An Apple employee who worked on HomePod tweeted that anyone who wants good sound with no surveillance should get a HomePod. Really? So that’s going to be Apple’s marking plan? I’ll keep my Bose Soundlink Mini which has great sound and doesn’t need to be continuously connected to power.
Yes, privacy is a added selling point / differentiation, there are others as in every marketing campaign which does not run through a random Apple employee's single tweet, but thanks for playing
Tim Cook has released this product and he needs to sell it, so he says what he needs to say.
However, for this price they should of put in an A11 cpu and 3gb ram. Yea, probably not needed for now but for this price it may future proof it more. The A8 cpu with 1gb ram was released in 2014.
This thing has no screen really, and will not play games or do a lot of of the heavy lifting normally done in phones in tablets.
So, an A8 and who knows what other DSP function they added, probably using the GPU for many of those DSP calculations, is probably sufficient for an audio centered device.
Considering it is connected to power and probably has a higher thermal dissipation capability and clock than the normal A8, it likely not that far from the performance of the A9 in the 6s.
I think a lot of people buy Alexa or similar devices thinking they’ll use them for a lot of different purposes, but end up using them mostly for music, with the occasional weather forecast, etc. But the Apple device seems to be the first one optimized for music, its actual “core” purpose. So it could be a good upgrade for people who got used to the convenience of Alexa, etc. but want something that sounds (and looks) better.
We won't know if it's really optimized for music until we hear it - marketing hype means nothing. And with all these devices, I don't know how we perceive going back over 60 years to mono sound systems is perceived as "optimized for music" unless one wants to argue that the largely crappy new music released today, largely created within ProTools, doesn't need stereo.
As I understand it, one HomePod does stereo just fine. Two will just give even greater separation.
Never mind Tim, I won't be buying one or any other ''Home assistant' for that matter. As for sound quality, my proper HiFi system, does very well thanks.
Well, who cares really. Most proper HIFI sound system sound like crap because of room acoustics and improper setup, so if you solved that good for you, otherwise you'd be part of the many people that stopped buying those "proper" system (look at their sales) and switched to single speaker setups were they could move the speaker to the best position instead of having to live around that elusive sweet spot.
It's not that tough to properly tune a modern sound system for a room. Many of them come with the tools built into the receiver. My Yamaha receiver did, and it works quite well. And it didn't cost any more (on sale) than the HomePod will.
And while I can't at the moment perceive a use case that would prompt me to buy one of these, I can see where some people might want something like this, especially the sub $50 ones from other manufacturers. Most music listeners don't care about HiFi sound quality, only that it's "good enough," so the additional quality of the Apple entry isn't a value add for them.
The question is not whether the price is justified w.r.t. other personal assistants offering the same capabilities, but whether the price is justified w.r.t. other *speakers* offering the same capabilities.. On that score the HomePod will probably compare pretty well..
I like how people here are just talking crap about a product they've never seen except in photos, nor used and are just making the same tired assumptions everyone seems to make when a new Apple product comes to market. Its always this well this thing is crap and nobody will buy it, it should have had this in it, and that in it, etc...and its overpriced for what it is. I just love armchair executives. Just as great as armchair engineers!
Apple knows what the hell its doing. It didn't get where it is today by just throwing crap products out to market. It knows what it wants to build, how they want to build it, why they want to build it, and who they're going to build it for. It didn't become one of the most successful companies in the world just by pure luck.
Apple doesn't do things first, they do things better. iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch. None of these were first to the market but when they did get to market they were a better experience. And future software updates will make them even more so. That's what defines Apple's products from the rest.
I fear HomePod will be DOA. Apple lost the virtual assistant battle a long time ago. And there are plenty of other smart-speaker manufactures that do great sound quality too.
I will never trust Goolag & Leftist Alexa's Mics inside my home.
Siri ,is already great on the phone. It will obviously improve ,and I believe the trust of Siri will help sell it.
"Leftist Alexa"? Can you be a bit more informational on this part of your comment? How is Alexa "leftist"?
Never mind Tim, I won't be buying one or any other ''Home assistant' for that matter. As for sound quality, my proper HiFi system, does very well thanks.
Well, who cares really. Most proper HIFI sound system sound like crap because of room acoustics and improper setup, so if you solved that good for you, otherwise you'd be part of the many people that stopped buying those "proper" system (look at their sales) and switched to single speaker setups were they could move the speaker to the best position instead of having to live around that elusive sweet spot.
I don't care so much about the "sweet spot". I DO CARE about stereo sound. You don't need to sit frozen in a perfect environment to hear the benefits of stereo sound. I don't understand why everyone is moving backwards in music playback- or maybe I do: the commoditization of music is simply continuing down the path corporatism has laid out for it. Who needs depth and subtlety in playback systems for music that lacks either?
I like how people here are just talking crap about a product they've never seen except in photos, nor used and are just making the same tired assumptions everyone seems to make when a new Apple product comes to market. Its always this well this thing is crap and nobody will buy it, it should have had this in it, and that in it, etc...and its overpriced for what it is. I just love armchair executives. Just as great as armchair engineers!
Apple knows what the hell its doing. It didn't get where it is today by just throwing crap products out to market. It knows what it wants to build, how they want to build it, why they want to build it, and who they're going to build it for. It didn't become one of the most successful companies in the world just by pure luck.
The Apple of today is burning through the reputation that the Apple of 2006-2012 earned with the earlier generations of products it produced that were top-level examples of their product categories (excellent computers and portables that anyone could use). Today's Apple clearly demonstrates not knowing what it's doing in terms of hardware (CPU throttling and suicidal machines to serve pathological thinness), QA (clearly insufficient), too-short development cycles (a new major release every year is too short for Apple's developers, third-party developers, and consumers), GUI design (since 2013's iOS 7 began the downward plunge on both iPhone and Mac), and customer trust (throttling again, but this time to avoid replacing defective hardware or batteries,; also passive-aggressively bullying customers into a ludicrously short product lifespan of three years)... etc.
There are plenty of reasons to doubt the expertise at Apple.
Apple doesn't do things first, they do things better. iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch. None of these were first to the market but when they did get to market they were a better experience. And future software updates will make them even more so. That's what defines Apple's products from the rest.
They DID things better, in the past. What's good today is legacy of what was good in Apple products between 2007 and 2012. Today's Apple no longer spends the time and attention to detail that creates a "late to market, but superior to the rest" kind of product lineup.
I think Apple is doing just fine. Their stock value is at record levels and they are selling products by the boatload. A lot of their time is currently spent with vertical integration which increases the value of a particular platform, whether it be phones, tablets, computers or soon-to-be speakers. That increases the value not only for the newest release of devices but also older devices too.
I'm not so worried that some new whizbang device has not been released in the same frequency. Sometimes you have to experience years of sweating through stuff until a breakthrough idea comes through.
That being said, what I have suspected and a recent article in the New York Times corroborates, is that after the novelty wears off, most of these devices are used for music, alarms, the weather, and sometimes the news. And that's the reason why Apple focused much of their work on developing an incredible speaker. Notice how Apple shows you the internal guts of HomePod while competitors do not? They do it not only to visually impress but also at that price point, it's really hard for other manufacturers to produce that kind of technology and it's still cheaper by $50 than Google's Max. Those who heard the HomePod at the Apple keynote were floored with the sound quality.
I like Apple's take on privacy because I know I'm the customer. With Google and Amazon, I always feel that I'm the product. And if that means that the HomePod's Siri can't do as much as Alexa, it doesn't bother me. For the most part, I'm just looking for a great speaker with some assistance anyways.
Looking forward to delivery of one for now. Master bath will be a great place to get morning news, weather, etc. Might just kill the daily Arizona Republic. After all that is nothing but a bunch of folks way left of center telling me how to live my life.
"Competition makes all of us better and I welcome it," Cook said. "(But) if you are both trying to license something and compete with your licensees, this is a difficult model and it remains to be seen if it can be successful or not."
This quote tells us that Apple will license its Car OS and not build a car.
License it to who? No automaker needs Apple here. They’re all alread doing their own thing (and probably way ahead of whatever Apple is doing).
Disagree. Almost every major auto manufacturer offers CarPlay & Android Auto, both of which are much better than anything the car guys offer.
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My feeling is that, to do that, it has to have more functionality than it has now...
That said, this product could well become the center of an automated home and Apple needs to keep a foot in that door as the market grows and expands.
It's not that tough to properly tune a modern sound system for a room. Many of them come with the tools built into the receiver. My Yamaha receiver did, and it works quite well. And it didn't cost any more (on sale) than the HomePod will.
And while I can't at the moment perceive a use case that would prompt me to buy one of these, I can see where some people might want something like this, especially the sub $50 ones from other manufacturers. Most music listeners don't care about HiFi sound quality, only that it's "good enough," so the additional quality of the Apple entry isn't a value add for them.
On that score the HomePod will probably compare pretty well..
Apple knows what the hell its doing. It didn't get where it is today by just throwing crap products out to market. It knows what it wants to build, how they want to build it, why they want to build it, and who they're going to build it for. It didn't become one of the most successful companies in the world just by pure luck.
There are plenty of reasons to doubt the expertise at Apple.
I'm not so worried that some new whizbang device has not been released in the same frequency. Sometimes you have to experience years of sweating through stuff until a breakthrough idea comes through.
That being said, what I have suspected and a recent article in the New York Times corroborates, is that after the novelty wears off, most of these devices are used for music, alarms, the weather, and sometimes the news. And that's the reason why Apple focused much of their work on developing an incredible speaker. Notice how Apple shows you the internal guts of HomePod while competitors do not? They do it not only to visually impress but also at that price point, it's really hard for other manufacturers to produce that kind of technology and it's still cheaper by $50 than Google's Max. Those who heard the HomePod at the Apple keynote were floored with the sound quality.
I like Apple's take on privacy because I know I'm the customer. With Google and Amazon, I always feel that I'm the product. And if that means that the HomePod's Siri can't do as much as Alexa, it doesn't bother me. For the most part, I'm just looking for a great speaker with some assistance anyways.