WTimberman

maccaguy said:

I’ve updated my HomePod to 13.2.1, but it refuses to recognize my wife’s voice. It keeps saying to turn on “Recognize my voice” in the Home app, but it’s on on both of our iPhones. I’ve power cycled all three devices. 

Was just listening to Myke Hurley on the latest episode of the Upgrade podcast with Jason Snell. He and his wife had the same problem. After a half-hour of growing frustration, he reported, and trying everything they could think of, activating SIri on the HomePod by holding a finger on top of one of the Pods somehow allowed it to recognize his wife's voice as that of a separate person. He said he wasn't really sure after the fact what the sequence of events was, or what exactly did the trick, but he thought that physically activating Siri was the key move. FYI....

DED doesn't suffer fools gladly, which is fine by me. Most of what he writes about the history of personal computing technology rings true to me, as I was around for most of it. (I bought my first Mac in 1984, my first iPod in 2002, my first iPhone in 2007, my first iPad in 2010, and my first Apple Watch in 2018.) People who complain about his attitude, while ignoring the factual basis for it, are, in my opinion, not worth reading or listening to. In the late 80's, I fought like a hyena to be allowed by the outfit I worked for to be allowed to use a Mac. Even after I proved that it played nice with the established SMB network, it was no go. So, yes, I remember well the supposed superiorities of Windows 95 and Windows NT being trumpeted at the time, almost all of which were irrelevant to the long-suffering users of both. Interestingly, I recently returned to my old workplace for a visit after being retired for fifteen years, and discovered that the entire place now runs exclusively on a Mac and iDevice network. In fact, the head of tech support introduced me to the fresh young faces in his department as "the first Mac user and evangelist in the company," as though I were some sort of Biblical prophet. This is pretty much how I see DED -- as an uncompromising teller of inconvenient truths. It'd be nice if there were more like him around.

Because I have a relatively small living room, I bought a pair of HomePods to serve as both music and TV speakers. For music, they're really superb--the computational audio makes a huge difference in staging when you're not at liberty to rearrange the room to suit the speakers. I find most audio systems designed for TV to be far too bright at one end of the frequency range, and far too boomy at the other end. The HomePods are more neutral-sounding to my ear, and seem to more accurately represent transient bass/treble peaks while not at the same time muffling sounds which fall into the more normal dynamic range of, say, intimate conversations between characters. I do agree, though, that HomePods as TV speakers are just not loud enough overall, although the trick of switching from automatic to stereo sound playback on the Apple TV pretty much solved the volume issue for me. (Thanks, Appleinsider staff and editors, for once again going the extra mile for your readers.)

The battle has always been between what I like to call the Soviet/Wintel model of computing and the Apple model. Once upon a time, every copy machine in the Soviet Union had a party custodian who made the copies for you, and, incidentally took note of every copy that was made. Corporate IT departments were very much like that, and Microsoft pandered to their impulse to control every aspect of our computing infrastructure. Despite the smug cynicism of hipster tech journalists like Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn, it was conviction, not necessity, which brought about Apple's focus on designing computing tools that individuals would need to control their own destiny in a technology-driven civilization. "The computer for the rest of us" wasn't just a marketing slogan, it was what drove Steve Jobs to get up and go to work every day. That core belief is still visible today in everything that a now giant Apple brings to market. That's Steve Jobs's real legacy, and we should consider ourselves lucky that he came along when he did.

mike1 said:

sflagel said:

kiowawa said:

foregoneconclusion said:

sflagel said:

Did the old one have this:

Yes, the original HomePod had Bluetooth 5.0. 

I had the impression the Mini version did not have Bluetooth, which made it hard to use for me as I travel a lot and wanted to bring it along without hooking to Hoel wifi.  

Although apparently the large HomePod did have Bluetooth 5.0, you could not use it to play music…. So if someone came to your house with a phone that is not from Apple, they could not share their music. The biggest reason not to get one.

Why would that matter? If they wanted me to hear something, they could just tell the HomePod to play it.

Not really concerned with how my home interacts with visitor's devices.

My understanding is that its limited bandwidth makes bluetooth inferior to wi-fi as a music transmission protocol. Apple apparently had do do some pretty impressive voodoo to make AirPods sound as good as they do, and even they can’t handle lossless audio at present. So I think Mike1 is right. Have your Android friends tell the HomePods what to play, ask you to play it for them, or keep a cheap bluetooth boombox around for them. (I mean that seriously. May daughter used to keep a JBL pill around just for that purpose.)

tedz98 said:

Apple’s market share is minuscule. Their overall pricing is higher than PC’s. Overall Apple’s products are of a higher quality, but you pay a premium for that. In a recession price sensitivity increases and I would predict demand for all of Apple’s products, including iPhones, will decrease significantly. The PC world is still dominated by Windows. The growth of cloud services should increase the ability of Apple to sell product in the corporate world, but the price premium may ultimately hinder that.

Yes, Windows 10 is good, and Windows Azure, Office 365, etc., are ever better, ever cheaper. Yes the Windows Surface line is great if you're a Windows user. Yes, generic Windows PCs are also even better, even cheaper (relatively) than they were in the oh-so-long-ago 1990s. If you're also a Google Docs and Android user (whoopie, choices!) you're presumptively, arguably, demonstrably well integrated. On the other hand, nothing, I repeat nothing, is as well-integrated as Apple's hardware/software ecosystem. When I'm in the zone -- iPhone, iPad Pro, iMac, and Apple Watch all engaged -- it's as though the machine-human interface of the future is already here. Check out Federico Viticci's well-documented adventures with the iPad Pro if you don't believe me. Silly fanboy differences aside, the future is looking brighter than ever, closer than ever, to Richard Brautigan's "Machines of Loving Grace."

Thanks, Mike. Speculation is fun among people who are honest with one another, especially when it comes to Apple, with its long history of making magical things appear in the real world. This stuff you’re calling out, though, is just what you’ve called it: crap. It poisons the fun, and it’s disrespectful to the people who put in long hours to make the magic, and to tell us all about it when it appears.

People who mock the HomePod probably don't own one. I own two, and paired, they're quite simply the best speakers I've ever owned, not suffering by comparison even with a couple of $1K each audiophile monsters I bought back in the day. For a small room, say 25 x 25 feet, they're ideal. Neutral, distortion free even at high volumes, and they talk to you besides. What more could you want? (Well, as TV/movie speakers, they can shake loose furniture parts, and resonant stuff on shelves, but not the walls, ceiling or floors, so maybe they're not for everybody. If you're an apartment dweller, though, who doesn't expect to experience nuclear explosions with total verisimilitude, it's hard to imagine doing any better.

And directly to the point of the post, William Gallagher is a smart guy, a knowledgeable guy and a nice guy, too. Apple should listen to him.

Just ordered a pair, which’ll mean some shuffling around, but I don’t mind a bit. (I’ve so been hoping for these.) They’ll replace the OG pair, which will be moved to the office. The mini pair now in the office will go to the guest bedroom. Weird part is, I’ve also kept an ancient iPod Hi-Fi in the kitchen. Hooked it up originally to an old AirPort Express and once I went to Eero, to a Belkin Soundform Connect receiver dongle. Gotta say, it’s been an amazingly reliable AirPlay speaker. A testament to Apple quality, it still sounds as good as it did when it I bought it new 16 years ago. Hope the HomePods prove to be just as durable! 

I prefer the aesthetics of Apple’s podcast player, but functionally speaking, Overcast is an order of magnitude better in almost all respects. Marco Arment, the developer of Overcast, seems acutely conscious of what it takes to design and test a truly intuitive and complete user interface, and as a result his app is an absolute joy to use. Years ago,  when I first encountered Instapaper — also his invention —  I remember thinking “whoever came up with this is a genius.” All these years later, I’m still of the same opinion. Apple is huge and as a result, often appears to be content with the basics in anything they view as non-critical consumer-facing software. Bug fixes, improvements, etc., are often abysmally slow to arrive, if indeed they ever do…. The apps Apple provides as defaults are serviceable, but indie developers, who are just as competent as Apple engineers, often take a far more granular approach to customer satisfaction. So, yeah, Overcast. Absolutely. God bless the independents, who really were and are crucial to making Apple what it is today! (If only Apple would treat them a little nicer, but I’m not holding my breath….)