HomePod mini works with your iPhone for requests like hearing your messages or notes, so they are completed on device without revealing that information to Apple.
This is the big differentiating feature, along with the seamless integration within the rest of Apple's product line.
EDIT: HomePod does this too but it was not at a price point nor size that competed with other assistants.
I don't even really use any other Apple products, and have never really been particularly comfortable with smart assistants, but I have to say that the steps that they've taken here with E2E, non-AppleID-tied identifiers, on-device computation, and of course the really good price point have got me seriously considering a purchase from them for the first time in a long time.
For my family members that already have Apple products for their tablet, phone, etc., but have either Amazon Echo or Google Home smart assistants, I'm definitely looking that these as an option for holiday presents.
I'm pretty deep into the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, Watch, iPad, MBP), but when it comes to smart speakers, I've always used a combination of Echo and Alexa-compatible Sonos devices.
The Alexa devices have always bothered me. Not just because of the baseline privacy concerns, but because it seems so damn easy to activate the trigger word on accident. The absolute worst part being a false positive activation of my Sonos system while watching a movie/show. When this happens (and it happens a lot), the audio volume of the show is lowered significantly to allow Alexa to hear the rest of the command.
Pause the show, wait til "she" stops listening, rewind the show very slightly because I missed whatever was just said due to the volume shift, resume the video, instantly pause again at the moment she was originally triggered until she stops listening, resume the show, this time without having to rewind since I paused soon enough not to miss any dialog.
Maddening.
And the fact that all of these false positives get sent straight to Amazon doesn't make me feel great.
I didn't need a HomePod for its audio quality since I already have great quality with the Sonos system, and couldn't justify the original HomePod's price as a command/control-focused smart speaker with a home already filled with Alexa devices.
All of that to say, HomePod mini is perfect for me.
I can throw out my Echos, disable Alexa on the Sonos system, and scatter a couple of Minis to replace the Echos.
I mean, if you binge The Witcher TV series you’ll probably trigger your apple voice products a lot. It’s the unfortunate consequence of choosing real names for virtual assistants. Only google home is really immune to this.
I know exactly what you mean, but if you say "cancel", it will shut it off faster. It is still a big annoyance which I hope gets fixed at some point in the future.
I suspect that the device is constantly recording the audio in your room, and sending that to Amazon’s servers in the cloud. Because I doubt that the little puck has enough processing power inside it to handle speech recognition.
This allows Amazon the ability to continually upgrade their servers, without the need to upgrade the puck.
And only when the server detects it’s prompt, “Alexa”, will it send a response back to the puck. This is how the little device appears to be so responsive.
And not surprisingly, this bit of functionality is not marketed by Amazon. After all, who the hell in their right mind, would want to be constantly monitored, and have all their private conversations at home be secretly recorded by Amazon.
In fact, I suspect that all the voice assistant devices from other manufacturers, like Google, are doing exactly this.
re: on-device computation, you'll note from the presentation that they said that no data is sent to Apple _until you say "Hey Siri"_. They're still doing transcription in the cloud which requires sending your voice for Apple to process and store.
I have no issues personally with using cloud services like this but they very much used weasley language in the presentation and website to obscure the fact that Apple's cloud absolutely will get access to your unencrypted raw utterances following their wakeword detection, and cause people to conclude that that wasn't happening.
As a side-note I find it a bit surprising that with all the history Apple has with Siri and the meaningfully powerful on-device ML acceleration that they still can't download and run a recognition model on-device that wouldn't require streaming your speech to Apple's servers...
They don’t tie your request to your Apple ID and you can opt out of any recording being stored. Presumably this would make it impossible for a government body to subpoena your recordings, which as we’ve seen with Alexa is entirely possible.
Pretty sure they do transcribe locally and only send text to cloud to interpret it. So still not private, but no audio is sent (unless for special cases).
Meanwhile a friend of mine flat refused to even consider buying any such device, from any vendor, because he's concerned about being spied on.
He cited several real incidents where vendors like Amazon had been caught listening in and sending audio clips to random subcontractors for analysis.
Several huge companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon have made it their business to maximally violate the privacy of the general public.
This rubs off on companies like Apple that treat customer privacy seriously.
The "free market" doesn't stop rampant abuse, and doesn't stop damage to unlucky bystanders. If everyone cheats, then the incentive will be to cheat also. If everyone violates privacy, then there will be little to no benefit in not also violating privacy. Certainly not if consumers simply won't believe you.
It's the same logic as: "Every politician is corrupt, so why should I vote for you Mr Honest Guy? You must be corrupt also! I'd rather vote for Mr Clearly On the Take, I like the way he smiles".
Everyone is cheating (they’re adtech companies) but Apple isn’t. Apple doesn’t have to cheat. They just charge it upfront, sure Siri won’t ever catch up because of the lack of data (knowledge graph like Google), but I’m fine with a crappy Siri than evil smart Alexa.
there's no way to delete photos from icloud immediately and I was also googling a bit and there's some article from infosec company and they were able to recover deleted photos few months after they should be deleted forever (I was googling about how to delete those photos immediately).
now, I don't have anything useful there but it pissed me off a lot and I'm definitely not going to use devices from one company, no matter what they say I'm missing
That is a naive (and demonstrably false) assertion.
Apple's privacy stance is really just marketing, like "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."
You don't have to use an apple device for more than a minute to realize this.
For example, you cannot use a new apple iphone without activating it with apple.
In the first screen or two, you are presented with their privacy policy, with is literally hundreds of pages long.
The rest of the setup is full of dark patterns, and even though it is GDPR compliant, it is very hard not to come out of the process without signing in or allowing them access to your data.
I think all of this comes from "business common sense" which is based on fear. They want data (and control) because it is an easier and more guaranteed way to make and sell things.
The only way out of this (for all of us) is actually robust competition by someone who will do it right and not collect data in the first place. (hint: it will help if they use rounded corners, gradients and transparency)
I’m not convinced. Fundamentally, Apple is a services and a hardware company. They have no business in advertisement. Do you follow Stratechery (Ben Thompson)? He writes about Apple’s privacy fundamentalism here (midway through the post): https://stratechery.com/2019/privacy-fundamentalism/
Aside from the fact that Apple DOES do advertising, you have to understand that even outside this - your data is valuable to apple and they take steps to keep it turned on. In some cases they are contractually obligated to collect the data.
Here's the thing -- by circumstance they are like arms dealers stuck selling arms to both sides. They must entice app developers to develop for their platform, and they must also entice consumers to buy their products.
Personally I think if apple was concerned about privacy, they would let you see what your phone is doing, and let you firewall your phone (one that could block apple traffic).
Apple certainly does have an advertising platform for the App Store and Apple News. They describe their privacy stance here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223
Maybe this is better in practice than other ad platforms, but they explicitly say that they use information about you to serve you targeted ads such as: location, age, gender, purchases from the App Store, what news you read, etc etc.
>Meanwhile a friend of mine flat refused to even consider buying any such device, from any vendor, because he's concerned about being spied on.
I solved this problem for my HomePod by denying it outgoing internet access on my router. Bonjour-based AirPlay support works great, and if Siri somehow became activated by accident despite my disabling it on the device, nothing could be sent to Apple.
How is it different though? Doesn't Siri on your phone send your recording to its backend to figure out what you need anyways? So it's just an extra step?
I think the difference stated above, was that for messaging, calls and other phone related activities it’s not sent. I’m not sure you can say the same for Google.
On Pixel 4, 4a and 5, assistant does most queries on devices with the Neural processor. I wouldn't be surprised if they bring that capability to speakers too eventually. Though that increases the price of course. HomePod Mini is equivalent to Google Mini or Echo Dot but costs 3x the price. Maybe it's all the Apple Tax but my guess is that they had to put a pretty strong processor to do NLP on-device.
My interpretation of that was your voice query is still sent to Apple and interpreted as whatever text/command, but the contents of the text message are not pulled from iCloud, instead they are pulled from within your local network directly from your iPhone. So all of your requests still do get processed in the cloud on Apple servers, but they don’t wind up with copies of the content of your messages (unless of course you enable iCloud back ups or iMessage cloud sync). This is definitely an improvement versus how things work on the Google side, but it’s a far cry from nothing at all getting sent to Apple.
The problem is that Google's voice recognition results in false positives. I've seen a few recordings on my Google privacy page with nothing but ambient noise from my apartment.
Well to my knowledge, Apple doesn't even have a similar page; That instills my confidence in Google rather than Apple, as I know for sure Apple can't be foolproof with false positives
A key difference is that Siri doesn’t use personal identifiers - I.e. it does send the recording for interpretation, but it isn’t associated with your user account.
Yeah, that'll be a differentiator for me. We have a few Echo Dots, which are pretty neat devices, but I'm not a huge fan of providing audio to Amazon and Google. Also, my neighbor was getting swatted and narrowed it down to his Echo Dots.
Yes, the police showed up at his door a couple times saying somebody called 911. He disconnected everything from his network, no more visits from the police. He plugged devices back in one at a time, leaving a day or so between devices. Within an hour of plugging in the Echo devices, the police were back. He unplugged the Echo devices, no issues since.
I meeeaaannn come on, I feel like this person is withholding some important details about why the police show up at their door. This is just too ridiculous to be real.
I find it odd that you say you're not a huge fan of providing audio to Amazon, yet have bought a few devices that actually do that and then have proceeded to put them into your home...?
For someone who isn't a fan of providing audio, you seem to have willfully done so.
The OP could not be a huge fan of sending the audio, but find the utility of the devices worth it for now. Very little in life is binary, and instead we make these sorts of trade offs every day.
I ordered two today as they were 20 €/each during Prime Day. I plan on using them as speakers mostly, so I'll have a look at where they talk to and maybe drop that connection...
I don't think Apple understands what 'world class' assistant means.
I've tried their intercom feature on an iPhone using Hey Siri. The message doesn't get recorded if you don't speak english. It works fine if you press and hold side button tho (my preferred way to use Siri anyway).
I would probably consider Homepod or Homepod mini if they've got batteries and bluetooth. Heck they could've even used MagSafe chargers for them. Now I've got two Soundcore Motion+ that got amazing hifi sound.
I'm a big apple fan, got a homepod last christmas, and it's the worst apple product that I've ever owned. Truly disappointing. Siri fails to recognize commands that work great on alexa or google, the features it does have often fail (if I transfer a podcast from playing on my phone to play on the homepod, my phone often fails to sync with the location of my homepod).
There's no way I will buy one of these until I hear from multiple people I know that they have one and it's truly amazing.
My non-tech partner 100% agrees. “Love it” is a term that I’ve heard.
I do have a few (literally a few) custom shortcuts for weird things that it just couldn’t figure out, like playing specifically our local radio station, but other than that it’s amazing.
“Hey Siri, play <whatever>” while we make dinner. “Hey Siri, turn it up!” Hey Siri good morning, turn the lights on, set a timer, she mostly does it all with aplomb.
If this one broke I’d have another within half an hour. I might get the Mini just to put in another room and mess about.
Now, caveat: I’ve never used Alexa or Google. I have no doubt that their voice assistant stuff would be better, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let one of those things listen to me at home. I just don’t trust them at all.
I'm always pretty surprised by the disparity, I wonder if its an accent thing. Quite frequently we use our HomePod from the other room since they were too pricey (before today) to put in each room. I cant think of a time where its had an issue with us giving it commands even when we're hollering from the adjacent room.
It probably is - I live in London with a spectrum of housemates from about the place and the needed "Alexa voice" is basically RP if you want it to work at all.
Siri has gotten much better for me. It's actually useful now. With my Airpod Pros I can reliably respond to texts using my voice. Music commands are also much better.
I'm not sure if I have just adapted my commands to ones that work, if Siri is improving, or it's both.
I must be getting old because playing an audio track, looking up some information or changing the volume seems a first world "problem" and is still incredibly easy just by using the device that is performing the task, eg. playing music. Back in the day, using my CD player or cassette player didn't seem like hard work.
The gulf between the "issues" that these devices solve and real problems in the world (starvation, war, death by covid) has never been wider.
I honestly am happy that they're useful for people but they feel like devices looking for a real purpose. I know someone with 70+ "smart" lightbulbs and cameras and devices all over his house and I do not understand how turning the light on or off can be considered too difficult for him to do.
I think reading through this thread confirms it! Didn't mean to target your comment in general but this is as far as I've got reading through this thread.
Like you, I wouldn't trust the Google or Amazon devices at all!
I've been a homeowner for nearly a decade now and I have to say I sympathize with you, even if for slightly different reasons, mainly the "hassle" factor. I see most of these "smart" things as just one more thing that can break.
Sure it may take a bit longer for me to initially run some wire for speakers (or cost more on a new home build), but once it's set up it is one-and-done. My stereo receivers are a little bulky, but they hide in a corner and the last forever and I don't need to debug their internet connection when I change my Wi-Fi password.
In engineering we talk about building solutions that are as simple as possible, and no simpler. Light switches and door locks are the epitome of this; adding batteries and wireless communication yields a "wow" factor at first, but I cringe at the idea of the numerous ways these can all fail now! I have enough to deal with just keeping up with maintenance on the simple stuff. I'll keep my nightly routine of manually turning off lights and locking doors, thank you.
Not to mention the fact that all of this is changing so fast. Are my HomeKit compatible devices even going to work with whatever phone/speaker/tv setup I have 10 years from now? Am I going to have to pull out all my light switches then? You know what's compatible with the human finger I expect to see at the end of my hand in 10 years? A normal freaking light switch.
I expect that by the time my kids are grown up everything will have settled on a common standard and "smart" devices will be a boring commodity product made by boring brands like GE on my boring Home Depot shelf. At that point I'll probably consider putting it in the wall. Right now I see 50 different one-off Chinese brands racing to the bottom competing with $100 top-of-the-line latest-and-greatest Apple techs and it's all just not worth the effort.
Turning off one light is not hard. Walking through the house in the evening to make sure the kids didn't leave lights on (and to lock up the various doors, and set the thermostat back, etc) is annoying. Being able to speak a single voice command to do all that on my way upstairs is much more convenient. Could I still do it by going to a different room? Absolutely. Is it nicer to not have to do that? Definitely.
Why did you have a CD player if cassettes worked for your? Was rewinding the cassette really too much trouble? Kids these days...
Audio fidelity! CDs were better than cassettes, even the later metal coated tape! CDs had no easily-discernable hiss for the most part (although a few early tape to CD transmissions were very hissy). Having said that, cassetes were far more robust and I regret getting rid of my Walkman with Bass Boost, that's for sure.
So? I'm sure you could understand the words just fine on cassette. Wanting to hear a bit less hiss in your recreational music listening seems like a pretty "first world problem" to me...
A sign of getting old indeed: when the technology at stage `n` is surely good enough and you see no reason for `n+1`. ;-)
You also set up a nice straw man there. Nobody’s saying that these things are “solving problems”. They’re just cool new technology. Being able to ask for an album while I’m chopping the vegetables for dinner is cool. Why not?
For me, asking Siri on my iPhone 11 Pro to play music from Spotify is always an adventure. Last it played me Spanish female singers, and before that I got acquainted with Japanese jazz! Then there's the 20% of times it freezes for around 20 seconds before replying, and the other 20% of time it just says "there's an error, please retry".
The fact that you can’t specify a default music app on iOS also bothers me quite a bit. On Android, assistant knew what app to use so I could just ask it to play something and not have to specify “on Spotify “. Of course this problem extends to loads of other apps on iOS.
Maybe i had low expectations, but i was impressed with homepod siri's understanding and how much it could do. I don't know why Apple doesn't just publish a list of all the commands. I documented what i found if anyone is interested:
I don't own one, but I visited a friend who had gotten one. He was excited to show it off. It was embarrassing. It played the wrong song. He asked it to increase the volume, which it did on the second attempt, but then it was too loud to hear him give the command to decrease the volume. He tried stopping it with his phone and couldn't. Ended up having to press a button on the thing (I think? Or he unplugged it). Quite literally the worst possible demo.
I don’t own one personally, but I use one at the office daily. They sound incredible. I have some google smart speakers and they’re pretty underwhelming in terms of sound. The voice assistant is excellent, though.
I’d much prefer the sound of the HomePod but it’s hard to justify the expense when I have something that works fine. If I could do it over, I’d absolutely spend way more for the better audio experience. While I use the assistant for things apart from music, music is still more than 99% of what comes out of that thing.
Because Apple is making privacy a key differentiator across their entire product line. How private they actually are is a different matter, but certainly they talk a lot about how the data that is sent to their servers doesn't include IDs and can't be tracked back to you, even if it does get stored.
I listen to music with mine and the sound is very good. Tried it with a friends Echo and... well it did play music but the sound was like a cheap radio.
I’ve never even heard of a HomePod bricking itself, nor does it sound plausible that Apple would charge to fix a device they bricked themselves, especially at $1 less than the price of a new device. I feel like you’re omitting something here.
Did Apple demand that people pay the out-of-warranty repair cost price on HomePods bricked by this update? Because I feel like that would have been a PR disaster that would have been newsworthy. But all I can find right now is a reference regarding the 13.2.1 update saying some users have “arranged replacement devices” with Apple after contacting support.
I have a whole army of Google Homes, and not one has bricked or had any problems. However, at their price point (bought the Home for $100, Home Minis were mostly free or $20) I wouldn't mind shelling out for a replacement. Considering the starting price of the HomePod, it's nuts that Apple would charge that much to fix (for something that was their issue no less).
That also does not sound typical of Apple customer care. They are generally very helpful and will often not charge for some issues, particularly if the device was actually bricked due to an update. They would likely replace a device for that kind of thing. I’m not convinced that we have the full story here.
It's pretty good, obviously not as good as high end speakers, but for the price (I got mine for £200) it's really good value and effortless to use. Main feature is it can adjust to any room or place you put it.
I find it bit bass heavy, though I prefer more neutral sound.
I bought it just for listening of music while I work and I'm very happy with it. I want to get another one to pair them into stereo setup.
So here is the thing I struggle with. I have a NAS. On it is my media (music, videos, photos) collection. I do not have a subscription to Apple Music, or the reset of the streaming services and I not want one. So how do I play my own music collection with this?
Right now to do this I have an AppleTV on every TV. I have an app on the AppleTV called MrMC which is basically a paid for port of Kodi for the AppleTV. The MrMC app can mount the NFS file share and play my music just fine. The AppleTV is plugged into and HDMI splitter that strips audio and outputs it to an amp which goes to my speakers. This just works, and I can remote control it with my an app on my iPhone.
Given that the HomePod will not be able to access my music collection, it is useless.
I would be happy with the HomePod being able to steam music from an open Music app on a Mac somewhere. I have enough spare Macs that it would be simple to just run Music on it (which mounts the network share.) But of course, I would be wasting power.
Oh well.
It would also be really nice if the AppleTV would just support SMB again.
NAS -> Plex -> Nest Audio (or other Google speakers) would achieve this. If your NAS doesn't support Plex, you could easily run it on a Raspberry Pi if it's just for music.
You'd have to look at alternatives for the media server (Plex) if you want to use a Homepod though .. I'm pretty sure Plex doesn't support AirPlay.
If it's just wireless audio you're after and not a "smart speaker" then there's some not-too-tricky ways to do this in the DIY space. snapcast for instance supports AirPlay and might integrate nicely into your current setup: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast
I have nice speakers I don't want to change. I used to control spotify and soundcloud through them using chromecast audio which is discontinued and the second one I bought off ebay doesn't work. I am open to playing MP3s off my NAS. I would even consider bluetooth since I rarely fiddle with the playlist.
What is the best way to remote control a device that is wired to my mixer (XLR or 1/4 in or 1/8in jack)
Did you click my snapcast link? It natively supports Spotify connect and Airplay, so you'd connect your mixer to the Pi's 3.5mm jack (or use a supported DAC).
You can also fashion a Chromecast audio out of a normal (video) Chromecast and an HDMI->audio adapter if you're looking to preserve the same experience.
There's a project called HomeBridge that lets other wifi/smart devices be seen on HomeKit and then can be controlled. Lots of user created plugins for a variety of things
Thanks for mentioning this. I've been using a HomePod/HomeKit for a while already, but was curious if there was a way I could get my cheapo IP cameras' feeds into the Home app. I was using Zoneminder, but that was kind of overkill and a pain to use for my use case.
After seeing your comment I setup HomeBridge and the homebridge-camera-ffmpeg plugin in about 10 minutes, and now I've got what I wanted. Thanks!
I also hooked my CCTV through homebridge recently with the aformentioned plugins ... it was a bonus, because with IFTTT effectively going payware, I needed to move my automation somewhere else
The "big" HomePods do support Airplay, I would assume the HomePod mini does as well. But indeed, if you have AppleMusic or iTunes Match, they become more useful.
You can make it work with iTunes Match. It will upload all your music (it's not just filename or metadata matching, apparently it uses audio fingerprints).
Then you can play your own stuff without needing an Apple Music subscription.
It's $25/year.
I moved to Apple music a while ago, but iTunes Match worked great for me before that.
It has a limit of 100K tracks. I have 97,760 right now. I worked at a music store in HS & College so I managed to acquire quite a collection. At Christmas the employee discount basically reached 75% so if I even thought I might want one song, buying the album was a no-brain. At one point I had an 8-bay SCSI tower with CD-ROMs in it and wrote a script to rip all the CDs. It took a few weeks :) In the last few years I have started on the process of IDing things that where ripped at lower quality and re-ripping in as Apple Lossless.
You should look into Logitech Media Server (open source with community forks/support).
You can install it on your NAS, I have it on a synology.
It also supports syncing music with multiple devices at a fraction, if any, of sonos or similar costs.
There is a plethora of plugins available including an AirPlay bridge to stream to your Apple tv.
You can use the excellent iPeng app (paid but recommended) as a phone remote (and even a source with an IAP).
I use the LMS ecosystem to stream from my NAS to my linux workstation (using squeezelite), to my tv/speakers on an nvidia shield, to my phone via iPeng and to another chromecast.
The HomePod can act as audio out for any Mac/iOS device. The music app on Mac can also stream directly to HomePod. (Or you can send system audio to it as well)
Correct, but can I have Music open on a Mac with a shared library and then say to the HomePod "Play ZZY" will it be able to locate that on the share and play it? If I cannot talk to it and have it find the shared music then what is the point?
I have not looked at Infuse. Thanks, I am going to check it out.
As to your feature ask, I never looked...one sec....Title, Year, Date Added, Last Played, Rating, My Rating, MPAA Rating, Duration, Data Added.
I was using Kodi on Intel Sticks before this (Win10). I wanted to switch to the AppleTV because it is simpler and supports Netflix, Amazon, etc. as an app (Needed keyboard, mouse on PC). I do not want my TV connected to the internet all so using the build in apps was not an option.
You can, at least from any Airplay 2 supported device. Mac, iOS, just change the output setting. Audio will sync up with video as well. Stereo pair only works with iOS and iTunes on Mac. (Not system audio)
Can HomePods only play via Apple Music? How about using Plex and getting that to play thru whatever device you want?
Disclaimer: I don't use Plex for music or have any Apple smart home devices. Just trying to throw out an idea that maybe possible. I use Plex with my NAS for video content and stream it to all my devices.
The coolest part to me is that they're using the S5 watch SoC to power it. Pretty cool that Apple's various hardware teams can just grab a part off the shelf to use in a completely different class of device.
I'd love to see them reintroduce AirPort routers powered by an A-series chip.
I'd love to see them put AirPort tech inside their smart speakers. That's one great way to differentiate from Alexa devices. We're still running AirPorts at my house, though I know eventually they'll die and we'll have to find something else.
In the meantime, they're super convenient for having my Time Capsule back up my Mac, and for piping audio via an Airport Express to the speakers I use with my projector setup.
Oh yes that would be nice. A bunch of PoE HomePod minis with WiFi 6 would work great in my house to replace my 802.11ac UniFi setup.
I'm really dreaming big now, but some sort of AirPort central base station with SFP+ for my FTTH connection and 4xPoE to power and feed a bunch of HomePods would be brilliant.
Not so sure on PoE (great for technically inclined folks, not the general public, and if you're really set on PoE you could use a reverse injector to take power off the ethernet and break power/data out at the device) but it would be smashing if HomePods had WiFi mesh support (802.11k/v/r) and Apple used them to challenge Google Next Wifi and Amazon's Eero offerings (because the UX on Nest Wifi and Eero is so good, but I'd rather give my money to Apple).
802.11s is the mesh technology you would want. The others are, I think, for roaming devices (literally mobile radios). A bunch of access points already have this, though most all implement mesh in their own, proprietary standard.
You're right, thanks for the correction. The standards I listed are on the mobile devices for seamless roaming between access points, 802.11s is the mesh standard proper [1]. OpenWRT supports 802.11s [2], so I assume this protocol is trivial to support in wifi silicon.
It seems like with Apple, any piece of tech with exactly one use tends to wither away and die. Now that the processor for the Apple Watch is on another device, it may show up somewhere else. Since this is wall powered, I don't think that bodes well for my hope that they release an Apple Watch that is smaller or has longer battery life (smaller often means smaller battery).
It seems like they always bring a new SoC in under their last commoditized SoC. What's the next smallest thing for them to stuff a new SoC into? Airpods?
I'm having a hard time finding out which node it's on and the die area. The S5 is essentially a re-badged S4 which as far as I can tell is made on standard TSMC 7nm. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the BOM is dominated by the casing and speaker hardware. That chip has been in production for about 2 years now.
Display + restrictions on internals/construction due to size constraints will make up a large part of that cost as well. I'd imagine that the chip itself is a pretty small percentage of the price of an Apple Watch.
You mean like the MacBook team grabbed that T2 security chip and now instead of desoldering some miniature flash chip with a BIOS in it a MacBook can be owned by merely plugging something into the USB-C port that accesses its magic debug wires?
I was tempted, but my partner has an Android and I'm pretty sure these can't even function as a basic Bluetooth speaker for non-Apple devices, so unfortunately it's a no-go. Apple got this right with AirPods: special integration with other Apple devices, but basic functionality with everything. Hopefully they will with these too one day.
This exactly. Apple is consistently releasing products that I would absolutely buy if they didn't do everything they could to get a horizontal monopoly of microprocessor devices in my house.
Usually I can live with it; I don't see myself switching to Android anytime soon. But the story is different when it's a communal device for everyone in the household.
You're right about not being able to pair as a Bluetooth speaker, but there are some advantages of Airplay (if you're using an Apple device). No pairing required (just shows up as an output device), no wrangling of Bluetooth connections to switch devices.
Surprisingly, it also supports peer to peer play if you don't have a wifi connection.
Of course AirPlay is more streamlined, just like Google Cast is more streamlined. The point is to have a fallback, for the cases when you want to use your expensive device from outside of the golden path.
It doesn't look like the HomePod Mini would support Bluetooth devices as an audio source [1] (the older HomePod has the same issue), even though it lists Bluetooth 5.0 as a connectivity option.
Alas, it's actually using the U1 ultra-wideband chip for position finding. That means this only works on the iPhone 11 and above. My guess is that bluetooth signal strength just isn't accurate enough.
You can see that this documented [1] in a footnote [2].
If they could make these work in a wireless atmos setup seamlessly with the apple tv I'd buy like 14 of them and place all around my living room. Syncing video and audio in real-time wirelessly is really difficult apparently, there's a standard for it called WiSA but almost no adoption sadly. I'd love to cut down on wiring.
> Pick up an incoming call from your iPhone, listen to music on your Mac, or upgrade your TV experience by taking the sound from your Apple TV to the next level — they all connect to HomePod mini.
Apple's site is a bit contradictory on this. In another place it lists speaker features and it lists "Home theater with Apple TV 4K" as a feature of the full size HomePod but not the mini.
Home Theater uses the full size HomePod's to do 5.1/7.1/Dolby Atmos surround sound. It requires the spatial processing to allow for the surround sound experience.
The HomePod Mini can be used as a stereo pair, and connected to an Apple TV with no issues.
One feature I wish Apple would build into this would be a 3.5mm jack or optical audio out. I have a lot of very nice speakers already in my house, but no multi-room audio, or voice assistant. I know the echos can do this, but I don’t want them spying on me.
Every single amazon echo device has a 3.5mm jack. And chromecast audios are going for $90 on eBay. I just want a simple solution to stream to my old speakers that isn't bluetooth or Amazon. I would've 100% bought a homepod mini if it had an audio out.
My dad watches Craigslist for old Airport Expresses because he wants to replace their Chromecast Audio with something that can talk to Apple Music, but Apple bafflingly doesn't have any current AirPlay offerings to connect external speakers.
Hey, I have a fairly old Airport Express; the box says 2004. The physical "factory reset" button doesn't seem to work anymore, but it's in a ready-to-be-configured default state (I got it there by connecting it to a network via Ethernet). It would need the old version of Airport Utility, but I'm assuming your dad knows that already, if he's looking for the old ones.
The U1 ultra-wideband chip means the HomePod can be used a fixed reference point for general purpose indoor location finding! Would be great for AirTags, if those ever become a reality.
At the moment, the U1 is only be used for the nifty hold-your-iphone-close move, but I have no doubt Apple has other applications in mind. Ultra-wideband is amazing for its indoor high-resolution position finding. Down to the inch is possible. But the more reference points you have, the faster/more accurate it will be.
When used with the U1 chip also in your iPhone, having a HomePod mini around could enable Apple's forthcoming AirTags to be located more quickly/precisely. Or enable a better AR experience. They're basically GPS satellites for in-home position finding. (Ultra-wideband uses time-of-flight, just like GPS)
I’d really like to see a future where HomePod Minis with the U1 enable my phone to precisely track its own location as I move throughout the house, with automations as I go from room to room, or with songs following me between rooms, or letting me ask Siri for a precise location of my phone.
The U1 and the Homepod-Mini really will make this possible! It seems like you'd need more than one Homepod to easily triangulate position, but by leveraging the precise accelerometers on the phone and taking multiple distance measurements from the Homepod's U1 chip, that alone might be enough to give you pretty precise location.
A very limited version of this feature is used in AirDrop with U1 equipped iPhones. Just point your phone to the phone you are transferring to and it shows up in the AirDrop share sheet.
Was that actually implemented / tested? I remember hearing about it but I never saw anyone mention or test it in any reviews. Does it actually work well?
It does exist, and it works! But both phones need U1 chips, meaning iPhone 11s and above.
One thing that's cool about this is that iOS must be using the slight movements of the phone in your hand to help triangulate the other phone. Ultra-wideband position finding relies on time-of-flight, so from a single reference point you only know the precise distance something is from you, and not its direction. To get around, my guess is iOS is using the accelerometers in the phone to measure slight changes a phones position, and then using multiple ultra-wideband distance measurements from those different positions to triangulate the other phone.
Really cute :). I have a pair of Homepods which pretty much has replaced my stereo for me, as together they sound really impressive. And are very convenient to use. Most of the time, I use my iPhone to control them. Certainly will get one or two minis for the rooms I am not constantly in, but would like to have some music support.
One thing I don't get, why Apple doesn't push them more as computer speakers. Mojave still doesn't support them as a pair, and the latency is too big for normal speaker usage. Should be a relative easy sell with a new Mac, if macOS supported them as a proper pair with low latency.
I have the iPhone now and have always used MacBooks, but so far I have refused to buy other products from them because they insist in keeping the ecosystem so closed. No Spotify support is why I’m not buying this. I’ve had Spotify for years and I’m not looking to switch. And Siri, unfortunately for me it’s now a selling point. It struggles so much on my phone that I can’t bring myself to use it often enough to care about it.
They already announced earlier this year that they had a new program to integrate third-party music services. And in today’s event they specifically called out “services like Pandora and Amazon [Music]” as being available “in the coming months”. I don’t know whether Spotify is included, but I would hope so.
Isn’t that for suggesting songs based on search results, or triggering songs with Siri on your phone? That’s not the same thing as using third-party music providers on HomePod.
One of the interesting things is that on the specs page it says it supports “Thread”, which is a new wireless protocol championed for home automation tech, as an alternative to zig bee and Zwave. One thing I didn’t see was any mention of if it would support being a “Home Hub”, allowing for remote access to smart home stuff.
I think personally this is one of the biggest details that is being entirely overlooked. In past keynotes Apple has mentioned they are actively working with other companies on the new Project Connected Home Over IP working group[1], which according to the limited marketing material available, seems to indicate will at least partially operate over Thread.
Thread is not exactly new, July 2014[0], and it uses the same base standard as ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4), just using 6LoWPAN which is a low power personal aera network using IPv6.
That is an interesting reversal. You could also say that the SDK for Spotify is available [1], but HomePod is yet to take advantage of them. The Spotify SDK has been available for many, many years and is integrated into many devices already.
There is a long history of Apple changing the rules on Spotify [2]. Given Apple's focus on promoting their streaming services, I would not be surprised if Apple is intentionally trying to pressure Spotify into a narrow lane as far as integration options. They wouldn't want to cannibalize their own streaming ecosystem.
Apple historically has not shown much interest in integrating direct support for third-party services, even in spaces they aren't competing in. In the few instances it has, these integrations saw little maintenance and were eventually removed. This makes some amount of sense with how rocky third-party APIs can be[1][2]. Generally, it's easier for both ends when service providers write their own integration for a given platform.
As an aside, the timeline given by Spotify is somewhat disingenuous because it doesn't include any of the times that APIs were opened up and is missing significant details about why rejections happened — for instance, early watchOS rejections (as far as I recall) had to do with the lack of a power efficient streaming API in watchOS. Once Apple had a streaming solution that was fit for public consumption (internal/private APIs almost always aren't and cleaning them up takes time), they added it to watchOS.
Don't get me wrong, I think iOS would be better if it opened up a little, but Spotify is no saint and has a tendency to embellish the story.
Even if Apple didn't have a competitive offering to Spotify, it'd be a terrible idea to adopt a third party's standard/SDK that impacted such a core part of the ecosystem and UX as controlling and handing off audio. The reason people buy into ecosystems is so there's a single entity that is weighing and making decisions about what creates the best user experience, which necessarily means having control over the roadmap of standards and interfaces.
Even if we were designing the perfect tech ecosystem that was free of business or competitive constraints, it still wouldn't be a good idea to have an app developer, with their own motivations that may not be aligned to users, dictate SDKs and standards to ecosystems or platforms. It's a weird and unsustainable power dynamic that misaligns incentives. It'd only be viable if in the process the app developer opened the standard and shared control of its future.
As much as Spotify wants to be a platform, what they offer is just a service, and they're not positioned to be controlling such standards. I love Spotify and much prefer it to Apple Music, but what they're doing is choosing not to build features that their customers want on platforms their customers have chosen in order to gain leverage in the regulatory battle over the 30% cut. I respect the desire to have a more level playing field but their other complaints are disingenuous and are not in the best interest of their customers.
Apple has a position as a gatekeeper and is charging a toll, unjustifiably. It's disingenuous to say that other people submitting to Apple's tolls are not working in the long-term best interest of their customers.
Spotify is slow to implement features their customers want (see: Watch, HomePod, TV, Siri), which is not in their customers best interest. Other smaller services like Pandora seem to be able to do this [1], leading one to reasonably conclude Spotify is choosing not to.
This has nothing to do with the 30% cut, except that its likely Spotify is crippling themselves to make their regulatory case (similar to Epic's approach). See sibling comment [2] regarding Spotify's slant on their timeline post, in which they seem like they're entitled to certain things that the platform is not yet capable of (e.g. Watch apps in 2015 when the APIs were very crude).
Fast forward to 2020 when these issues have long since been sorted out and Spotify still lacks an offline Watch app. As a Spotify customer I'd love to be able to listen to music while on a run, but Spotify has decided this core use case of an extremely popular platform is not worth building.
250mm MAU really cuts the market for these devices. I won’t get one till they support Spotify so my house is filled with Echos and Google smart speakers. While all my TVs have Apple TV because it supports Spotify. They also need one with a screen for kitchen use to see recipes.
I wish there could be a better partnership between Apple and Spotify. I consider Spotify to be best in field for my music needs and a tighter integration would be a win-win for me as a consumer.
Just the other day:
> "Hey Siri, favorite this song on Spotify."
> "Sorry, Spotify hasn't added support for that." (paraphrased)
Exactly. Its a charade that's not in the best interest of customers of their service in order to get regulatory leverage on the 30% cut. I think people confuse the means (not support functionality that their customers want) with the ends (have a more level playing field against a competitor). I respect the ends they're trying to achieve but the means make me a dissatisfied customer.
One thing I don't quite understand about the HomeKit "ecosystem" is that there doesn't seem to be much of one...
I've looked on the Apple store, the local electronics store, but everything I would expect to see in a range of smart devices are very notably absent.
For example, I can't find a reasonably sized multi-port Apple HomeKit power board.
I can't find motion or person presence sensors.
In fact, just about the only products that seem to exist are "smart" light bulbs, but I don't see what's so smart about paying AUD 150 for a light bulb...
With the homebridge-people plugin, you can expose an occupancy sensor in Homekit, and trigger a scene when everyone leaves the house, for example. Or the inverse, when someone arrives home. This is more reliable than the built in Homekit location based triggers, because those work with GPS. You don’t always want your lights turning on just because you drove past your house. :)
Home kit works really nice when combined with something like Home Assistant. I can use any kind of smart device I want while still interacting through the clean native HomeKit interface
Wish I could get 4 or 5 of these and use as a home theater setup. It'd be significantly cheaper than a Sonos Arc, and presumably offer better surround (though worse low-frequency response).
Good point, this is a limitation for some. We have a projector setup that we plug iPhones/iPads/MacBooks into, so we can AirPlay the audio from those to the speakers at the front of the room. Currently we AirPlay to an Airport Express (c. 2009?) that sends sound out to speakers. This works around the challenge of having video going out at the back of the room (to the projector) and needing audio to come out at the front of the room.
This system doesn't work when we're playing Nintendo Switch, in which case the audio just comes out of the projector. For our purposes, that's fine; but I could see how someone playing Xbox would want that to be hooked into their audio system. I wonder if there would be some way to pipe audio through an old Mac mini to accomplish this. At that point it's probably worth just paying the Sonos tax.
But how would you get the audio from an HDMI cable into the HomePod? Does Apple TV offer some sort of HDMI passthrough? I don't know since I've never had one.
I guess with the lack of Dolby Atmos they would be more comparable to a Sonos Beam plus two rear speakers (e.g. Symfonisk) which can be bought for about $500. And that works with HDMI ARC for any input you might have on your TV, AirPlay, and every service that Sonos supports.
> If you want to take the amazing sound experience of HomePod mini even further, you can create a stereo pair. Two HomePod mini speakers paired in the same room create left and right channels for an immersive soundstage.
Fwiw, it does look like they are advertising stereo pairing as an out-of-the-box feature
The stereo pair feature was hobbled at release (only iTunes on MacOS, but from any app on iOS), but subsequent MacOS updates apparently solved this. But beware if you're running and older MacOS and don't want to update just to get stereo pairing!
Oddly enough this was the most exciting thing for me today.
I use a Google Home in my kitchen almost exclusively for hands-free timers and music control when cooking/cleaning. My Home got bricked by an update last month and was going to just forgo replacing it because I am getting tired of Google's diminishing support of their products and the privacy concerns.
My only concern is Siri is easily the worst assistant when compared to Google or Amazon. I just hope it is good enough to handle my music and timer requests.
I definitely agree with you that Siri is (currently) the worst assistant, but if it helps, it has consistently been just fine for me with music and timers.
Yeah I figure it should be able to accomplish that. I am sure there are people who use these home speakers for more complex tasks, but after the honeymoon period of owning it, my usage of the speakers basically broke down to:
1. Timers
2. Music
3. Asking about commute times
I agree that this is one of the more interesting things today (especially for folks with an iPhone 11 Pro, who aren't looking to upgrade).
There's already a way to use Siri skills to access OK, Google through your iPhone [1] without letting Google listen in on everything you say. It would be awesome if there were a way to do this from HomePods...
I haven't used Alexa, but Siri on HomePod is way behind Google Assistant in capabilities and recognition reliability. I use it moderately for setting timers, reminders, shopping list, controlling my HomeKit lights, and getting weather.
I'd judge it to be 80% reliable in picking up commands (but the way human memory works, it's likely much higher than that but the times it fails are more memorable)
That's true, unless you have privacy options enabled in your Google account. In which case your Google Home becomes a doorstop.
At least that was my experience before I gave away a gifted Google Home because it refused to let me proceed through setup without disabling a bunch of privacy settings across my entire Google account.
The sound quality is way beyond anything Google or Amazon offer.
If you have other Apple devices, it works just like Siri on your phone. I've got one in my kitchen and it can hear me anywhere in my 3 bedroom house. It's pretty impressive from an audio recognition standpoint.
Amazon and Google both have much better home assistants built in.
Have you tried the echo studio, probably not. If you are streaming music, I wonder if you could tell the different between the echo studio and the homepod in terms of price. They don't sound the same, but the quality is very good for those not looking for an audiophile setup. The studio is a lot of speaker for the money and offers better voice assistant. Apple made a nice thing in the home pod, but it isn't any special...yet
...with the additional downside that it's from Google, and Google projects and devices have a tendency to be abandoned pretty quickly whenever their interest turns to something else.
I mean they've been doing the physical incarnation of Google Assistant for a while now; it predates Homepod by more than a year. There's no arguing that Google is anything but capricious and loaded with privacy issues, but I think it's safe to assume at this point that they're not going to be dropping the hardware any time soon. The original Google Home is still getting feature updates and I doubt that's going to change even with a replacement coming out.
But I agree with you.. they're generally better about hardware support than software.
The "Nest" rebrand of the Google Home devices to me signifies that they're really investing in this consumer IoT product line. That and they're (arguably) the dominant player in the space.
Well, sure. Look at the Pixel phones: the Pixel 1 was released Oct 2016 and support ended Dec 2019, and the Pixel 2 was released Oct 2017 and they'll be dropping support this year after updating to Android 11.
Even with Nest specifically they dropped Works With Nest support last year, effectively killing off the many integrations that had been built since 2014 in favor of their newer Works with Google Assistant program.
IMO Google Assistant is still generally stronger in parsing my sentences, multi-command workflows (Siri doesn't have it), and not having all my devices wake up and respond at the same time.
This gets to a different philosophy of voice assistant computing between the companies.
Google (and Amazon) have significant cloud infrastructures. The sequence of wake -> audio clip -> cloud -> process -> command -> device --- that's how they do it.
Apple has taken a different route with a limited set of "domains" which have voice processing associated with them. These can be seen in https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit which has different apps register that they can handle different domains.
This means that Google (and Amazon) will have a stronger parsing of those sentences and commands for arbitrary queries. Siri, however, has a stronger integration with arbitrary commands that are part of an existing 'domain' being handled by an existing app.
The multiple device wake is an interesting problem (I've seen Alexa, when two devices both wake, verify that the correct one had the response). With Siri, I've seen multiple devices wake, but I haven't had multiple ones respond - I suspect there's some network traffic to decide which one has the best audio signal and ability to process the information... but that's my experience, I could very well be wrong there.
The thing is that this really goes to a difference in philosophy about how voice assistants work and integrate with different 3rd party applications.
One thing I'm waiting for with Siri is the ability to set the colors and brightness of my Hue lights at the same time. I have to "Hey Siri" twice to do what should be a single command.
Related, but if you want a non spying speaker (i.e a network connected speaker with no mic) - Sonos make a mic free version of their entry level speaker: One SL. It supports Apple Airplay 2 and two One SLs can be paired for studio sound.
However, it is more expensive than the HomePod mini, not wireless (needs to be plugged in), & although it integrates tightly with iOS it can’t be as smooth as HomePod probably is (I haven’t tried the HomePod myself).
As far as privacy however, I definitely understand people's worry about the mic, but honestly I think it distracts from really looking at the data tracking practices and how much data is collected even without a mic. See [0]
I'm curious about Apple's data tracking, but based on their marketing page alone it definitely feels like they've given it a big consideration and it's not an afterthought. I cannot say the same for Sonos unfortunately. (I assume Google/Alexa etc are worse, but I don't use those, and didn't dig into it).
I only housesat for someone with one so my experience is limited. My take was audio quality is WAY better, so if your primary desire is for a speaker it blows the Google/Amazon ones out of the water. BUT Siri is less useful so if you want more voice-control/smart assistant stuff it feels much more limited.
It's actually really decent at the use cases it's explicitly designed for, but completely falls apart if you have any edge cases. Bear in mind though, these are what Apple thinks of as edge cases like "What if I prefer Spotify over Apple Music," not necessarily a reasonable person's idea of an edge case.
I, personally, didn't notice much of a difference between the HomePod and the Sonos 5 though I know people who say the HomePod is markedly better. The Sonos, however, has a line-in and works with an Alexa unit if you have it (though, strangely, it's not built in). If not for the privacy sensitivity with Alexa I'd probably go for the Sonos, but the privacy and integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem kind of tips it back to Apple for me.
Why would you trust a company whose bottom line ultimately depends on spying on everyone, in a regulatory environment which demonstrated that breaching your own promises/privacy policy (in the case of Facebook and the 2FA phone numbers they promised not to use for ad targeting purposes) results in nothing more than a slap on the wrist?
Because the alternative (Apple) is a company that produces worse products that breach my privacy even more. You cannot get your location on an Apple device without also sending your location to Apple. You cannot install an app on your iOS device without telling Apple. If you want to make your own apps for your device, you have to deanonymize yourself even further with banking details.
If you want better privacy, don't continue to let companies who lie about providing better privacy get away with it. So far, I haven't seen Google deliberately lie about the privacy of their services. That should be the bare minimum that we expect.
Yeah Google deliberately lies. That's why they're being sued by the state of Arizona, for willfully deceiving users and tracking their locations even if they opted out. [1] They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways.
Apple, for its part, says "Apple doesn’t retain a history of what you’ve searched for or where you’ve been" and there's no reason to doubt it.
> They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways.
I would just apply Hanlon's razor here. It most likely was a bug or oversight, if it had been some malicious evil scheme, I would assume more care would have been taken so that people don't find out.
Now, coming to the question of why do they even store it for opted in users?
Aside from potential ad relevance, I think it is simply because they power a lot of their features with context and they get better with data.
For example, if you search cheesecake on Google, the answer likely will be either a recipe or a restaurant. A restaurant search will likely be helped by data about previous visits and current location. A recipe search will be helped by past search result clicks and again location.
Do they really need to store this to serve search results? I don't think so. DDG works without them, but then again DDG performs very poor for queries like this which can be helped with context.
Note: I don't know how any of this exactly works, so these are just my assumptions.
"Willfully misleads and deceives" is verbatim from the lawsuit. IANAL but that sounds like "deliberately lies" to me.
From the lawsuit: for years, Google has known that the user experience they designed misleads and deceives users. The evidence obtained from within Google—such as internal emails, presentations, and memos—is overwhelming in this regard
They knew that they were deceiving users, and liked it that way.
An example of of how Google uses this data: Google will track if you click an ad for Cheesecake Factory and later physically visit one. This allows them to charge higher rates for ads. This isn't a secret, they brag about that capability. It's why they use so many dark patterns to push users to enable location tracking.
Google deliberately lies, like when forcing you to enable location history to be able to store home or work addresses in Google Maps - there is no technical reason for this.
The GDPR consent prompt they recently implemented on Google & YouTube is not actually GDPR compliant and does not offer an easy way to opt-out.
I can go on and on. I'm not saying Apple is perfect (a lot of the points you raised are valid), but it's sure as hell better than a company whose entire bottom-line is based on stalking people.
Not defending them but is it forced? I remember being asked about it. I used to keep it off for a long time but keep it on now to keep track of places I visit.
> there is no technical reason for this.
I have seen them give you best time to leave from home/office for/after work based on developing traffic as notifications. Same for reminders of events in calendar with location context.
Also, just my assumption but they might be adding locality context to searches.
Primarily use mine as a speaker and HomeKit device. I have a couple light switches that I use with HomeKit and Siri works really well with control of that.
I also use it with Apple Music and from time to time as an AirPlay device. It also works really well for those purposes.
I don't typically use Siri for reading emails, text messages, or other things like that. I will ask it what the weather is as I walk out the door to determine whether I need to grab an umbrella or a hoodie or something. It also works well enough for that.
Homekit might limit you as far as hardware goes, but if you’re handy you can run a Home Assistant instance and connect Siri to just about anything: Z-wave sensors, Logitech Harmony Hub, non-HomeKit light bulbs, etc.
I have a homepod that I use exclusively for playing musing and it's quite good at that. It's definition of what's "disco" and isn't doesn't quite match mine, but...close enough.
If you're going for the HomePod (vs. the HomePod mini), buy it only if you have Apple Music or iTunes Match. It's really not worth it otherwise. I have a Google Home, Google Home mini, and an Echo Dot (got all of them for free except the HomePods).
Assistant wise, you'd get better results from Google Assistant/Alexa. Apple has been lagging and playing catchup (from not having multiple timers in the initial HomePod release to adding voice recognition last year when Google had it earlier). The answers are more limited like your iOS Siri (don't expect anything better). Even worse, it seems like HomePod's Siri backend is different than say an iPad's which generally means it's a generation behind. For instance, the HomePod doesn't really support continuous conversations/follow-up questions.
Siri is ok finding popular music, but if you ask it to play the "The A-List: K-Pop playlist" vs. "The A-List: Pop Music" for instance, it's a tossup on which it chooses dependent on the alignment of the planets. The same goes for musician names where if it kinda sounds like the more popular musician, it will tend to choose the more popular one. Furthermore, if you have a specific version of a song (say acoustic/live version), then the HomePod always tends to pick the most popular version of the song even if you say "acoustic" or any other hints.
There are "Shortcuts" on the HomePod. You can use it to add Todos to third party apps (if you don't want to use the Apple Reminders integration) or play a podcast from a third party player from your iPhone/iPad. Not as useful as Alexa skills and every now and then it takes some magical phrase to correctly activate them. The main problem with Siri beyond lacking knowledge is that Siri lacks consistency. While it's ambitious in letting you say anything versus the narrower "scripted keywords" that Alexa understands, if you say something one day that it perfectly understands and repeated it exactly a week later, you have no idea if Siri will still understand you. I read about this complaint before against Siri, but having experienced it more than a few times now, it is incredibly frustrating. And Siri sometimes (unintentionally) mocks you by repeating all the main parts of your request back to you correctly, but it does the wrong thing.
Hardware wise, the HomePod sounds better than a Google Home, Google Home mini, and Echo Dot. But of course, the others are cheaper. Two HomePods do sound better than one. Besides the better output, the mics are significantly more sensitive even in a loud environment. If you're putting the HomePod in a noisy kitchen or playing music loudly, then a HomePod can pick up your voice without you shouting at it.
The Apple TV integration has gotten better, but even with two HomePods, a relatively cheap home theater setup sounds better and can be used for all your TV content instead of just from your Apple devices. If you place the HomePods right next to the TV at roughly the same height, they sound good but if you move them too low/high or around the room, it does sound "off". The whole spatial two HomePod thing kinda does work for music in a room, but for TV content, it does not.
Really the other assistants are as good if not better than the HomePod, then the only distinguishing (non-privacy) feature is if you want a premium and pretty good way to listen to Apple Music. Maybe a few more music services which hopefully will be available soon. I don't regret buying the HomePods at all because I do like listening to music on them, but all of the assistant and "smart" tech is available on your iPhone if it can hear you.
You act like if this was some kind of bug that Apple discovered and fixed.
It was not. It was a conscious decision they made and would still be doing if this article was not published and there wasn't some controversy surrounding it.
Yeah good for them for not doing it anymore but the point is they did and that was a year ago not a lifetime.
Apple is only trying to sell you privacy since its looks good for them.
Apple is consistently worse on privacy than alternatives. Don't let them get away with it, or everybody will play Apple's game of just pretending that they care about privacy.
Apple is consistently better on privacy, actually, than competitors. Not sure which competitors you are talking about or which issues/products, but you're way, way off-base. And for obvious reasons: Amazon and Google need to gather user data to survive because they don't make any profitable hardware. Apple doesn't need your data, plus, they have a real and honest commitment to privacy.
>Apple doesn't need your data, plus, they have a real and honest commitment to privacy.
Since you opened that door: Apple shares personal user data with the Chinese government. Call it what you will, but it's not a 'real honest commitment to privacy'.
> Apple is consistently better on privacy, actually, than competitors.
Among Apple, Amazon, and Google; only Apple's phones and tablets send your location to Apple every time you use GPS (even if you're not using an Apple app like Apple Maps!). Among those three companies, only Apple requires you to tell Apple every app you install. Among those three companies, only Apple requires you to further associate your banking details with all that data collection if you want to develop apps for your own device.
That is not an honest commitment to privacy. The other two companies let you opt out of all data collection entirely on your devices.
You're absolutely right that it's not a close call.
To millstone because downvotes prevent me from replying: that is data that the users voluntarily gave Google (like their email and documents), and Google collects that data from its services on iOS as well. On Android, you don't have to give Google any of your data at all. It even makes it easy to not send data to Google by letting you choose a default maps application, browser, etc. Compare to Apple, where you must give your location data to Apple if you want to know where you are on iOS, and there is nothing you can do about it. One is clearly worse. Making light of not being able to develop apps for your own devices without handing over banking details is something I never thought I would see on a forum for technologists.
This is a correct statement, which I have proven to you before. What's more, your earlier quibble about anonymizing the data doesn't even negate the statements I have made. Apple always sends your location to Apple, while Google and Amazon do not if you don't want them to.
Just as you did then, you continue to ignore the even more egregious practice of not only tracking everything you install but tying it to your identity.
Due to people downvoting my comments to the point that I cannot reply, I will explain why askafriend is wrong right here (though I already explained why they are wrong in my GP post, which they also ignored in their response to that post). Disabling Apple Maps from getting your location does not stop Apple from getting your location. When any app gets your location on iOS, Apple also gets your location. This is explained clearly in the link contained in this comment, which askafriend ignored. Both Amazon and Google allow you to get your location without telling anybody.
Even if it were true that Apple always sends a location home, which it is not, if it is anonymous, by definition it is not your location.
But that’s the least of it:
The text you quote in you your linked comment nowhere states that your location is sent to Apple every time it is requested.
That’s not a quibble. It’s much more serious
You wrote comment so you must know that what you just linked doesn’t support your actual claim, so it creates the impression you are doing this to be intentionally misleading.
> if it is anonymous, by definition it is not your location.
That's a really wacky contortion. Whose location is it then?
> nowhere states that your location is sent to Apple every time it is requested.
You're right. It's worse than that. I pointed out in that post that Apple periodically gets your location even if no app requests it. Apple also says that you consent to having your location collected every time another app requests it, so even if it is not true now (which you have not been able to show and which would mean they wouldn't need such a scary consent, so I highly doubt it), it can be true tomorrow.
The actually privacy-respecting Android devices from Amazon and Google do not suffer from this issue. Nor do they require you to tell anybody if you install an app on your device, tied to your identity, which you have once again ignored.
1. Whose location is this: 38.0826966°, -122.0144075°?
2. “so even if it is not true now”
This is you admitting that you actually don’t know that they are doing what you said they were doing.
You actually have no idea what Apple is collecting. You are just speculating based on a legal disclaimer about what they could be doing.
3. “it can be true tomorrow.”
Again you admit that you know that it may not be true.
Asserting something to be true, when you know that you really don’t know whether it is true, is called lying.
You lied when you made the claim earlier in the thread, and you doubled down on that lie by asserting that it was not false, when you were challenged about the truth of your statement.
> Whose location is this: 38.0826966°, -122.0144075°?
That is not the data that is stored. You are deliberately lying because you yourself said that an encrypted identifier is stored with the data. As I already proved to you earlier, that encrypted identifier can be deanonymized by Apple.
> This is you admitting that you actually don’t know that they are doing what you said they were doing.
I showed that they were doing worse than what I had originally claimed, and you ignored that.
> You lied
You're the one who lied in my previous comment. Go see what it says. You can't even argue semantics like you're doing here.
Remember, the whole point is that on Google and Amazon allow you to turn off this data collection entirely, which is significantly better for privacy, and you have not been able to argue otherwise. Worse, you continue to ignore the app data tied to your identity. You are arguing for a bad actor, which makes you look absolutely silly, like somebody who was duped into overpaying for a worse device who feels the need to justify their foolishness to the world.
By the way, here's proof that they're not just making you consent to that scary privacy disclaimer for shits and giggles as you hoped against hope that they did: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/
Disabling Apple Maps from getting your location does not stop Apple from getting your location. When any app gets your location on iOS, Apple also gets your location. Apple even gets your location if no app requests your location. This is explained clearly in the link contained in comment you replied to. Both Amazon and Google allow you to get your location without telling anybody.
Apple doesn't not get _your_ location without an app requesting it.
They periodically send the location of nearby cell-towers and wifi hotspots (all public information) back to a crowdsourced database. _Your_ identity isn't associated with any of it. Apple doesn't know who you are or where your phone is. They do not store GPS coordinates. A single cell tower is nowhere near accurate enough to determine the location of the phone, etc etc.
> They periodically send the location of nearby cell-towers and wifi hotspots (all public information) back to a crowdsourced database.
With your GPS location. That's how they figure out the location of those devices.
> _Your_ identity isn't associated with any of it.
As I showed in the link you continue to ignore, an easily deanonymized identifier is associated with that data in order to prevent people from sending junk data.
> Google/Android do this too:
The whole point is that on Android, you can opt out. Android respects users privacy enough to even ask them if they want to opt out on initial setup.
> You can also entirely disable location services if you're uncomfortable with this and that'd stop it.
As I explained in the link, disabling location services means you can't get your location at all. Not so with Android.
> You're weaponizing people's ignorance and the complexity of the technical details.
I'm fixing your and zepto's ignorance in order to protect people's privacy against bad actors like Apple.
> The whole point is that on Android, you can opt out.
The principle of Privacy isn't the act of giving people options (Facebook uses this excuse all the time - "but users had the option! not our fault!").
The principle is designing privacy into the default way people use things. At an ecosystem level the privacy awareness level and incentive structure is clear between the big companies.
Nitpicking and hyperbole isn't helping make your point like you think it is. Do you think my mom knows how to opt out of something like that on Android or if that's even possible? No. But she's IS going to be using Apple Maps by default and have a heightened level of privacy all the same.
Privacy is taking care of your entire customer base and making intelligent default considerations. Not giving nerds a pane of options.
> The principle is designing privacy into the default way people use things.
And Android puts it right there in device setup, allowing them tonset up their privacy preferences correctly the way people use things.
> Do you think my mom knows how to opt out of something like that on Android or if that's even possible?
If she uses Android, she would. It asks her right there in setup. Do you think your mom knows that Apple tracks every location she has ever been, and she can't make them stop? Even you don't know it, and you're arguably tech literate.
The correct way to handle privacy is giving users the choice between usability and privacy. Android does this correctly. Google's Android devices default to usable, which gives you services that are actually useful unlike the iOS apps that are missing functionality, and allows the user to install apps that are actually private and set them as default if they prefer. Other Android distributions default to the other side. iOS is worse both for people who value functionality and for people who value privacy because it gives you defaults that are neither private nor usable that you cannot change.
A lot of your statements are either misleading or false but I don't have the energy to engage so I'll let someone else do it.
As a start, I'll paste some information from Apple and TechCrunch around when they rebuilt maps from the ground up in 2018:
---
“We specifically don’t collect data, even from point A to point B,” notes Cue. “We collect data — when we do it — in an anonymous fashion, in subsections of the whole, so we couldn’t even say that there is a person that went from point A to point B. We’re collecting the segments of it. As you can imagine, that’s always been a key part of doing this. Honestly, we don’t think it buys us anything [to collect more]. We’re not losing any features or capabilities by doing this.”
The segments that he is referring to are sliced out of any given person’s navigation session. Neither the beginning or the end of any trip is ever transmitted to Apple. Rotating identifiers, not personal information, are assigned to any data or requests sent to Apple and it augments the “ground truth” data provided by its own mapping vehicles with this “probe data” sent back from iPhones.
Because only random segments of any person’s drive is ever sent and that data is completely anonymized, there is never a way to tell if any trip was ever a single individual. The local system signs the IDs and only it knows to whom that ID refers. Apple is working very hard here to not know anything about its users. This kind of privacy can’t be added on at the end, it has to be woven in at the ground level.
The secret sauce here is what Apple calls probe data. Essentially little slices of vector data that represent direction and speed transmitted back to Apple completely anonymized with no way to tie it to a specific user or even any given trip. It’s reaching in and sipping a tiny amount of data from millions of users instead, giving it a holistic, real-time picture without compromising user privacy.
All of this, of course, is governed by whether you opted into location services, and can be toggled off using the maps location toggle in the Privacy section of settings.
Apple says that this will have a near zero effect on battery life or data usage, because you’re already using the ‘maps’ features when any probe data is shared and it’s a fraction of what power is being drawn by those activities.
So yes, information about location is being sent to Apple. No, it's not useful for Apple and it is encrypted in a way that Apple can't get it the underlying data.
> Apple returns the encrypted location of the laptop to your iPad, which can use its private key to decrypt it and tell you the laptop's last known location. Meanwhile, Apple has never seen the decrypted location, and since hashing functions are designed to be irreversible, it can't even use the hashed public keys to collect any information about where the device has been.
It gets stored on the device and sent when you are back online. On an Amazon or Google Android device, you can use a truly offline mapping app that doesn't send data to anybody. Even better, you can set that as your default map provider if you like.
To sibling commenter: my comment is based on a correct understanding of Location Services, not on anything to do with Find My Device. You don't have to put words in my mouth, especially when I have already explained it using my own words elsewhere in the thread.
On the one hand, Google has compiled a petabyte scale database containing detailed day-to-day movements, trips taken, searches made, web sites visited, purchases online and offline, and more, all linked together and associated with our identities.
But Apple requires a credit card to sign up for a developer account so obviously they're much worse.
The Arizona lawsuit tracks the many ways that Google manufactures "consent", from deliberately confusing UIs, to pushing software updates that automatically change settings without informing the user. It even documents cases of Google engineers who thought they had opted out, but were not.
And this is ignoring the tons of non-consensual tracking, such as purchasing credit card history, the DoubleClick/GTags/Analytics that infest the web, etc.
Maybe you can get an Android phone and thoroughly deGooglefy it by flashing LineageOS or whatever. I'll give you that, you can't do that with an iPhone. If that's your bar, then so be it. iPhones are not for you.
But the vast vast majority of users will have their privacy better protected by Apple's location services, which don't track you, than Google's pushy and deceptive tracking.
> The Arizona lawsuit tracks the many ways that Google manufactures "consent"
That lawsuit is completely irrelevant to the question of which devices provide more privacy.
> Maybe you can get an Android phone and thoroughly deGooglefy it by flashing LineageOS or whatever.
You don't have to do that. Just don't use apps that use Google services. Done. It's that simple. On Apple devices, you have no choice but to give up your privacy. Worse, you give up your privacy to use garbage services that are less useful than their Google and Amazon counterparts.
Curious how much market share this homepod line has. My gut feel is that Amazon has the lion's share, followed by Google and everyone else has crumbs at the bottom.
I think it is best to understand this as two different markets. Amazon Echo and Google Home devices are mainly about their smart assistants. Homepod is for music, and it competes more directly with Sonos devices.
after today's presentation i'm pretty sure that HomePod Mini is the Apple answer to Amazon Echo and Google Home.
Maybe the HomePod (original) can compete with the Sonos One or Five at sound level but not in terms of features people are looking for listening music such as: virtually all music streaming services available, integration with all the remaining Sonos products for Home cinema or for Home sound system.
To me Homepod Mini is after the home assistant market. The HomePod (original) well it seemed like a shot in the dark now it will most likely get the Homepod mini features.
Siri lives in on your wrist, in your pocket, or even in your ears with AirPods. It's a pretty significant difference. When you can access Siri anywhere, you only need to put speakers out where you want music.
Google and Amazon need to work harder to get presence so they push them out using aggressive pricing.
You appear to be intentionally obfuscating for whatever reason. I found something from 2019 that appears to show Apple in a distant third place, with Amazon as #1 in the USA and some supporting research showing similar trends world-wide. [1][2]
So yeah, as I expected it's Amazon's game, Google trailing but a strong presence, and Apple virtually missing from the race.
I also think the market is pretty saturated if not about to taper. Amazon and Google have been all over this market for years and there's just no big value prop. 99% of the use is just as a smart speaker. I'd bet very few do home automation. Some are doing a bit of voice commerce if they're bought into the Amazon ecosystem. Apple doesn't offer much beyond cool product design. If someone was going to bust open this space it would be Spotify.
I'm bummed the didn't release a smart display. We're an iPhone/iPad/Mac/Apple TV family, but the Nest Hub Max has become a really great part of our lives. When combined with the Nest Hello, we get video of the front door in the kitchen when the doorbell rings, and the Google Homes in the bathrooms also notify us. We have a couple HomePods that we tried to use, but there's no doorbell integration we could find, and believe it or not, I really like having a photo display and visual cues when we interact with the kitchen device. I would spend the money to transition to an Apple smart display/doorbell and these HomePods, but they have stubbornly refused to produce the product so many others are selling. I just don't get it.
My initial reaction was the same — maybe we'd get one for our kid's room. But then I saw that Intercom supports all iOS devices, so probably we'd just put an old iPhone or iPad in there instead.
But it's not 100% clear if when they say Intercom supports all iOS/WatchOS/MacOS devices, they mean you can communicate from one of those devices to a HomePod, or whether you can communicate amongst any of those devices (no HomePod required).
We have a first-gen iPhone SE that runs iOS 14 fine but probably wouldn't fetch more than $99+tax, especially when the hassle factor is accounted for. Also, it's nice to have a backup phone around the house, in case something happens to one of our primary phones.
> Intercom offers a quick and easy way to send messages to everyone in a household — from one HomePod to another, or across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and CarPlay.
I was expecting a refresh of the HomePod too, though rumors mentioned only the HomePod mini. I also thought that a price of $79 would’ve been quite attractive compared to the $99 price. Just have to wait for holiday sales, I guess.
I can’t wait for reviews and comparisons on the sound of HomePod vs. HomePod mini.
Probably not relevant to what GP is trying to argue, but it would likely mean they’d price it at CAD $99 instead of CAD $129. Fairy significant psychological difference there.
With the prime day sale, it's even a smaller fraction.
However, there's probably a bit of a difference with the amount of on board processing that the two devices can do.
For example, my iPhone can do voice to text while on airplane mode.
{guessing} Similar on board processing would allow a HomePod Mini to work with HomeKit without needing to go to the cloud - Amazon working with Hue does need to go out to the cloud to get that voice to text to command layer. {/guessing}
Woohoo, finally a cheaper homepod!
I was looking forward to something like this to be able to remotely control my Home Assistant setup through Homebridge Hue.
Without having dedicated Apple TV/iPad/Homepod at home, you can't access devices in Home app, even if you have VPN.
This meant that even at home I had to unlock the phone and wait for it to connect to Wifi before Siri would do anything with devices. This delay made it impractical to use Siri for controlling devices through Siri.
Maybe it's possible to make it work with VPN by also forwarding some autodiscovery packets, but I'm not sure.
Am I right in thinking this doesn’t work as a speaker for your living room unless you do everything through Apple TV? Is there a way to use it with a PS4 at all for example?
These look great, and much cheaper than I expected. I already have a couple of the big HomePods and they're great, but I couldn't quite bring myself to buy any more for rooms that I really just want the smart assistant stuff in. But for this price I'll pick up three I think.
I'm sure my wife is going to drive me up the wall with the intercom feature though!
This doesn't appear discussed in the copy: does anyone know if HomePod/(Mini) has been updated to be friendlier towards households with more than one adult user in them (families, roommates, whatever)? I initially found the HomePod alluring, but that it could pair only with one iPhone (and thus effectively one user) was a real turn-off when I last looked into it.
They've had it for a year or so. From the HomePod site:
A personalized experience.
For each person in the family.
Together with Siri, HomePod can learn and recognize up to six different voices and create a personalized listening experience for everybody at home. So when they say “Hey Siri, play some music” they’ll get a mix of songs customized just for them — picked from Apple Music based on their listening history and personal preferences. And with Personal Requests, they can access their own messages, reminders, lists, and calendars, and make and receive phone calls.
We own four of the standard HomePods. They are supposed to be stereo pairable. They are, but several times a week they either plain don’t work, lose the channel, or play different music on each channel.
Generally speaking, while the sound is excellent that user interface and implementation are atrocious.
Not much buzz about the sound quality yet, but it looks like a solid attempt. Force cancelling passive radiators with what looks like back suspension too, but I wonder if it will have vertical axis vibration issues if they arent doing something about that from the speaker driver itself.
Cute, an Apple themed Google Home. Is it still the case that Spotify won’t work with it? Because that really makes the device worthless to me and many others like me.
I have to wonder if Apple will ever release a sound bar or the like, for Sonos-style 'sound bar plus two rear speakers' surround sound rather than just stereo.
I doubt the HomePod Mini at 99$ has any good sound quality compared to the Sonos One or original HomePod. Except if you want to use the Apple ecosystem features in different rooms i dont see the benefit of getting 2.
The big difference is seamless integration with other Apple products. This is why they’ll take market share, it will just work with your iPhone better than the echo does.
A limiting factor is Siri. It took them 8 years to allow asking to play a particular song on Spotify.
Usually the first thing I say to Siri is 'Hey Google' so it goes to Google Assistant.
I'm not really sure what "seamless integration" is left. I (and my friends that have similar devices) use smart speakers for power control, getting the weather, playing music, and setting timers/alarms. It doesn't take an sole-source ecosystem to make that work well.
I agree with this "innovation is dead" sentiment. Apple used to be pioneers and futurists. Now they focus on retaining their well-defined market. This almost makes sense, except they have such a tremendous amount of cash they can afford to take risks.
so much apple-fanboy on here. Grab a good second hand hi-fi set (cheap this days, everyone wants to be "smart"), play your own cd`s, vinyls, *.flac or other good quality digital media) and you will get a good sound...
HomePod mini works effortlessly with your Apple devices.
and only apple devices.
Burned myself on apple years ago, got myself an ipod, learned my lesson with itunes, sold it, never come back.
Too bad it seemingly relies so much on Siri. I haven’t been able to make Siri play me any music what so ever, despite multiple attempts. Once I’ve started playing, I can’t even make Siri skip tracks forward or backwards. Absolutely worthless.
I don’t get it. Siri is the absolute worst compared to Google assistant, the only compelling reason to buy the HomePod is for sound quality.
So unless this has some other redeeming quality over “Siri in your living room”, I don’t think it will sell well. The original HomePod regularly went on sale for 33% off already.
That was my exact thought too. I'm an owner of both an Echo, and a few Echo Dots. The Dots aren't great for music, but the Echo is actually really decent.
The name is a big mistake (they should call it just "HomePod", and the larger one "HomePod Max / Studio". Right now they are forcing people to compare it to the $30 smart assistants by the other two. It's not evident from the name that the HomePod "Mini" isn't competing with the Google Home Mini or Amazon Echo Dot.
Google / Amazon / Apple
Low end:
Home Mini / Echo Dot / None, but people will think HomePod Mini sits here
I'm curious to know what 90% of people do with their home assistant devices. I have a Google Home. I know it can do a huge array of things, but almost all I do with it is play music, control lights, and set timers. Siri can do all of those things.
For me it's that plus voice-controlled NPR or audiobooks while doing other things (often cooking) and weather for later in the day (while getting ready in the morning). It'd also be temperature control, but I'm stuck with a millivolt thermostat and apparently nobody's interest in selling to us gas fireplace people.
For one, I can use them as a speaker for my non-Apple devices. My household is almost entirely Apple products, but considering I have a few devices I would like to occasionally pair like a PC, it makes more sense to buy a home assistant/speak device from Google or Amazon that will work with everything I own, rather than a Homepod that will work with 90% of what I own, even if I like everything else about the Homepod more.
I have a couple of Echo devices, predominantly I use them for lighting control, alarms, timers, speakers for music and podcasts when cooking, paging out messages
round the house rather than yelling down the stairs. My six year old son has picked up that he can use them to call me despite not having a phone of his own, so I also occasionally get calls when out and about asking for urgent Zelda help.
Nest Audio was recently released and for the same price as the Homepod Mini. Curious to see how they stack up sound quality wise.. if the Nest holds it's own like I think it will I really see _no_ compelling reason for the Homepod.
This is the big differentiating feature, along with the seamless integration within the rest of Apple's product line.
EDIT: HomePod does this too but it was not at a price point nor size that competed with other assistants.