george kaplan

I can’t imagine a reality where HomePod mini matches Echo Dot for price point, even double the price if Apple prioritizes (A) sound quality, and (B) build quality and security.

I would be shocked if Amazon made a penny on a $40 Dot (maybe now, after years of amortizing costs), and the constant supply of “refurbished” Dots indicates and unending stream of DOAs exchanged though Amazon and refurbished.

We had a Dot, fairly early on, an impulse buy at Best Buy for $25. It was clearly a Trojan Horse to get Alexa into the household and create a ubiquity with other IoT appliances. It began to creep me out that it was always listening—and we experienced the incredibly spooky spontaneous “laughing” from Echo, in a quiet room with no input—so we turned off the mic, and that defeated the purpose of having the Dot in the first place. I lost faith in Amazon’s ability to put my privacy and security over its need to monetize everything it can see.

HomePod has been far from perfect, but the sound quality is excellent in my 2000s-era home (Great Room design with living space and open kitchen in one room, hard surfaces throughout). The far-reach mics pick up our requests from the next room or over ridiculously loud music. Most importantly, Mrs Kaplan can use it, and she tells me constantly she wants her next phone to be a Jitterbug because she gets burned out on tech. I have rudimentary HomeKit tools, and she can turn lights off and on and feel like a boss.

ralphie said:

The Apple TV remote was the #1 reason I switched to Roku. No regrets.

We have both. The problem with Roku is the seriously ugly interface which is more or less required for the apps. Also the response time is much slower than the ATV 4K. Navigating the ATV is a relative pleasure vs the Roku.

I believe that 30 years from now, business schools will teach the history of the launch of HBO Max as a cautionary tale of how not to introduce a new product into a market which already features more than one of your current products, much as the saga of “New Coke” is taught today.

AT&T appears to be singularly inept in its launches of other products and services lately (i.e., DirecTV Now, which shed some of its channels AND became more expensive at the same time, then became AT&T Now—whether the mediocre video quality and negligible reliability of DirecTV Now was fixed in the renaming to AT&T Now, I can’t say).

Subscribers who paid HBO $15/mo for Now, get MAX instead, which has much more content in addition to the same relationship to current HBO shows as Now had. But if you subscribe for HBO itself through a cable provider for that same $15/mo, you get the rebranded old Go as before for free, but no access to the Max breadth of content—that will cost *another* $15/mo, thank you.

The only advantage to having HBO subscriptions through cable providers is the “live” schedule—John Oliver appears 11pm ET on HBO, but not for hours later on Max/Now. Otherwise, AT&T has built a case to have their 3rd party subscribers drop their HBO account through Charter/Comcast/Cox/etc, and take a sub with Max instead. While that figures to enrich AT&T since no fee would be paid to the cable company for their royalty on the subscription, it also figures to erode the decades-long relationships HBO has had with these signal providers.

The whole time, AT&T did an absolutely abysmal job of explaining features/benefits to both current and prospective customers. They danced around the “how much will it cost?” question for months, and then failed to be clear on “do I get this if I subscribe to HBO already?” question. They believe they will have a massive subscriber base by the time 2024 rolls around, but they will need much more compelling original programming that than which was part of the launch.

fastasleep said:

What? This makes zero sense. The HBO NOW app literally just turned into HBO Max overnight. I didn't have to do anything. There is no action needed and I don't know what they're referring to with this "HBO Now will now be rebranded as HBO moving forward" nonsense — that didn't happen. What's going on here?

It remains a massive clusterf.

If you had HBO Now on your Apple TV or other Apple device, it seamlessly turned into HBO Max on the launch of the latter. But other subscribers (Like those with Roku) didn’t get the app immediately due to financial disagreements between the streaming company and HBO. Those issues may resolve themselves, but in the meantime those customers may have to start an account with HBO Max and then terminate their account with Now.