WWDC: Apple Enters Internet of Things Market with HomePod
The device boasts 'incredible acoustic properties' to become the iPod of home speakers.
Apple hopes to do to home speakers what the iPod did to music via the HomePod, a speaker that has "incredible acoustic properties" per the Apple impresarios who debuted it at today's WWDC.
Positioned as a competitor to the Amazon Echo, the HomePod prioritizes music usage. It runs on an Apple A8 and houses a custom woofer, as well as real-time acoustic modeling and multi-channel echo cancellation. What that means is HomePod will optimize audio based on where you put it.
HomePod will recognize voice commands and play any songs you've got stored in Apple Music. If you like the song that just played and want to listen to more tunes in that vein, just say "I like this song" or "Play more songs like that." HomePod responds to other questions Apple users have been asking Siri for years, such as requests for the weather.
The device will sync up with HomeKit-friendly devices, so you'll be able to tell it to control components of your home such as air conditioning and garage doors. Not coincidentally, Apple also announced AirPlay 2, which you'll be able to use to pair up speakers and play music in different rooms of your house.
HomePod will be listed for $349.
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replyDavid Craddock posted a new article, WWDC: Apple HomePod 'Will Reinvent Music in Our Homes'
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... Nope.
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I doubt it'll work as seamlessly with multiple music services but as far as actual simplicity and ease of use I don't know why you'd doubt Apple here, their brand is built on being the best at that. Look at the AirPods for a recent example of the degree to which their solution comes out simpler and easier than anyone else's similar option.
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Have you used Sonos? That's what makes me doubt it, Apple is more competent than most, but Sonos for what it does blows everything else I've ever tried out of the water. Everyone who comes over is amazed at how simple it is, how easily they can take control of my system and play their own music in whatever room they want, group and ungroup rooms, create stereo pairs etc.
I only doubt it because I'm amazed at what Sonos has achieved, so I wouldn't expect anyone to do it as well, even Apple.
I honestly hope they do though, because competition is good.-
No I haven't. I don't doubt that it's well done. But Apple is famous for going a step beyond everyone else once they apply their vertically integrated solutions to a space, like the AirPods vs the best wireless headphones from someone else.
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If you just blindly group all failures together then you won't do a very good job predicting the future.
Ping was an obvious failure from the moment it was announced. Apple has/had no experience in social or services. Apple failing to sell an overpriced Mac at the height of Windows' dominance does not seem like an instructive comparison either. Apple Music also falls into the services category that they're bad at along with being hamstrung by a decade+ of iTunes/Music app legacy.
That's why I focused on a recent and similar example with AirPods. A category that had premium players delivering decent results and then Apple came in with their vertically integrated solution and significantly improved the experience even on axis people didn't expect (Bluetooth pairing). It promptly garnered Apple's cliche "magical" in reviews. A home speaker integrated with the phone, watch and headphones is exactly in that wheelhouse, not Ping's.
If you want to pick a case for failure (for some definition of failure) it'd be easier to criticize it for Siri not being good enough vs the competition and that turning out to be more important as a differentiator than sound quality (even though for now Apple is clearing positioning it as a speaker more than an assistant). But then that doesn't make Sonos position vs the Echo and Google Home sound good either. Especially given the difficulty 3rd parties have had interesting other's assistants.-
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no I just don't think "Ping was bad so this could be too" is any kind of reason to predict failure. I offered an example of what is a believable argument for failure. There are others too.
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Man, if the HomePod has Apple's ease of use it'll be hard to beat.
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so far, its locked to the apple ecosystem. what if someone has an android phone? or wants to control it from their computer? or a friend comes over and you want them to seemlessly connect? remember folks, apple had a speaker before. It was cancelled within it's first year. Not everything they do is a home run. Sonos is fucking amazing today - and Apple has a long way to go to get there.
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no one is confused about Apple's ecosystem plays. The entire pitch is that if you go all in you get a better experience than the more open system. That's the trade off you make.
Consider the future where your friend comes over with an Android phone. What do they want to do with your sound system exactly? Gone are the days where their local music collection is important. You're both using a streaming music service with essentially the same catalogs. So when your friend says "you gotta hear this song" all they do is say "Hey Siri play blah". You control it with your phone or your voice or your Mac or your watch and it works better than the alternative (compare iMessage on MacOS vs Android SMS sync on Windows). Sonos should be much more concerned that they're a GPS company in 2002 than Apple should be worried about a product with a ceiling likely in the 10s of millions unit near term not meeting expectations.-
Hmm, the "more open system", I dunno, but Google has Chromecast capability on pretty much all new TV's, so anyone with any kind of device that supports that can just pew pew pew hand off the stream to the built-in Chromecast functionality or just cast their device right on up there (or with Miracast, which is part of WiFi) like magic boom boom swish boom
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Echo won't sound as good, though
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I liek to believe that Steve Jobs is still alive hanging out with Tupac and is consulting Tim Cook via carrier pigeon
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all the impressions so far is the HomePod sounds like high end audio gear and better than the Sonos 3
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Lol
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which is of course just to say other such devices without those limitations (alexa & home) are obviously going to sell better, and potentially draw users to those services for simplicity/portability
admittedly, theyre probably (hopefully?) going to add support for those sooner rather than later.
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Maps is competent but simply still not close to Google maps
https://www.justinobeirne.com/a-year-of-google-maps-and-apple-maps/
And that doesn't even cover stuff like understanding lanes and such when showing directions
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Apple just loves lying, it's a part of their culture, because they knows it gets them the consumers they want with the money they need
https://www.geek.com/apple/apple-fastest-computer-in-the-world-ad-pulled-by-bbb-555997/
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