Apple again said to cut HomePod orders on poor sales performance

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Comments

  • Reply 61 of 98
    bluefire1 said:
    If I can afford to spend $349 for a HomePod, I can afford $24.99 for iTunes Match and $9.99 a month for Apple Music.
    Before I go on this tirade, note that the following circumstances do not apply to me, and I intend to buy a HomePod whenever it becomes available in Canada. That said, I do understand why some people are disappointed with the HomePod.

    The problem with the HomePod's streaming limitations has nothing to do with "affording" the service. It's about paying a fee to use a device I already paid for to access music I already own! It's illogical.

    Imagine you buy a CD. Then you buy a CD player. How would you feel if the manufacturer of the CD player said you have to subscribe to their service to play that CD?

    Apple is saying that if I want to actually USE the HomePod in the way it was intended, rather than reducing it to Just Another Dumb Speaker, my music library must exist in the cloud rather than on a storage device in my home. Apple then charges me money to access the Apple server that already holds the music I already paid for when I bought it from Apple. It does this so I can play the music I bought from Apple on the speaker I bought from Apple. If I don't want to pay the fee I can still play the music on the speaker, but doing so defeats the primary features of the speaker.

    It is perhaps no surprise then that some buyers are suggesting that Apple may go suck its own stem.
    edited April 2018 gatorguylarrya
  • Reply 62 of 98
    macplusplusmacplusplus Posts: 2,112member
    eightzero said:

    eightzero said:
    bill42 said:
    SendMcjak said:
    zone said:
    ... If this was not an Apple product people would be saying how great it is!
    Apparently, a fairly small number of people who actually bought one.

    HomePod is a well-engineered product with fairly poor market fit + a terrible launch strategy.
    I would buy two of them or maybe three if you could use voice commands to tell the home pods to play any songs in your main computer's iTunes library. Alas that only works if you pay a monthly subscription to Apple Music. No thanks Apple.
    I'm not sure, but I think you can do this if you buy the $25/yr iTunes Match service. Seems odd to need to do this.

    The subscription fee is the backbreaker for me. I hate those. I'd be interested if you could do what you say without the match subscription. Fairly, it isn't that $25 is outrageous - it is sort of the principle. 
    The reason for the $25 fee isn't for the voice commands, it's for the source of the stream -- hosting it on the cloud. If your local iTunes computer is powered down, your requests would fail and there's no music. With a Match subscription your entire music library is in iCloud Music Library, giving the HP access to it at any time. 

    Are you saying you expect Apple to host everyone's entire multi-gigabyte libraries in the cloud for free? Or are you saying you'd prefer HP to stream it from your Mac and be unable to playback if it's sleeping/off?
    I'm saying I would be inclined to consider buying an Apple device to stream from my local storage, with full support, for no subscription fee. If it is off, fine. I accept I can't use my devices when they are powered off.

    I did not say what you imply.

    You can do this already.

    • You can stream to HomePod directly from your Mac or iOS device
    • You can use Remote on your iPhone or iPad to control your iTunes library playback on your Mac, streaming to HomePod
    • You can't use Siri on the HomePod to control your local Library, as it's tied to Apple Music/Match by design
    I understand both your position and eightzero's. Both are valid, but I admit to being a little disappointed in the direction Apple took with this.

    It seems to me that Apple could have made it possible for the HomePod to select a local Mac as the source. Instead, the only method available for playing local content reduces the HomePod to Just Another Dumb Speaker. Why did Apple make using their own hardware no better than an Android phone with a Bluetooth speaker?

    I have similar complaints about the Apple TV 4K and the TV app on the iPhone. Apple's push to have us all store everything in the cloud is getting a little annoying, not because there's a major downside to that approach, but because Apple's devices are doing an increasingly shitty job of dealing with our existing LOCAL content. Maybe I'm over-sensitive, but I'm starting to feel like Apple is prioritizing opportunities to sell me services ahead of making sure my overall experience with Apple devices is positive and enjoyable.
    Enable Home Sharing on your Mac's iTunes and there, all your local content is in your Apple TV. You absolutely don't need to store anything on the "cloud". Just download your purchased iTunes movies to your Mac and publish with Home Sharing from there. All my iTunes movies are downloaded and stored locally in my iTunes Library, they are never downloaded again and again for watching on the Apple TV.

    There are two exceptions to that:
    1) You cannot download 4K iTunes movies, they have to be streamed again and again. But with an Apple TV 4K with large storage they may be temporarily cached as well.
    2) You must watch a rented iTunes movie on the device you rented it, you cannot switch devices for rentals. So, you may always rent the movie on Apple TV.

    Regarding your own ripped movies, throw away the crappy .mkv and store them in .m4v format, then add to the iTunes library. You can do all metadata editing (such as Title, artwork, video kind, season, episode if any and alike...) in iTunes Get Info window or you may use a batch processing tool like Road Movie or iSubtitle. To publish that local content to the iPhone use Infuse on the iPhone and download your movies via file sharing or watch without downloading to the iPhone.
    edited April 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 63 of 98
    macplusplusmacplusplus Posts: 2,112member
    bluefire1 said:
    If I can afford to spend $349 for a HomePod, I can afford $24.99 for iTunes Match and $9.99 a month for Apple Music.
    Before I go on this tirade, note that the following circumstances do not apply to me, and I intend to buy a HomePod whenever it becomes available in Canada. That said, I do understand why some people are disappointed with the HomePod.

    The problem with the HomePod's streaming limitations has nothing to do with "affording" the service. It's about paying a fee to use a device I already paid for to access music I already own! It's illogical.

    Imagine you buy a CD. Then you buy a CD player. How would you feel if the manufacturer of the CD player said you have to subscribe to their service to play that CD?
    Why wouldn't you play your own CD on HomePod !!? Slide the CD into your Mac (or whatever attached), select AirPlay in iTunes and go !...
    bluefire1 said:
    If I can afford to spend $349 for a HomePod, I can afford $24.99 for iTunes Match and $9.99 a month for Apple Music.
    Apple is saying that if I want to actually USE the HomePod in the way it was intended, rather than reducing it to Just Another Dumb Speaker, my music library must exist in the cloud rather than on a storage device in my home. Apple then charges me money to access the Apple server that already holds the music I already paid for when I bought it from Apple. It does this so I can play the music I bought from Apple on the speaker I bought from Apple. If I don't want to pay the fee I can still play the music on the speaker, but doing so defeats the primary features of the speaker.

    It is perhaps no surprise then that some buyers are suggesting that Apple may go suck its own stem.
    Your music library does absolutely not need to be in the "cloud". Select your locally stored song in iTunes and then AirPlay to HomePod. Ah, then it becomes "Just Another Dumb" speaker !!!

    Don't be dumb, just use Siri on your Mac to play tracks in iTunes, that's it. Do you really believe that Siri on the Mac is less capable of playing music than Siri on the HomePod? What are those "primary features of the speaker" other than primarily being a speaker?

    AppleTV supports iTunes Home Sharing but HomePod not. Why? My opinion is that AirPlay makes Home Sharing redundant for audio streaming. Video is just the opposite: due to AirPlay's limitations (consider many devices past and present), restricting local streaming to only AirPlay would reduce the video quality on AppleTV. A more robust network sharing was needed to preserve video quality, this is why AppleTV should support Home Sharing. Indeed if you attach the AppleTV to the network via Ethernet, you will gladly notice that the bottlenecks you may experience with Wi-Fi only Home Sharing connection disappear (stuttering, dropped frames etc).

    After a couple of weeks of honeymoon with Siri in your HomePod, you'll get tired of shouting commands to Siri and you'll prefer using the AppleTV Remote. Then you'll appreciate again the value of Home Sharing: AppleTV will play your Home Shared local library on the HomePod via AirPlay with the convenience of the Remote.
    edited April 2018
  • Reply 64 of 98
    The market fit is phenomenal. What the HomePod is supposed to do is be the multiroom audio controller for a wide variety of vendor products.
    Which it isn't. It doesn't even control Apple products unless you have a subscription. You can't even buy it here in Canada. Canada!

    What part of this is phenomenal?
    larrya
  • Reply 65 of 98
    The times I have been in a couple of busy Apple stores the only area not buzzing with activity was the speaker.  
    I turned it on and in the store space it just sounded like a cheap boom box- undoubtedly it sounds different in most homes.

    The device is too expensive, too limited in features and the outside looks like a dirt magnet. Maybe you do not have munchkins in your home, but I do on a regular basis. Little dirty hands are going to touch something like that.

    Then add in the fact that non-AppleCare repairs cost almost as much as the device lists for new.

    Pass.
  • Reply 66 of 98
    macplusplusmacplusplus Posts: 2,112member
    The market fit is phenomenal. What the HomePod is supposed to do is be the multiroom audio controller for a wide variety of vendor products.
    Which it isn't. It doesn't even control Apple products unless you have a subscription. You can't even buy it here in Canada. Canada!

    What part of this is phenomenal?
    You only need an iCloud account to control HomeKit devices, not an Apple Music subscription:

    Set up HomePod as a home hub

    HomePod automatically sets itself up as a home hub so you can control your HomeKit accessories remotely with the Home app and use automations. Just make sure that the iOS device you use to set up HomePod is signed in to iCloud with the Apple ID that you used to set up your HomeKit accessories in the Home app.

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207057

    There, it mentions only iCloud account, not an Apple Music subscription.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 67 of 98
    Enable Home Sharing on your Mac's iTunes and there, all your local content is in your Apple TV. You absolutely don't need to store anything on the "cloud"
    I didn't say it's not possible, I said "...Apple's devices are doing an increasingly shitty job of dealing with our existing LOCAL content." If I watch a locally-stored movie with the 4K, it still shows as "Unwatched" on the Gen3 Apple TV, our Macs, and our iDevices. Local content is not included in the TV app on the 4K (I can't get my head around how Amazon content shows up on the "Up Next" list but material purchased and downloaded directly from Apple doesn't). Local titles are not found with Siri searches.

    It's obviously possible to access local content with Apple's media playback devices, but the experience is inferior to playing from the iTunes cloud.
  • Reply 68 of 98
    dogsdogs Posts: 1member
    Just got the HomePod, love the sound and the easy set up.  As for Siri, i am not a big user of it on the phone so I wasn’t expecting a great deal.   Siri works okay, actually a little better than on the phone.  My grips about the Home PoD have been stated by others.  Apple appears to have rushed the product to the market.  I am hopeful like the original IPhone and Apple Watch it will get better with time.  
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 69 of 98

    After a couple of weeks of honeymoon with Siri in your HomePod, you'll get tired of shouting commands to Siri and you'll prefer using the AppleTV Remote.
    Not in my case. The reason for me having a HomePod at all would be to have a device that can play music without requiring a device between the music library and the speaker. Right now I have to fire up the Mac (which is in another room) or pull out my phone to control playback. I want to be able to walk into the kitchen and say "Hey Siri, shuffle the playlist Blues" or "Play me something by Bruno Mars." If it plays something I don't feel like hearing at any given moment, just telling the HomePod to skip is easier than reaching for a device, especially in the kitchen where one's hands may be full and/or covered with ick.

    Using the phone or Mac as a controller is obviously not what one might describe as a hardship, but it's a minor nuisance that the HomePod is specifically designed to overcome. If that feature is not available, the most compelling reason to choose a HomePod over any high-quality Bluetooth speaker is defeated.
    larrya
  • Reply 70 of 98
    macplusplusmacplusplus Posts: 2,112member
    Enable Home Sharing on your Mac's iTunes and there, all your local content is in your Apple TV. You absolutely don't need to store anything on the "cloud"
    I didn't say it's not possible, I said "...Apple's devices are doing an increasingly shitty job of dealing with our existing LOCAL content." If I watch a locally-stored movie with the 4K, it still shows as "Unwatched" on the Gen3 Apple TV, our Macs, and our iDevices. Local content is not included in the TV app on the 4K (I can't get my head around how Amazon content shows up on the "Up Next" list but material purchased and downloaded directly from Apple doesn't). Local titles are not found with Siri searches.
    What you describe amounts to just a paradigm, not a technical necessity nor failure. If you have creative ideas about iTunes integration you may submit product feedback to Apple. Since you don't mind to describe your issues step by step, I don't mind to handle them here but as a whole, you have just a paradigm problem, not a technical problem. My experience is exactly the opposite: when you watch a locally stored and Home Shared movie on Apple TV, it is marked as "watched" in the host Mac's iTunes. You can also mark it manually as "watched" on the host Mac, this is a trivial issue. If you have local content on a host Mac, why Siri on Apple TV would search your host Mac? Use Siri on the host for search. See, this is a matter of paradigm. Your local iTunes library and your iCloud library provide total control to you but you cannot have each of those control the other. Apple Music resolves this by allowing to upload your locally stored songs to your iCloud Music Library but movies cannot benefit from the same convenience. And this is totally understandable given the bandwith and storage issues. Maybe in the future Apple may allow you to upload your locally stored videos too to a future iCloud Movie Library. Experiment with iCloud Theater as for now and see the outcome.

    Enable Home Sharing on your Mac's iTunes and there, all your local content is in your Apple TV. You absolutely don't need to store anything on the "cloud"
    It's obviously possible to access local content with Apple's media playback devices, but the experience is inferior to playing from the iTunes cloud.
    Absolutely not, unless you AirPlay that content to Apple TV. Use Home Sharing, not AirPlay, to maintain video quality.

  • Reply 71 of 98
    macplusplusmacplusplus Posts: 2,112member


    After a couple of weeks of honeymoon with Siri in your HomePod, you'll get tired of shouting commands to Siri and you'll prefer using the AppleTV Remote.
    Not in my case. The reason for me having a HomePod at all would be to have a device that can play music without requiring a device between the music library and the speaker. Right now I have to fire up the Mac (which is in another room) or pull out my phone to control playback. I want to be able to walk into the kitchen and say "Hey Siri, shuffle the playlist Blues" or "Play me something by Bruno Mars." If it plays something I don't feel like hearing at any given moment, just telling the HomePod to skip is easier than reaching for a device, especially in the kitchen where one's hands may be full and/or covered with ick.

    Using the phone or Mac as a controller is obviously not what one might describe as a hardship, but it's a minor nuisance that the HomePod is specifically designed to overcome. If that feature is not available, the most compelling reason to choose a HomePod over any high-quality Bluetooth speaker is defeated.
    To get over this "nuisance" you must upload your locally stored songs to your iCloud Music Library. There they will be available to and controlled by HomePod Siri.
  • Reply 72 of 98
    eightzeroeightzero Posts: 3,056member
    bluefire1 said:
    If I can afford to spend $349 for a HomePod, I can afford $24.99 for iTunes Match and $9.99 a month for Apple Music.
    Before I go on this tirade, note that the following circumstances do not apply to me, and I intend to buy a HomePod whenever it becomes available in Canada. That said, I do understand why some people are disappointed with the HomePod.

    The problem with the HomePod's streaming limitations has nothing to do with "affording" the service. It's about paying a fee to use a device I already paid for to access music I already own! It's illogical.

    Imagine you buy a CD. Then you buy a CD player. How would you feel if the manufacturer of the CD player said you have to subscribe to their service to play that CD?

    Apple is saying that if I want to actually USE the HomePod in the way it was intended, rather than reducing it to Just Another Dumb Speaker, my music library must exist in the cloud rather than on a storage device in my home. Apple then charges me money to access the Apple server that already holds the music I already paid for when I bought it from Apple. It does this so I can play the music I bought from Apple on the speaker I bought from Apple. If I don't want to pay the fee I can still play the music on the speaker, but doing so defeats the primary features of the speaker.

    It is perhaps no surprise then that some buyers are suggesting that Apple may go suck its own stem.

    There are going to be variations of this thread on AI for al long as they run articles on the HomePod. My only point on this device is that it is not currently valuable to me  because I find the marketing to me of a device with certain built in and desirable features to come at a subscription cost to me to be not a significant value to me. I completely understand Apple wanting to bake in features so as to make buying those subscriptions, whatever their cost, valuable and thus profitable. This is certainly a no brainier for people that stream a lot of music, already subscribe to Apple Music, or want music on all the time in their life. That is just not a description of me.  I am not offended, amused, or scoffing at other peoples' choices, merely expressing my preferences for spending my money.

    If Apple changes this, I might be interested.

    I do object to people trying to suggest I am wrong in my evaluation of what I find useful or valuable, I need to get over it, that I'm being unreasonable, or scornfully suggest I need to see it their way. I have Siri on my wrist, and a voice assistant isn't real useful to me but I like my Apple Watch. It doesn't have a subscription fee. I like that. Yes, my iPhone does, and I accept that because of the value it provides to me.
    edited April 2018
  • Reply 73 of 98
    macplusplusmacplusplus Posts: 2,112member
    Especially for Windows users, who don’t own a Mac but still want to use HomePod along with their iPhones or iPads:

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204926


  • Reply 74 of 98
    [...] Your local iTunes library and your iCloud library provide total control to you but you cannot have each of those control the other.
    You've explained how the controls work, but not WHY Apple would choose to design it that way. If it's possible for the ATV to manage content on a remote server over the internet, it must be possible to do the same with HomeShared content. Why would Apple deliberately make managing local content less convenient?

    Absolutely not, unless you AirPlay that content to Apple TV. Use Home Sharing, not AirPlay, to maintain video quality.
    I said the experience is diminished, not the picture quality.
  • Reply 75 of 98
    larryalarrya Posts: 606member
    eightzero said:

    eightzero said:
    bill42 said:
    SendMcjak said:
    zone said:
    ... If this was not an Apple product people would be saying how great it is!
    Apparently, a fairly small number of people who actually bought one.

    HomePod is a well-engineered product with fairly poor market fit + a terrible launch strategy.
    I would buy two of them or maybe three if you could use voice commands to tell the home pods to play any songs in your main computer's iTunes library. Alas that only works if you pay a monthly subscription to Apple Music. No thanks Apple.
    I'm not sure, but I think you can do this if you buy the $25/yr iTunes Match service. Seems odd to need to do this.

    The subscription fee is the backbreaker for me. I hate those. I'd be interested if you could do what you say without the match subscription. Fairly, it isn't that $25 is outrageous - it is sort of the principle. 
    The reason for the $25 fee isn't for the voice commands, it's for the source of the stream -- hosting it on the cloud. If your local iTunes computer is powered down, your requests would fail and there's no music. With a Match subscription your entire music library is in iCloud Music Library, giving the HP access to it at any time. 

    Are you saying you expect Apple to host everyone's entire multi-gigabyte libraries in the cloud for free? Or are you saying you'd prefer HP to stream it from your Mac and be unable to playback if it's sleeping/off?
    I'm saying I would be inclined to consider buying an Apple device to stream from my local storage, with full support, for no subscription fee. If it is off, fine. I accept I can't use my devices when they are powered off.

    I did not say what you imply.

    You can do this already.

    • You can stream to HomePod directly from your Mac or iOS device
    • You can use Remote on your iPhone or iPad to control your iTunes library playback on your Mac, streaming to HomePod
    • You can't use Siri on the HomePod to control your local Library, as it's tied to Apple Music/Match by design
    I understand both your position and eightzero's. Both are valid, but I admit to being a little disappointed in the direction Apple took with this.

    It seems to me that Apple could have made it possible for the HomePod to select a local Mac as the source. Instead, the only method available for playing local content reduces the HomePod to Just Another Dumb Speaker. Why did Apple make using their own hardware no better than an Android phone with a Bluetooth speaker?

    I have similar complaints about the Apple TV 4K and the TV app on the iPhone. Apple's push to have us all store everything in the cloud is getting a little annoying, not because there's a major downside to that approach, but because Apple's devices are doing an increasingly shitty job of dealing with our existing LOCAL content. Maybe I'm over-sensitive, but I'm starting to feel like Apple is prioritizing opportunities to sell me services ahead of making sure my overall experience with Apple devices is positive and enjoyable.
    THIS!

  • Reply 76 of 98
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,621member

    After a couple of weeks of honeymoon with Siri in your HomePod, you'll get tired of shouting commands to Siri and you'll prefer using the AppleTV Remote.
    Not in my case. The reason for me having a HomePod at all would be to have a device that can play music without requiring a device between the music library and the speaker. Right now I have to fire up the Mac (which is in another room) or pull out my phone to control playback. I want to be able to walk into the kitchen and say "Hey Siri, shuffle the playlist Blues" or "Play me something by Bruno Mars." If it plays something I don't feel like hearing at any given moment, just telling the HomePod to skip is easier than reaching for a device, especially in the kitchen where one's hands may be full and/or covered with ick.

    Using the phone or Mac as a controller is obviously not what one might describe as a hardship, but it's a minor nuisance that the HomePod is specifically designed to overcome. If that feature is not available, the most compelling reason to choose a HomePod over any high-quality Bluetooth speaker is defeated.
    I am not personally in the market for a HomePod but if I were, the situation you describe would definitely influence my decision.

    I never understood why AirDrop required BT, Wifi and iCloud to even work at all. That's when it works, of course.

    I will never understand why Apple didn't produce its own - flexible - NAS solution to handle backups, cloud access, media serving etc

    Apple Services should co-exist with other services its users might be using and the user should be able to decide, so flexible means supporting Plex Server, .mkvs etc.

    QuickTime never fulfilled its consumer potential because of its lack of flexibility.

    Years ago, one of the biggest (and most stupid) obstacles for Mac users was having no HFS support in Windows. Apple should have had a Windows utility to provide support on Windows from the start.

    HomePod in its current state does not appeal to me.


  • Reply 77 of 98
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    bluefire1 said:
    If I can afford to spend $349 for a HomePod, I can afford $24.99 for iTunes Match and $9.99 a month for Apple Music.
    You don’t need Match if you have Apple Music. 
  • Reply 78 of 98
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member
    eightzero said:

    eightzero said:
    bill42 said:
    SendMcjak said:
    zone said:
    ... If this was not an Apple product people would be saying how great it is!
    Apparently, a fairly small number of people who actually bought one.

    HomePod is a well-engineered product with fairly poor market fit + a terrible launch strategy.
    I would buy two of them or maybe three if you could use voice commands to tell the home pods to play any songs in your main computer's iTunes library. Alas that only works if you pay a monthly subscription to Apple Music. No thanks Apple.
    I'm not sure, but I think you can do this if you buy the $25/yr iTunes Match service. Seems odd to need to do this.

    The subscription fee is the backbreaker for me. I hate those. I'd be interested if you could do what you say without the match subscription. Fairly, it isn't that $25 is outrageous - it is sort of the principle. 
    The reason for the $25 fee isn't for the voice commands, it's for the source of the stream -- hosting it on the cloud. If your local iTunes computer is powered down, your requests would fail and there's no music. With a Match subscription your entire music library is in iCloud Music Library, giving the HP access to it at any time. 

    Are you saying you expect Apple to host everyone's entire multi-gigabyte libraries in the cloud for free? Or are you saying you'd prefer HP to stream it from your Mac and be unable to playback if it's sleeping/off?
    I'm saying I would be inclined to consider buying an Apple device to stream from my local storage, with full support, for no subscription fee. If it is off, fine. I accept I can't use my devices when they are powered off.

    I did not say what you imply.

    You can do this already.

    • You can stream to HomePod directly from your Mac or iOS device
    • You can use Remote on your iPhone or iPad to control your iTunes library playback on your Mac, streaming to HomePod
    • You can't use Siri on the HomePod to control your local Library, as it's tied to Apple Music/Match by design

    It seems to me that Apple could have made it possible for the HomePod to select a local Mac as the source. Instead, the only method available for playing local content reduces the HomePod to Just Another Dumb Speaker. Why did Apple make using their own hardware no better than an Android phone with a Bluetooth speaker?
    They still could. Maybe when AirPlay 2 comes out? Maybe never. But it’s possible they’ll expand the features in a firmware update down the road, who knows. 
  • Reply 79 of 98
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member

    [...] Your local iTunes library and your iCloud library provide total control to you but you cannot have each of those control the other.
    You've explained how the controls work, but not WHY Apple would choose to design it that way. If it's possible for the ATV to manage content on a remote server over the internet, it must be possible to do the same with HomeShared content. Why would Apple deliberately make managing local content less convenient?

    I’ll tell you why. Because that’s a completely different, separate feature. Right now your Siri query goes to the cloud and gets parsed in the context of the Apple Music database/meta data etc and returns your results. None of this happens inside your HomePod. For it to be able to do the same locally for networked Macs, it’d have to index your iTunes library or libraries, upload that to the cloud, and create a — wait for it — iCloud Music Library to run queries against (Apple Music or Match already does this) and then instead of pulling the result from Apple Music’s servers, send the result back down to the HomePod, look for the Mac that is associated with that particular Library on the network (which might not be awake or even present) and if iTunes is even running, send a remote command to play back your selected track.  There are all sorts of components here that makes thus less than a trivial problem to solve. It’s not hard to figure out why they went with Apple Music as the primary source. It’s not that it’s impossible, but it’s not as simple as you make it out to be. 
  • Reply 80 of 98
    fastasleepfastasleep Posts: 6,408member

    avon b7 said:

    After a couple of weeks of honeymoon with Siri in your HomePod, you'll get tired of shouting commands to Siri and you'll prefer using the AppleTV Remote.
    Not in my case. The reason for me having a HomePod at all would be to have a device that can play music without requiring a device between the music library and the speaker. Right now I have to fire up the Mac (which is in another room) or pull out my phone to control playback. I want to be able to walk into the kitchen and say "Hey Siri, shuffle the playlist Blues" or "Play me something by Bruno Mars." If it plays something I don't feel like hearing at any given moment, just telling the HomePod to skip is easier than reaching for a device, especially in the kitchen where one's hands may be full and/or covered with ick.

    Using the phone or Mac as a controller is obviously not what one might describe as a hardship, but it's a minor nuisance that the HomePod is specifically designed to overcome. If that feature is not available, the most compelling reason to choose a HomePod over any high-quality Bluetooth speaker is defeated.
    I never understood why AirDrop required BT, Wifi and iCloud to even work at all. That's when it works, of course.

    Bluetooth for proximity, Wi-Fi for file transfers, iCloud to identify you.
    I will never understand why Apple didn't produce its own - flexible - NAS solution to handle backups, cloud access, media serving etc

    Apple Services should co-exist with other services its users might be using and the user should be able to decide, so flexible means supporting Plex Server, .mkvs etc.

    My 2009 Mac mini does all those things.
    QuickTime never fulfilled its consumer potential because of its lack of flexibility.

    Years ago, one of the biggest (and most stupid) obstacles for Mac users was having no HFS support in Windows. Apple should have had a Windows utility to provide support on Windows from the start.

    HomePod in its current state does not appeal to me.


    Ok
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