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

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  • Reply 41 of 101
    You wait and still don’t get the promised features?  LOL what a cluster fxxx
    williamlondon
  • Reply 42 of 101
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,801member
    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. 
    Um...Apple corporate doesn't have hundreds of thousands of employees. They have tens of thousands, but no where near hundreds of thousands. Apple actually does a lot with a little in terms of how many employees they have. Yes, Apple has a whole has hundreds of thousands of employees, but over 50% of them are retail employees, not corporate employees. These are two completely different areas of Apple. One is not directly related to the other and its very rare that anyone in retail ever goes to Apple corporate. 

    So take your baseless argument and shove it! You have no idea what you're talking about....not even close!
    MacPro
  • Reply 43 of 101
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    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.

  • Reply 44 of 101
    gatorguy said:
    Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:
    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.
    Christina Warren also works for Microsoft. Take it for what it's worth.
    Sure she got a job at Microsoft last year but she says she has 4 Macs, 3 iPads and 3 iPhones plus is an Apple Watch wearer (and still calls herself the ultimate fan girl).  She’s pretty much Apple’s target market but is telling people to get a Sonos instead. Maybe when the HomePod is an actual platform vs. an iPhone accessory that supports Apple Music she’ll change her mind. 
    Whether a relatively high price and missing/delayed features or not IMHO Apple will still sell a million of 'em in the first 30 days. That's the power of the Apple fan-base.  Simply based on past performance they'll be given benefit of the doubt, a position they've earned.
    And if this delay were news today about the latest gadget from Google or Microsoft or Amazon, everyone defending Apple here today would be wrapping themselves in Cupertino-colored snark, laughing and pointing at anyone who said of Google or Microsoft or Amazon: "That's the power of the [INSERT OTHER COMPANY NAME HERE] fan-base."

    Of course, I'm sure calling this out makes me a troll so...how dare I? ;/
  • Reply 45 of 101
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    vonbrick said:
    Sonos, Amazon and Google will be drinking today from the tears of disappointed users who thought they were waiting for Apple to get it right.

    Now...let's sit back and wait for our fellow AI readers to spin this into a tale of suspense, intrigue and to justify why $350 spent is somehow better than $100.

    And...GO!
    Huh? Do you really think the HW could be sold for under $100? Even Amazon, which runs on a platform of trying to breakeven (or even as a loss leader for their Echo products to dominate this nascent market they created), don't even sell any Echo HW that is even close to the power and performance of the HomePod… and that includes their $150 Echo Plus.

    Sonos One is probably the closest to HomePod at this point and that's double the price you mention, and likely doesn't sound as good just going by what I can see with the breakdown of the internals and the SoC being used. And that's without any consideration for Apple's A-series chip and how that will ultimately work with their beam forming speakers.

    Maybe one HomePod at $350 will sound worse than two Songs Ones in a living room, or maybe not, but surely not likely not better than a single Sonos One, and certainly not better than two Echo Dots with multi-room audio support to get to your $100 price tag.
    MacPro
  • Reply 46 of 101
    gatorguy said:
    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.
    Christina Warren also works for Microsoft. Take it for what it's worth.
    Sure she got a job at Microsoft last year but she says she has 4 Macs, 3 iPads and 3 iPhones plus is an Apple Watch wearer (and still calls herself the ultimate fan girl).  She’s pretty much Apple’s target market but is telling people to get a Sonos instead. Maybe when the HomePod is an actual platform vs. an iPhone accessory that supports Apple Music she’ll change her mind. 
    Whether a relatively high price and missing/delayed features or not IMHO Apple will still sell a million of 'em in the first 30 days. That's the power of the Apple fan-base.  Simply based on past performance they'll be given benefit of the doubt, a position they've earned.
    Maybe so but it doesn’t look good when pro-Apple analysts/tech writers are skeptical of the product or telling people to buy something else. Susie Ochs, who I believe used to write for MacWorld tweeted that she was relieved at how little she wanted a HomePod. I’m sure that’s not what Apple marketing wants to see. I suppose they gave some high end audio sites early access so perhaps we’ll start seeing some positive reviews soon. Would be good for Apple to get those out now.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 47 of 101
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    If there are features you want that aren't yet present, then don't buy it. It's that simple.

    Unlike many categories of CE these days that have become practically mandatory for our daily lives, there's no such demand for a voice controlled "stereo linking and multiple-room support."

    I can easily make an argument for home-based dgital personal assistant practically being a mandatory resource for the blind, immobile, and those with certain motor functions in their limbs, and if that's the case then these people likely already have Google Home or Amazon Echos.

    Note that the Amazon Echo has been out for over 3 years and didn't get multi speaker support until recently. This is likely Blackberry and Nokia users coming to this forum circa 2007 to say the iPhone sucked big monkey balls because it didn't have this or that feature they've been using for years. Cut, copy, and paste comes readily to mind. Where the fuck are Nokia and Blackberry today?

    Maybe the HomePod will be 
    another iPod Hi-Fi, but don't count Apple out for not releasing SW that they don't think will offer a certain level of user satisfaction. If you're a spec sheet whore then you probably own a Samsung phone as it is.
    StrangeDaysrandominternetpersonfastasleepMacPro
  • Reply 48 of 101
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    Apple just doesn’t seem able to ship a product or software update in full now adays. There is always something “coming soon”. No product is unaffected, it’s turning into a real cluster fuck.

    iMessage Cloud, APFS for Fusion Drives, AirPlay 2 etc, what the hell is going wrong in Cupertino?


    williamlondon
  • Reply 49 of 101
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    saarek said:
    Apple just doesn’t seem able to ship a product or software update in full now adays. There is always something “coming soon”. No product is unaffected, it’s turning into a real cluster fuck.

    iMessage Cloud, APFS for Fusion Drives, AirPlay 2 etc, what the hell is going wrong in Cupertino?
    When do you think this ended?
  • Reply 50 of 101
    holyoneholyone Posts: 398member
    Whether a relatively high price and missing/delayed features or not IMHO Apple will still sell a million of 'em in the first 30 days. That's the power of the Apple fan-base.  Simply based on past performance they'll be given benefit of the doubt, a position they've earned. No it's not a position they've earned, it's a position Steve Jobs earned them when they were in the brink of death, who also was suprisingly obsessed with high quality speakers at one point but quickly came to his senses. The fanatics enjoy sighting HP sound quality as though that is the reason Apple made this product because the world was in such desperate need of high quality speakers Apple just had to do something about it. Home Pod questions to me aren't about it's premature announcement only to be delayed then released incomplete but, are about Apple entering a near nonexistent market they just don't seem to understand, the conlution that what's wrong with the Alexa hardwear is that it's a shity speaker is a gross misunderstanding of what the echo or the dot are and what Bezos is up to, it's not a speaker in every room but a microphone in every room and how much friction that removes in day to day interaction people have with the technologies that surround them, with this bieng the greater objective, which product is in a superior position ?
  • Reply 51 of 101
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    avon b7 said:
    vonbrick said:
    Sonos, Amazon and Google will be drinking today from the tears of disappointed users who thought they were waiting for Apple to get it right.

    Now...let's sit back and wait for our fellow AI readers to spin this into a tale of suspense, intrigue and to justify why $350 spent is somehow better than $100.

    And...GO!
    Because they won’t sound like shit? It’s a shelf speaker first, gimmicky voice assistant second. 
    This is looking tricky. Is this a mono shelf speaker not sounding shit?

    I say that because If stereo is key to great performance, do you absolutely need two? And in the same room? A third one if you want to extend the experience? A fourth if you want that experience to be stereo too? It's all adding up.

    I'm a little lost in trying to piece it all together but I'm admittedly out of this game as I don't use any assistants and have a Nad Viso.

    I don't have a problem with them pre-announcing it  (that served a marketing purpose) or delaying it (stuff happens) but shipping and giving yourself up to a year to include all the announced features? 

    Maybe some kind of gift voucher for early adopters would have been an idea.

    Is the stereo angle important here from a musical perspective, because if it is and it has a deficiency in that area, the 'great sound' or not sounding shot part rings a little shallow if it isn't capable of it without another unit and even if you had one it won't work out of the box.

    I have audio equipment that sounds very good even if some of it is not highly specced. What would make me buy one of these apart from Siri interaction?
    I heard that it does do channel separation even in one unit. Regardless, it's not super important for a single shelf speaker -- see the Bose shelf speakers. As a music listening device and not a home theater, it just needs to sound good. Like my existing wireless AirPlay speaker units, which definitely don't sound good.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 52 of 101
    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?
  • Reply 53 of 101
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    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 Thompson 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.

    EDIT: mixup on the Bens. 
    edited January 2018 williamlondon
  • Reply 54 of 101
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    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. 
    WTF? Apple these days are just rolling out products without clear strategy, or this over-engineered mess.
    vonbrick said:
    Sonos, Amazon and Google will be drinking today from the tears of disappointed users who thought they were waiting for Apple to get it right.

    Now...let's sit back and wait for our fellow AI readers to spin this into a tale of suspense, intrigue and to justify why $350 spent is somehow better than $100.

    And...GO!
    The trolls are out in force today.  
    Every time there's an Apple launch. Every. Time. This thing sucks, this thing is doomed, Apple lost it, Steve Jobs, yada yada... AI must love the hits.
    randominternetpersonwilliamlondonfastasleep
  • Reply 55 of 101
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    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.

    williamlondontmay
  • Reply 56 of 101
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    saarek said:
    Apple just doesn’t seem able to ship a product or software update in full now adays. There is always something “coming soon”. No product is unaffected, it’s turning into a real cluster fuck.

    iMessage Cloud, APFS for Fusion Drives, AirPlay 2 etc, what the hell is going wrong in Cupertino?
    It's not "wrong" if they're good products. APFS works awesome on my Mac, my AW3 kicks ass, my X kicks ass, my ATV kicks ass, my AirPods kick ass, etc.. 

    You've cited some features that are delayed, but they're hardly tentpoles and it doesn't really matter that they're late. Why don't we list late stuff at other companies too? Surely Apple isn't the only software shop that has delays?
    williamlondontmayMacPro
  • Reply 57 of 101
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    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. 

    "Time for Tim to go", even while Apple today is healthier by pretty much every single metric than at any other point in it's history? Because the Homepod is getting one feature in a future software update, for what are probably extremely legitimate reasons? Like every single other piece of hardware that is controlled by software, that has ever launched in the history of mankind? And because of that, it's "unfinished"? You have no clue what you're talking about, and that was a really stupid fucking post. Same as all your other shitty and obvious troll posts. 
    StrangeDayswilliamlondontmay
  • Reply 58 of 101
    Soli said:
    vonbrick said:
    Sonos, Amazon and Google will be drinking today from the tears of disappointed users who thought they were waiting for Apple to get it right.

    Now...let's sit back and wait for our fellow AI readers to spin this into a tale of suspense, intrigue and to justify why $350 spent is somehow better than $100.

    And...GO!
    Huh? Do you really think the HW could be sold for under $100? Even Amazon, which runs on a platform of trying to breakeven (or even as a loss leader for their Echo products to dominate this nascent market they created), don't even sell any Echo HW that is even close to the power and performance of the HomePod… and that includes their $150 Echo Plus.

    Sonos One is probably the closest to HomePod at this point and that's double the price you mention, and likely doesn't sound as good just going by what I can see with the breakdown of the internals and the SoC being used. And that's without any consideration for Apple's A-series chip and how that will ultimately work with their beam forming speakers.

    Maybe one HomePod at $350 will sound worse than two Songs Ones in a living room, or maybe not, but surely not likely not better than a single Sonos One, and certainly not better than two Echo Dots with multi-room audio support to get to your $100 price tag.
    No.  I don't think the Homepod could be sold for under $100 and that's also not the point.  For $350, I can get THREE "smart" devices that sound very good (and a fourth that is completely adequate in the kitchen) when:
    • playing music from one of a handful of different subscription services or playing a ton of audio on demand on each of the four speakers throughout my entire house
    • controls the array of "smart" devices peppered across three floors
    • can turn on and switch inputs on my television and play what I tell it to play on demand
    • offers an ever-expanding list of games and activities which, as unimportant as they are, can be quite entertaining
    My point is that these four speakers do all of this and more today.  Each (except the mini device) set me back $100 (or less around the holiday shopping rush).  I was READY to replace it all with Homepod even knowing I would be forsaking some functionality in the name of better sound and, well, because Apple.  I waited until the holidays.  Then I waited again.  And again...the Homepod Apple wants to sell to me for $350 today isn't the product they promised in June.  Not delivering a feature already available elsewhere makes me uncomfortable enough to just go ahead and go all-in on one of the others.

    Honestly?  I'm a little pissed and whiny. ;)
    edited January 2018
  • Reply 59 of 101
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    holyone said:
    No it's not a position they've earned, it's a position Steve Jobs earned them when they were in the brink of death, who also was suprisingly obsessed with high quality speakers at one point but quickly came to his senses. The fanatics enjoy sighting HP sound quality as though that is the reason Apple made this product because the world was in such desperate need of high quality speakers Apple just had to do something about it. Home Pod questions to me aren't about it's premature announcement only to be delayed then released incomplete but, are about Apple entering a near nonexistent market they just don't seem to understand, the conlution that what's wrong with the Alexa hardwear is that it's a shity speaker is a gross misunderstanding of what the echo or the dot are and what Bezos is up to, it's not a speaker in every room but a microphone in every room and how much friction that removes in day to day interaction people have with the technologies that surround them, with this bieng the greater objective, which product is in a superior position ?
    Ah there it is -- the Steve Jobs post!

    Sorry man, but you have no idea what Apple's roadmap or strategy is. No one ever does. When the AW came out the usual haters piled up on it as lacking this and that, but guess what? It kicks ass up and down. 

    You assume Amazon has a mastermind plan, yet paradoxically you assume Apple does not and is a drowning man flapping his arms. Curious. Hope you're not managing anyone's money.
    williamlondon
  • Reply 60 of 101
    mjtomlinmjtomlin Posts: 2,673member
    vonbrick said:
    Sonos, Amazon and Google will be drinking today from the tears of disappointed users who thought they were waiting for Apple to get it right.

    Now...let's sit back and wait for our fellow AI readers to spin this into a tale of suspense, intrigue and to justify why $350 spent is somehow better than $100.

    And...GO!

    No one needs to justify what they pay for something. Value is a matter of perception. Always has been. If the HomePod makes listening to Apple Music drop dead simple and convenient and produce somewhat decent sound, then $350 is worth it to me. Sorry if that's not "better" for you, but that's your reality, not mine.

    Also, let's consider the features missing...

    1. Stereo syncing - this only applies to those who were planning on buying at least two to use as stereo speakers.
    2. Multi-room audio - again this only applies to those people with multiple AirPlay 2 capable devices, which I do not believe there are any yet as AirPlay 2 has not been released.

    The issue seems to have nothing to do with the HomePod, but rather AirPlay 2 which does all the syncing, including the stereo syncing.
    MacPro
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