now.
A consistent core philosophy at Apple is that, while they do create innovative devices that combine other functions into something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (see iPhone v. cellphone+PDA+GPS+iPod), they fastidiously do not create devices that are intended to be all things to all people (see MacOS devices that don't support swapping out internal hardware for third-party, nonstandard "cutting edge" bells and whistles). HomePod was never intended to serve as an audio output device for third-party sources, and that's very unlikely to change.
A software update could likely enable bluetooth playback on all existing HomePods, yet that's still unavailable. Why? They're not interested. Adding holes into which you can stick wires connected to other devices? They're even less interested in that. Any expectation that Apple would add these things is silly. My examples of FireWire, ethernet, and speaker wire connectors are really only slightly more absurd, but offering them up helps make the point of the silliness of the original proposition. So, reductio ad absurdum, not so much straw man.
Yes because your experience with Apple gear - which oddly enough is absolutely flawless every time even if a problem is affecting every single other person - is indicative of everyone. It's not nonsense. It frequently lags behind the video by half a second or more. There are many people here and on Apple's own forums complaining of this. It's not the network either, I can ping the HP and there is <0.5ms delay.
But I do agree that the YT app is utter garbage.
It seems the HP has been largely forgotten about, which is a shame. With some things Apple is great at keeping long-term support, their routers for example and macOS. But they also do have a habit of introducing something with much fanfare and when it's not wildly popular, pretty much ignoring it until they can release new hardware to justify charging for new software features which apparently aren't supported on old hardware. Siri was like that; it saw basically no upgrades for several years after the 4s was released. When eventually the watch came along it became better, though it's still pretty terrible with no improvements to its intelligence for years. In fact it has got worse since they dropped Wolfram Alpha's "computational intelligence" integration. For example, you used to be able to ask Siri "how heavy is a Boeing 747?" and Wolfram Alpha would reply. Now it just gives you a list of results from a Google search (despite my Safari search settings being DuckDuckGo, but thats another matter).
AirPlay 2 is the same, it's pretty buggy and was delayed supposedly to support the HP, but longstanding bugs are still there and go ignored. Let's hope they don't release Airplay 3 requiring a HP2.
That's the part people seem to struggle with -- Apple builds for its ecosystem, not for general use cases. And that's perfectly OK. More than OK really, since it generally means they can optimize for the use cases they have in mind, rather than supporting all sorts of other devices and use cases. It's ecosystem tailored, not ecosystem locked.
I doubt very much that we'll see 3.5mm analog jacks on the next HP.
I have a home theater system, with a surround-sound amplifier connected to the TV, powering wired surround speakers. There are some HomePods in other parts of the house. When watching Netflix on the AppleTV, I'm listening through the amp and surround speakers. It sounds great. Sometimes I want to play music in the whole house. I can play Apple Music through the amp and wired speakers in the TV room, and then use AirPlay to add on the HomePods elsewhere. The AppleTV has a tool in the settings for measuring any delay created by pumping sound through the TV room amp and speakers. Once that's set, Airplay syncs up those with the HomePods perfectly, resulting in outstanding whole-home audio. (I've always wanted that, but never wanted to go through the pain of installing the wiring for traditional satellite speakers.) It works great. It's also good that when I finish with the whole home audio experience and shut things down, the ATV will eventually revert to default and disconnect from the HomePods, even if I've forgotten to do it manually. This is desirable, because I probably don't need the sound from watching TV later to blast the whole house.
This is the intended purpose of HomePods connecting to your AppleTV. It's not for using a HP as your primary TV speaker. A corollary to this is the fact that the HomePod sets its own EQ based on active reading of the acoustics of the room it's in. It's an incredibly advanced feature that results in clear, balanced audio that fills a whole room with no dead spots, and they're not interested in users defeating that by manually screwing around with EQ. This is a fully-baked idea, when the device is used as intended.
As noted in my previous post, Apple is not interested in producing devices that are all things to all people. You can be mad at them if you want for not making it easier for you to use a HomePod as your TV speaker, but that was never the intended use of the device. There are already other excellent devices available out there that are designed for that purpose, and you might be well served to choose one of those for your TV speaker. You could be mad at your car manufacturer because your car doesn't work very well as a power generator for your house, but that was never the intended use of your car. Get a dedicated TV speaker and move your HomePod to another room, and you'll probably find that things work much better for you.
No you don't. The current touch surface is at the top of the device, mandating your eyeballs are above the speaker, and that there is clearance above the HP for you to see and get your hand positioned to connect with the small tap targets. If you could swipe up/down on the fabric itself it saves you a foot or more. I can easily re-create this use case by placing the speaker on a nearby shelf at face-level -- reaching over to swipe its side up/down is stone simple. But to operate the touch controls on the top, I have to step up on a chair in order to get higher than the top of the HP.
Do you have one? If you did I think you'd understand why line-of-sight to the top of touch-device is less functional than adding the ability to use its sides for gestures. It's not even up for argument, it's just a fact.