Ah yes, let's review based on higher-numbers-are-better, because actually listening to it wouldn't tell us anything.
Yes, absolutely, let’s trash it now instead of waiting to hear what one actually sounds like and how one performs. As the old song Town Without Pity used to say, “When those little minds tear you in two."
I wonder if this version will be as bad handling TV volume as the 2018 version. Music is great on that one, but most TV media needs to be nearly full volume to be heard.
Not for ours. The HomePods can go very loud indeed, too loud if needed. That Netflix start up sound could shatter the windows. Are you sure you have them connected via the Apple TV? Or are you using some other non Apple smart TV tech?
Ordered two for use on my desk as speakers for my MBP when connected to the 32" 4k LG Display. Retiring a set of Focal computer speakers XS 2.1 (USB connected) from way back (2009, maybe). They have served well and sound good but take up a lot of real estate, require a lot of cables and are long past being able to be repaired. https://www.focal.com/sites/www.focal.fr/files/shared/catalog/document/Focal_XS21_Specification-sheet.pdf
Using the Military/Veteran's discount that Apple offers you save 10% off list and then putting it on the Apple Card takes another 3% off, so not too bad. Feb 3rd delivery.
I wonder if this will poop the bed like some of the other one and then Apple will saying nothing is wrong with it and then refuse to repair it.
Why would I buy a new homepod from Apple when my old OG started heating up, popping sounds. and finally a burning smell and Apple didn’t replace it? Im in shock with this announcement !
I am pretty gobsmacked Apple has done this with those problems above. incompatibility means it can’t be paired with the old HomePods or the homepod minis.it also has all the connectivity limitations if the first model too. A great set of product updates yesterday followed up by an insult the day after. It seems clear the announcement was staggered to stop the homepod announcement taking the gloss off the Mac mini and MBP announcements.
Seriously, the homepod 2 deserves to fail even harder than the first one.
Why would you want to pair it with dissimilar HPs?
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
Please explain how WiFi 7 would benefit the HomePod. I mean how much bandwidth does it take to transmit a song? Same goes for Bluetooth 5.3. Completely unjustified for an audio device.
I sort of concur - except for one point. If you really delve into the practical and consumable benefits of the newer WiFi standards you'll start to see that much of the focus on "speed" is missing the point of the technology. As you know, as you move up in frequency the negative effects from physical obstructions increases as well. Many of those spectacular performance numbers you see for WiFi 5 and above are for ranges that are ridiculously short, like less than a meter. Once you increase the distance up or have to contend with a wall, floor, large piece of furniture, and no longer have line-of-site between the endpoints usable bandwidth plummets dramatically. The real benefit of WiFi 5 and later is to give you more ways to avoid electromagnetic (radio) interference by providing many more non-overlapping radio channels plus more concurrent input and output connections.
From this perspective moving up to WiFi 6 and beyond would have been a benefit to people who live in high density WiFi environments. But then you'll also have to deal with your neighbors yelling at you because you're playing your HomePod too loud.
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
Please explain how WiFi 7 would benefit the HomePod. I mean how much bandwidth does it take to transmit a song? Same goes for Bluetooth 5.3. Completely unjustified for an audio device.
Maybe you should read my post? "I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi."
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
I was surprised to learn that all Apple Watches only support 802.11b/g/n - https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/List_of_Apple_Watches - I guess because they're using the same S7 SoC as the Apple Watch, they inherited this limitation. Was also surprised how many devices on my home network are connected at WiFi 4 (or "n").
Reissue a product that failed in the market years ago, remove 1/3 of the speakers, keep the price, make it incompatible with the previous version, use a 8 year old CPU, downgrade network to a 14 year old standard, keep Bluetooth 5.0, and launch after Christmas. Why?
Because what kind of power do you really need for a device that plays music? What benefit do you get from the latest, greatest, fastest, 3nm SOC monster in a music player? Please inform us why a music player would need that. And are you also assuming speaker technology has not advanced once iota either?
The point you're missing in nubus's post is that Apple is reissuing a product that has already failed in the marketplace just a few years ago--and, on the face of the specs released, the Home Pod seems poised to fail again. For all the buyers who passed on it the first time--and I'm one of them--I don't see anything in the press release that makes me think this revision will be better. I don't know... maybe it will sound so amazing this time around that it will be competitive at this price point. Maybe fewer speakers will sound better thanks to computational audio advancements. We shall see--but right now, I'm skeptical.
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
Please explain how WiFi 7 would benefit the HomePod. I mean how much bandwidth does it take to transmit a song? Same goes for Bluetooth 5.3. Completely unjustified for an audio device.
I sort of concur - except for one point. If you really delve into the practical and consumable benefits of the newer WiFi standards you'll start to see that much of the focus on "speed" is missing the point of the technology. As you know, as you move up in frequency the negative effects from physical obstructions increases as well. Many of those spectacular performance numbers you see for WiFi 5 and above are for ranges that are ridiculously short, like less than a meter. Once you increase the distance up or have to contend with a wall, floor, large piece of furniture, and no longer have line-of-site between the endpoints usable bandwidth plummets dramatically. The real benefit of WiFi 5 and later is to give you more ways to avoid electromagnetic (radio) interference by providing many more non-overlapping radio channels plus more concurrent input and output connections.
From this perspective moving up to WiFi 6 and beyond would have been a benefit to people who live in high density WiFi environments. But then you'll also have to deal with your neighbors yelling at you because you're playing your HomePod too loud.
Exactly Dewme. The one point you cite as an exception IS the point I made in my post and I agree that the main benefit for most people in moving to the latest WiFi standards isn't speed, it's greater freedom from interference in high density wifi enviroments, which is pretty much any city.
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
It's worth bearing in mind that supply chain issues may have impacted the design. If you've still got 1 million BT 5.0 modules available but your supply of BT 5.3 modules is being exhausted by your new Mac Mini and MacBook Pro production lines, it's probably worth making that tradeoff. Similar for the WiFi modules; if you don't need the speed and can bypass some supply hurdles by using the older spec then it's probably worth it. There might also be conflicts with Thread and Matter that were easier to avoid or resolve by using the older components.
Still makes me itch, though - these are devices with a projected lifespan of more than five years, it'd be nice to have the latest and greatest components.
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
I was surprised to learn that all Apple Watches only support 802.11b/g/n - https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/List_of_Apple_Watches - I guess because they're using the same S7 SoC as the Apple Watch, they inherited this limitation. Was also surprised how many devices on my home network are connected at WiFi 4 (or "n").
Ah, if it's all handled by the SoC then that makes even more sense. And that SoC is optimised for power management, so I theorise that WiFi 4 uses less power than the more recent protocols.
Okay. Now Apple needs a BassPod subwoofer and the ability to tie it and and a few HomePods and HomePod minis into a true Spatial Audio network that supports Atmos.
So my new LG TV with built-in AppleTV app wouldn’t work with HomePods unless I hookup an AppleTV?
The AppleTV App is software designed to let your TV access the media from Apple. The AppleTV box is hardware with the components needed to connect to HomePods. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?
Sometimes I really don't understand Apple decisions. WiFi 7 is just around the corner, with the draft standard having been written two years ago, but the 2023 Home Pod takes us back to WiFi 4 (or "n") that debuted in 2009? I get that it doesn't need the speed of WiFi 6, but there are far fewer routers and devices currently using 6, which becomes a helpful factor when you live in an apartment building and 40-something networks other than your own come up under wifi. How much extra could wifi 6 support have cost Apple? Similarly, why not support the latest Bluetooth standard, 5.3, in a newly released speaker, instead of 5.0 from 7 years ago?
Because it's based on the S7 chip from the Apple Watch. WiFi 4 may be old, but as long as you don't really care about massive bandwidth then it still absolutely rules in terms of signal range vs. power consumption. This is why most battery-powered wireless security cameras and other IoT devices still use WiFi 4. The newer standards would trade off battery life for no meaningful gain in performance. Now that WPA2 deauth attacks against cameras are becoming more of a thing, some of them are moving up to WiFi 6 so they can use WPA3 (which still doesn't solve the jamming problem but whatever; if it's important then run a wire).
This doesn't really hurt anything performance-wise on the HomePod and lets them use what is likely their least-expensive CPU that does everything important.
Comments
Retiring a set of Focal computer speakers XS 2.1 (USB connected) from way back (2009, maybe). They have served well and sound good but take up a lot of real estate, require a lot of cables and are long past being able to be repaired.
https://www.focal.com/sites/www.focal.fr/files/shared/catalog/document/Focal_XS21_Specification-sheet.pdf
Using the Military/Veteran's discount that Apple offers you save 10% off list and then putting it on the Apple Card takes another 3% off, so not too bad.
Feb 3rd delivery.
From this perspective moving up to WiFi 6 and beyond would have been a benefit to people who live in high density WiFi environments. But then you'll also have to deal with your neighbors yelling at you because you're playing your HomePod too loud.
Still makes me itch, though - these are devices with a projected lifespan of more than five years, it'd be nice to have the latest and greatest components.
THAT would rock.
This doesn't really hurt anything performance-wise on the HomePod and lets them use what is likely their least-expensive CPU that does everything important.