thrang

The issue with the HomePod wasn't the HomePod itself (though perhaps A8 was long in tooth), but the poor performance of Siri. At $349/299, your assistant better be the bee's knees...

The HomePod sounds incredible, and a stereo pair is amazingly engaging for the size.

At $99, you may get a little more slack.

My concern is that this was part of a home invasion strategy that now seems less defined, less robust.

However, if this is the precursor of a HP2, perhaps with mesh networking capabilities, or of Apple buying Sonos (I initially discounted this rumor, but the Sonos name, and the development and product already done completed (with Airplay 2), especially for sounders and 5.1 setups), it might be worth it for Apple. I own several HomePods as well as four zones of Sonos Amps/ HT setup)

Was Beats "worth" $3bn though? There is a lot less buzz arounds Beats lately it seems...

I don't care how forward thinking one believes they are, but this is laughably stupid....

LoveNotch_n_AirPods said:

People ITT rightfully calling out Facebook's other hardware flops like the FB phone. However, they're killing it with the Oculus Quest 2. We're an all-Apple household except company work PCs, and I rarely ever use Facebook. But I love the Quest.

Facebook is adding Messenger to Quest and enabling multiuser support (something which people have asked for since iPad came out), which is a stealth way to get people to add all their household members without FB. I have hundreds of $ in games and would love to drop Quest and buy an Apple iGlass, but Apple is nowhere to be found on this. Analysts are saying they want typical modern Apple ideal form factor (wireless and thin), but I'd be happy to use a wire from my A14 iPhone to the HMD. It would still be less clunky and more powerful than the Quest 2. 

People might laugh and say it's niche but it won't be for long. I had the Quest 1 and a year later comes Quest 2 and it's way better. My elderly relatives who rolled their eyes about games and couldn't understand controllers are drawn into VR and don't want to put it down. People forget how small Apple was before the iPhone, and VR/AR is likely to be the next frontier. I want Apple to get in there so we aren't stuck with Apple being the Android (or even Windows Phone if it's more than a couple years) of XR and unable to get the best devs and the best apps.. 

I firmly do not believe that closed-off, Ready Player One-type introversion has much long term interest to Apple or indeed to most people. It’s far too debilitating to the human experience.

Augmented reality I think does pose a much greater interest to Apple, not only for the more general populous, but to many industry vertices that would benefit from having access to information while remaining engaged in the real world.

So while Apple may release a VR headset, it will, I think, be a large test platform for their AR plans.

Oh yes, if they weren’t rummaging around deep up your sphincter enough, give them your vitals. Yeah…..!

but good luck nonetheless….

StrangeDays said:

thrang said:

What they need to fix is the bug when setting an Hompod as a Default Speaker for an Apple TV - when "paired" this way, the HomePod "Hey Siri" is, while not completely disabled, largely useless (you cannot "Hey Sir" requests for Music and Podcast playbacks, though oddly it will still give you the weather or control Home devices)

While I understand there may be a few scenarios where playback control priority can be a little challenging to assume programmatically, an easy scenario to fix is to allow HomePod Siri full functionality if the associated Apple TV is asleep. Right now, if the AppleTV is asleep and I ask that HomePod to play something, you simply get a "Sorry, I'm having a problem connecting to Apple Music " or something like that.

If I start playback on another HomePod, and they ask it to also play on the problem child, it works. Same for initiating on the phone - 

So the control logic is a bit half-assed right now...

I’ve noticed odd things like this before (I use my HP pair as default speakers for ATV). I’ve submitted bugs...it would be nice if they can get it sorted out. 

I got a senior Apple support specialist last week on the phone, who acknowledges this is as designed, though engineers are working on improvement (he agreed it is poor implementation).

Apparently the issue arose as part of the solution in developing the Home Theater Audio option in ATV for system-wide output. So it appears Apple "knows" it's an issue, but aren't publicly acknowledging it.

If you happen to have a stereo HomePod pair set as default to an Apple TV, Siri will work - this is because only one of the two speakers is "captured" by the ATV in Default Output mode - the second speaker receives the other channel ATV audio via a wireless connection between the two Homepods. Thus, the "non-captured" speaker in the pair is free to listen to Siri commands in the room, will will play back requests in stereo (I have a stereo pair in another room, and discovered this by chance, and it was later confirmed by Apple)

There are inconsistencies in logic and behavior in several ways as it currently stands. Its definitely improved over the past year or so, but not allowing Siri playback to a HomePod speaker paired with a ATV (especially when not playing content or asleep), is a very weird miss.