One correction. You can't set up the HomePod with ANY iPhone. You must be using an iPhone or iPad that uses the same AppleID as the Home in HomeKit.
This is a major gotcha
Imagine that a wife buys a HomePod for her kitchen but her husband has setup HomeKit with his AppleID. She won't be able to use her Notes, Reminders or Calendar through HomePod because HomeKit requires her husband's AppleID to add a device and then HomePod uses that AppleID as the HomePod owner. HomeKit 'steals' her device during setup and gives it to her husband in the setup process even though HomePod may be using her AppleID for music and podcasts.
Perhaps a simple solution would be for HomePod setup to ask who in Family Sharing is the owner of the HomePod and then use that AppleID for Notes, Reminders and Calendars.
Could this problem be caused by the fact that HomePod is both a smart speaker and a HomeKit hub?
How stupid is that when you set up your wife phone using your own Apple ID? Same shit here. The primary user will get Apple ID in HomePod. Your troll is on another level!
One correction. You can't set up the HomePod with ANY iPhone. You must be using an iPhone or iPad that uses the same AppleID as the Home in HomeKit.
This is a major gotcha
Imagine that a wife buys a HomePod for her kitchen but her husband has setup HomeKit with his AppleID. She won't be able to use her Notes, Reminders or Calendar through HomePod because HomeKit requires her husband's AppleID to add a device and then HomePod uses that AppleID as the HomePod owner. HomeKit 'steals' her device during setup and gives it to her husband in the setup process even though HomePod may be using her AppleID for music and podcasts.
Perhaps a simple solution would be for HomePod setup to ask who in Family Sharing is the owner of the HomePod and then use that AppleID for Notes, Reminders and Calendars.
Could this problem be caused by the fact that HomePod is both a smart speaker and a HomeKit hub?
I’m glad someone else has noticed this issue. I’ve read most every review and the reviews seem to miss the fact that it’s not just limited to a single iPhone but, no matter how many other iPhones your family owns, none of them can be used to setup and linked to the HomePod. This, to people with families, is an important limitation. It kind of makes family members second rate citizens in the Apple ecosystem.
...interesting. Author admits to not using echo or Google home. Cool. But then compares their sound quality, which home pod excels in. But when it's time to compare Siri to them, he leaves that out.
That's like me comparing multitasking on my note 8 to IPX. Of course it wins .But when I get around to Samsung's face ID, I don't emphasize it's shortcomings.
Get real on your assessment dude
Multiple people handled the review. I clearly explained that portions comparing to Amazon and Google were provided by Max and Vadim.
gatorguy said: It's correct if speaking Spanish. Not when replying in American English, which again is different from British English. So no it's not "more correct". Surely you don't think every English word derived from a foreign root, and there's a LOT of 'em, should be pronounced in that foreign language
No, it's not only correct when speaking Spanish. I guarantee you that there are plenty of English speaking anglos in California that use "potty-o" and not "patty-o". And, again, it's a straw man to claim I don't think anglicized versions are correct. I'm disputing that Siri's use of the Spanish pronunciation is an error.
Great review, very relevant to my personal use cases. I'm very heavily into music every day, along with Podcasts, but I very rarely use Siri, maybe one a month. The HomeKit integration is relevant however, so I'm looking forward to expanding my use of Siri in that area.
As far as English pronunciation is concerned I've found the English (Canada) to be somewhat better for Americans in that it doesn't mangle my name. But complaining about pronunciation in any AI product isn't something I worry too much about. Having grown up outside of Boston I learned to become quite adept at deciphering spoken word that is barely recognizable as being English, so accommodating Siri's pronunciation is a piece of cake. No problemo, HomePod is still wickedly cool.
gatorguy said: It's correct if speaking Spanish. Not when replying in American English, which again is different from British English. So no it's not "more correct". Surely you don't think every English word derived from a foreign root, and there's a LOT of 'em, should be pronounced in that foreign language
No, it's not only correct when speaking Spanish. I guarantee you that there are plenty of English speaking anglos in California that use "potty-o" and not "patty-o". And, again, it's a straw man to claim I don't think anglicized versions are correct. I'm disputing that Siri's use of the Spanish pronunciation is an error.
HomePod isn’t even available in Spanish speaking countries. While I appreciate your insight and background on the word patio, the argument regarding how she pronounces it is ultimately pedantic — Siri mispronounces a lot of things, regardless of the origin of the word.
Also, my wife’s first language is Spanish, and she says there is a distinct difference in that language — it’s two syllables in Spanish, which is different from the three syllables of a mispronounced “pot-e-oh.”
nhughes said: HomePod isn’t even available in Spanish speaking countries. While I appreciate your insight and background on the word patio, the argument regarding how she pronounces it is ultimately pedantic — Siri mispronounces a lot of things, regardless of the origin of the word.
It's not pedantic when the article specifically uses the pronunciation of patio as if it were an obvious error. It's not.
We have thousands of words in the English vocabulary that are not pronounced correctly by your 'standard'.
You're making the same mistake as the other person that responded to me: I never said that the pronunciation the author expected was "incorrect". I said that Siri's use of the Spanish pronunciation was more correct. If you read the article, the author appears to believe that "potty-o" is some sort of hilarious mispronunciation and error by Siri. In fact, it's more correct than the English conversational version.
For example, if I used the correct Latin pronunciation for vice versa, that wouldn't be hilariously incorrect. It would be more correct than the anglicized conversational version.
It's correct if speaking Spanish. Not when replying in American English, which again is different from British English. So no it's not "more correct". Surely you don't think every English word derived from a foreign root, and there's a LOT of 'em, should be pronounced in that foreign language, and the same whether conversing in London or talking in Atlanta. That would open up a whole new set of problems. Paris, karate, pesos, Beethoven, delicatessen...
When in Rome.
So, we shouldn't reasonably expect Siri to understand anyone who speaks to it, regardless of which country they're in, or their native language, and any accents they may have in another language?
i think this ridiculous debate highlights just how far Siri has to go.
There's an animation to click on that demonstrates how beam forming works.
But that may not be exactly how Apple's beam-forming works, correct? Just confirming before reading thru the whole thing for myself.
EDIT: Nevermind, It wasn't a scientific "physicists" explanation as much as his personal experience with HomePod in his particular layout and placement. There's no doubt that it's a good speaker. Thanks for the link tho.
I agree the sound quality blew me away, not being an audiophile it still amazed me almost as much as the design. I think Siri could get more credit; at least in my usage. I found it to be very fun and easy to use. It even deciphered lyrics of a song I spoke and played the song I couldn’t think of. Siri also had a pleasant conversation with Google Home. If you place them together and ask Google to say “Hey Siri” which also invoked the HomePod, they begin a cute conversation. While I also agree Siri could use a “giant leap” of an upgrade, I think it’s up to par for what I use it for and I think Siri’s voice sounds really good coming from the HomePod.
nhughes said: HomePod isn’t even available in Spanish speaking countries. While I appreciate your insight and background on the word patio, the argument regarding how she pronounces it is ultimately pedantic — Siri mispronounces a lot of things, regardless of the origin of the word.
It's not pedantic when the article specifically uses the pronunciation of patio as if it were an obvious error. It's not.
There's an animation to click on that demonstrates how beam forming works.
But that may not be exactly how Apple's beam-forming works, correct? Just confirming before reading thru the whole thing for myself.
EDIT: Nevermind, It wasn't a scientific "physicists" explanation as much as his personal experience with HomePod in his particular layout and placement. There's no doubt that it's a good speaker. Thanks for the link tho.
Literally half of the article was a "scientific explanation" for laymen from a physicist that has experience in the field.
Here's the explanatory text from the link and he doesn't even mention the HomePod until the very last sentence:
"I'm a poor musician, but find it an important part of my life. Grad school was at Stony Brook. Besides an excellent physics department one of my reasons for doing grad school at Stony Brook was it's proximity to music in New York City.. That wasn't quite enough, so two of us founded a concert series at the university that thrives to this day. At Bell Labs it became apparent that music might be a significant driver for Internet use and I found myself walking many paths. One was sound field reconstruction.
Sound field reconstruction is just the fancy way of recreating the sound where it was recorded or engineered in your home. In theory you record the acoustic signatures of the recording studio and your living room and create a mathematical operation that makes your living room sound like the recording space. In practice it's approximately hard. Sound waves are fairly large and get reflected, absorbed and transmitted by and through everything in your room. Making matters worse the sound field at different spots in the room is usually very different and things in the room move between and during listening sessions. We made serious progress, but it took exotic microphone and speaker arrays as well as state of the art (for the time) computing to make it sort of work.,
One detail is centrally important. Imagine sitting before a simple speaker cone. Most of the sound comes straight at you with the volume falling off as you get away from the speaker's central axis. Speakers have very characteristic patterns showing how loud they are depending on the angle you're sitting at as well as the frequency of the sound they're producing. If you have two stereo speakers there is usually a sweet spot where the sound reproduction is optimal. In this area the sound field can be fairly good and you can close your eyes and visualize where the musicians are.
Imagine an array of speakers, each with it's own amplifier, all controlled by a computer, you can control the phase and amplitude (loudness) of each speaker. The waves they send out interfere with each other as they expand outwards. By controlling the phase and loudness (amplitude) of each speaker you can make them interfere in such a way that they create a new wave that can be aimed. The little animation shows an array of four speakers in a row, but it can be any number and they don't have to be in a line. The HomePod uses seven small speakers arranged in a ring."
The HomePod also has a ring shaped array of six microphones. They listen to the room (sample it) at a fairly high rate and decide what parts of the music, from it's stereo signature, need to go where and how it needs be modified to interact with the room and everything in it. An Apple A8 processor, the same two billion transistor processor used in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, handles the computational chores. This is much more power than we had back in the day. Although I don't know exactly what they're working on, several people I know who are real experts at this have been at Apple for years."
I think i figured why siri is so limited on the homepod, i seems like the question processing is mostly done on the homepod itself verses sending it out to a server first. Just a thought and Apple just needs to crack up its capabilities.
This also means it is actually better for home automation, something many conveniently forget.
Also, I totally disagree with 3.5 considering what the main selling point of this thing is. This is AGAIN a desingenious review.
The review should be against the target market, not the imaginary in someone's head market.
What speaker this size, can be placed anywhere, delivers this kind of sound... not one... bang... 4.5 to 5 rating, everything else is just prattling and the YMMV in a review is just bizarre too.
When this thing sells 10M inside 12 months, will people change their tune, or will they slink to darkness like with every other Apple product.
I would agree doing home automation and having voice command process locally is going to be far better, verse a third party knowing when you turn on your lights and turn down your heat. I have not move into the home kit for home control until they can address the major issues, like knowing that 4 people are in the house and doing something the system has to be able to deal with all 4 people. I have used home automation since the 80's with X10 and Insteon. I can tell you I stop using it all when the kids had issues with it and it does not pass the wife test of it better be simple stupid.
I have to agree first and for most the sound is great, i have it sitting on a shelf between my family room and Kitchen with the family room having large vaulted ceiling and the one little speaker at 50% volume fills the entire space, it lets you have conversation without having to yell, and anywhere in the both rooms it response to Hey Siri without raising your voice. Took a little time to get use to not having to raise your voice to say hey Siri. In comparison, I have a surround sound 350 watts system in my Family room and I have to crank it to about 45% of full volume to fill both rooms with music, but it is so loud you can not have conversation really well in the Kitchen. The other thing the homepod is so small you can to tell where the music is coming from. People came in an did not even notice it.
The only issue I have found was streaming pandora, it was getting buffering errors, I am not sure where the issue is at. I use to stream to my ATV then into my surround sound system and have not had the buffering issues. Also, Homepod will play your music library which is on your phone, even if you do not have iTunes Match subscription or paid for songs from the iTunes store. Most all the music on my iPhone is from my library on my computer which I ripped from CDs, I told homepod to play some music and it went to my music library on my phone and begin randomly play and shuffling the music on my phone. This was one of this things which was not clear it would do. It was said you had to an apple music subscription of or have iTunes Match to listen to your music library. I guess this would be true if your phone is not on the same network. Also I did not have buffering issue when the homepod was streaming my music library.
Update: i think i figure out why the ATV does not have the Pandora buffering issues verse the homepod, The ATV is hardwire to my Gigbit Ent network in my house. Most all my Audio and Video stream devices are hardwired, I only use WiFi for truly Mobile devices like phones and iPad, Everything else is hardwired
Comments
Get real on your reading comprehension dude.
As far as English pronunciation is concerned I've found the English (Canada) to be somewhat better for Americans in that it doesn't mangle my name. But complaining about pronunciation in any AI product isn't something I worry too much about. Having grown up outside of Boston I learned to become quite adept at deciphering spoken word that is barely recognizable as being English, so accommodating Siri's pronunciation is a piece of cake. No problemo, HomePod is still wickedly cool.
Also, my wife’s first language is Spanish, and she says there is a distinct difference in that language — it’s two syllables in Spanish, which is different from the three syllables of a mispronounced “pot-e-oh.”
Wait...what?
https://youtu.be/rrTI8wmrMrw
http://tingilinde.typepad.com/omenti/2018/02/the-next-step-in-home-audio.html
There's an animation to click on that demonstrates how beam forming works.
i think this ridiculous debate highlights just how far Siri has to go.
EDIT: Nevermind, It wasn't a scientific "physicists" explanation as much as his personal experience with HomePod in his particular layout and placement. There's no doubt that it's a good speaker. Thanks for the link tho.
Here's the explanatory text from the link and he doesn't even mention the HomePod until the very last sentence:
"I'm a poor musician, but find it an important part of my life. Grad school was at Stony Brook. Besides an excellent physics department one of my reasons for doing grad school at Stony Brook was it's proximity to music in New York City.. That wasn't quite enough, so two of us founded a concert series at the university that thrives to this day. At Bell Labs it became apparent that music might be a significant driver for Internet use and I found myself walking many paths. One was sound field reconstruction.
Sound field reconstruction is just the fancy way of recreating the sound where it was recorded or engineered in your home. In theory you record the acoustic signatures of the recording studio and your living room and create a mathematical operation that makes your living room sound like the recording space. In practice it's approximately hard. Sound waves are fairly large and get reflected, absorbed and transmitted by and through everything in your room. Making matters worse the sound field at different spots in the room is usually very different and things in the room move between and during listening sessions. We made serious progress, but it took exotic microphone and speaker arrays as well as state of the art (for the time) computing to make it sort of work.,
One detail is centrally important. Imagine sitting before a simple speaker cone. Most of the sound comes straight at you with the volume falling off as you get away from the speaker's central axis. Speakers have very characteristic patterns showing how loud they are depending on the angle you're sitting at as well as the frequency of the sound they're producing. If you have two stereo speakers there is usually a sweet spot where the sound reproduction is optimal. In this area the sound field can be fairly good and you can close your eyes and visualize where the musicians are.
Imagine an array of speakers, each with it's own amplifier, all controlled by a computer, you can control the phase and amplitude (loudness) of each speaker. The waves they send out interfere with each other as they expand outwards. By controlling the phase and loudness (amplitude) of each speaker you can make them interfere in such a way that they create a new wave that can be aimed. The little animation shows an array of four speakers in a row, but it can be any number and they don't have to be in a line. The HomePod uses seven small speakers arranged in a ring."
The HomePod also has a ring shaped array of six microphones. They listen to the room (sample it) at a fairly high rate and decide what parts of the music, from it's stereo signature, need to go where and how it needs be modified to interact with the room and everything in it. An Apple A8 processor, the same two billion transistor processor used in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, handles the computational chores. This is much more power than we had back in the day. Although I don't know exactly what they're working on, several people I know who are real experts at this have been at Apple for years."
I have to agree first and for most the sound is great, i have it sitting on a shelf between my family room and Kitchen with the family room having large vaulted ceiling and the one little speaker at 50% volume fills the entire space, it lets you have conversation without having to yell, and anywhere in the both rooms it response to Hey Siri without raising your voice. Took a little time to get use to not having to raise your voice to say hey Siri. In comparison, I have a surround sound 350 watts system in my Family room and I have to crank it to about 45% of full volume to fill both rooms with music, but it is so loud you can not have conversation really well in the Kitchen. The other thing the homepod is so small you can to tell where the music is coming from. People came in an did not even notice it.
The only issue I have found was streaming pandora, it was getting buffering errors, I am not sure where the issue is at. I use to stream to my ATV then into my surround sound system and have not had the buffering issues. Also, Homepod will play your music library which is on your phone, even if you do not have iTunes Match subscription or paid for songs from the iTunes store. Most all the music on my iPhone is from my library on my computer which I ripped from CDs, I told homepod to play some music and it went to my music library on my phone and begin randomly play and shuffling the music on my phone. This was one of this things which was not clear it would do. It was said you had to an apple music subscription of or have iTunes Match to listen to your music library. I guess this would be true if your phone is not on the same network. Also I did not have buffering issue when the homepod was streaming my music library.
Update: i think i figure out why the ATV does not have the Pandora buffering issues verse the homepod, The ATV is hardwire to my Gigbit Ent network in my house. Most all my Audio and Video stream devices are hardwired, I only use WiFi for truly Mobile devices like phones and iPad, Everything else is hardwired