WTimberman

True what you say. HomeKit is very much an adventure still, and not a cheap one. After several years of cautious, yet ever deeper wading into the HomeKit morass, I've now got got HomeKit locks, tunable lights, a thermostat, multi-room audio (HomePods, and one magnificently ancient iPod Hi-Fi/AirPort Express combo) and several different brands of security cameras. You'd think that by this time, I'd have had enough, but no. I keep checking my bank account and dreaming of garage door openers, ceiling fan and window blind controls, and God knows what else to come. Intrigued me. Addicted me. Silly, bankrupt me. Pity would be the charitable response. Still, I live alone, so I don't have to worry about misguided family members trying to use actual light switches, or screwing up my genius lists with HomePod requests for Merle Haggard tunes. Even better, in the wake of Phillips' latest software updates. my lights no longer come back on in shades of orange or purple rather than white after a summer power failure, or fail to come back on at all. Yippee! As you've so carefully put it, we're ALMOST there. Really. Honestly. If we've got the do-re-mi....

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.

iPod HiFi + AirPort Express + TOSlink, the thing that wouldn't die. I've been using this combo for nigh on to 15 years and have never even had to think about it, except when I replaced the older AE with the newer, Apple TV shaped one. Once I got a pair of HomePods, I was thinking about retiring the beastie. Now I'll just move it to another room. And I thought AirPods were amazing. (Oh, they are, they are, but this latest trick just makes me smile.)

It's true that a lot has happened in the last two years. I live in a small town in AZ (pop. 7000), and during that time the local chain supermarket outlet and one of the two local markets, the office supply store, drugstore, liquor store, hardware store and a local winery have all installed working ApplePay terminals. Even one of our gas stations, which just underwent a major renovation, has ApplePay not only in the convenience store, but also at the pumps. And, although they're often overlooked, vending machines all over town have long had contactless payment modules. Restaurants are still a black hole, though. The iPad-to-your-table system that is catching on in California is missing in action here. This is a feature I'm really eager to see, as a single check per table, with person-to-person ApplePay to reimburse the person who picks up said check would be a wonderful timesaver for everyone.

fastasleep said:

WTimberman said:

What I'd really like to do with HomePods, apart from playing music on them, is to use a pair of them as TV speakers for an Apple TV setup. It's always seemed a waste to me to need two sound systems in my living room, one for music playback, and one for the TV. I realize that for audiophiles, and for home cinema fans, having two speaker systems, whether or not they're fed from the same receiver/amp, is the way to go, but for ordinary mortals like me, having one reasonably high-quality speaker pair serving both use-cases would be pretty compelling.

I don't understand. I have a single stereo/speakers set that outputs audio from the TV as well as music (radio, AirPlay by way of Airport Express, etc). Why do you need two?

My setup is an Apple TV 4th gen. connected to an old Samsung DLP TV with only one HDMI input, but an excellent speaker system -- 3 speakers embedded in the fascia on either side of the screen, which mimic surround sound fairly well -- and, for music, believe it or not, I've got an even older iPod Hi-Fi connected to my network with an AirPort Express. So...a) I'm definitely not an audiophile, b) my living room is small, and c) on top of all my other techno-peculiarities I'm also something of a cheapskate.

Still, it is time to upgrade. I'm thinking an OLED 4K HDR TV, a 4K Apple TV, but instead of a sound bar, the two HomePods to do double duty, which will allow me to forego a receiver with more features than I need.

And yes, I do realize that a single good receiver will support switchable outputs to both a high-end set of music speakers, and a soundbar or a Dolby multiple speaker (5, 7, whatever) surround sound system. In my original comment, I was thinking more of the fact that most of the people I know who are really into such things think that cinema speakers don't do justice to their music, and are likewise critical of music speakers hooked up to their TVs. So at a minimum, they want two sets of speakers. The real geeks, the ones with a separate home theater in another room, generally seem to favor separate amplifier systems as well. Above my pay grade, of course, so I may be missing some of the finer points.