HomePod

Apple has announced that the company is discontinuing the original HomePod, and, for now, it is only available as long as stocks last. At the same time, the HomePod mini will still be sold, and Apple told TechCrunch:

HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. […] Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care.

It’s undeniable that the original HomePod was too expensive, and its audio wasn’t ideal for everyone. In my review of the HomePod, I said that “when the HomePod sounds good, it’s great, but it doesn’t always sound good.” This is because it works well with certain types of music – mostly bass-heavy pop and hip-hop – but doesn’t offer any EQ settings. And when you set up a stereo pair, which sounds much better than twice a HomePod, you don’t even have settings to adjust the left-right balance between them.

Apple sold the original HomePod as a device offering superior sound, but the HomePod mini is totally different: it is a smart speaker that highlights the smarts, not the speaker. As a Siri device, it’s small and unobtrusive, and as a music device, it’s good enough for most people.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

Just over three years after Apple introduced the HomePod, the company is discontinuing the device. Overpriced, underpowered, a combination of trying to hard and not delivering, the HomePod has its fans and its detractors. My first listening experience showed me that the when the HomePod sounds good, it’s great, but it doesn’t always sound good. One problem with the device is that it is too bass-heavy, and there are no EQ settings, as there are with similar devices, such as Sonos’ excellent Sonos One speakers.

In my more extensive review, I pointed out how the HomePod does have good sound – at times – but, as a smart speaker, it was limited by Siri. Apple improved its Siri features over time, but the HomePod was still overpriced, especially compared to the Sonos One, which offers similar sound quality at a much lower price.

A few months after the release of the HomePod, I wrote about why the device wasn’t successful. To start with, it was too expensive: at $349, that’s the price of a much more refined audio device. (Apple did eventually reduce the price to $299, but this is still too much.) Apple didn’t release AirPlay 2 right away, which hampered the device’s functionality a bit. When they did, and you could combine two HomePods into a stereo pair, this offered sound that was much better than twice a HomePod.

But even after that, it was clear that the HomePod was a missed opportinity. I believe that Apple made a number of mistakes with this device. Aside from the price, it wasn’t clean what the HomePod was for. I wrote:

Is it a Siri device, or is it speaker that provides “consistent high-definition sound?” If it’s the former, then Apple is trying to sell this to people who already have at least one Siri-capable device. If it’s the latter, well, Apple’s crack marketing team came out with lots of great adjectives, but the overall opinion among audiophiles is that it’s meh.

While the HomePod has fancy technology, I feel that this is wasted:

Apple touts the HomePod’s ability to adapt to any location. “Equipped with spatial awareness, HomePod automatically tunes itself to give you optimal sound — wherever it’s placed.” This may be true, but it’s a mono speaker; the only adjustments it’s going to make are to the tone of the music, and, perhaps, to the output of the various tweeters (there are seven, in a circle).

And, above all, Apple tried to do too much with the device:

The company was falling behind in the smart speaker market, but they should have realized that they already have that market cornered: just say “Hey, Siri” to your iPhone (or Apple Watch, or iPad, or Mac…) And while their adaptive audio technology is impressive, it fails by not allowing users to choose the type of sound they want. By prioritizing the bass-heavy sound of rap and hip-hop music – the genre they push most in Apple Music – they created speakers that many people find unpalatable.

Curiously, Apple added an interesting feature to the HomePod just a few months ago: if you connect two HomePods to an Apple TV 4K, you can use them to play back Dolby Atmos sound. This is a compelling use case for the devices, but you can get soundbars that handle Dolby Atmos for less than a pair of HomePods.

The HomePod mini changed all that. Instead of focusing on audio quality, Apple focused on functionality, and they now provide a compact speaker with Siri, which is good enough for most people.

I think Apple fell into the trap of people who care about audio, thinking that everyone feels like they do. The vast majority of people are fine listening to music on cheap Bluetooth speakers, or ever from their phones, and paying that much for what might be better audio just doesn’t make sense. Yet people will pay the price of the HomePod for headphones, because they are more important when people are on the go: look at the success of Apple’s Beats headphones, and what seems to be a successful launch of the AirPods Pro.

Apple should have some good speakers in its product line; I would be interested in seeing an Apple soundbar, for example, but it would have to compete with Sonos, who has its Beam, costing only $399.

So Apple now has a product line whose only device is a “mini.” I expect this to stick around for a while, as its a part of Apple’s smart home strategy. Perhaps we’ll see another, larger HomePod in the future: maybe Apple is going all out with a HomePod Pro.

Apple’s new HomePod is a very interesting device. But it’s overpriced, and when it sounds good, it’s great; but it doesn’t always sound good.

The HomePod mini is not a mini version of the HomePod, but a different device entirely. At the same time, it’s the cheapest Apple device that works on its own. It needs the cloud for Siri, and for Apple Music, of course, but at $99, it’s the least expensive Apple product that is not an accessory.

It’s worth considering this when thinking about what the HomePod mini is for. It’s not for music; it’s for the smart home. Apple is way behind Amazon in the smart speaker / smart home space, and, even though just about every Apple user has Siri in their pocket or on their wrist, having a device in fixed locations in the home may lead to more use of Siri and specifically smart home products.

Note the four key points that Apple presents on its website for the HomePod mini:

• Room-filling sound.
• An intelligent assistant.
• Control your smart home.
• Private and secure.

I think it’s safe to discount the first; the HomePod mini is really mini: it’s 3.3″ / 84mm tall. That’s a tad more than 1/2 the height of my iPhone 11. It’s not mini, it’s tiny. It will play music, and sound like an inexpensive Bluetooth speaker, but nothing like the HomePod or other good standalone speakers.

The second point is just another way of saying that it works with Siri. But everyone with an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch already has Siri. Perhaps that’s not enough.

But it’s the third point, “Control your smart home” that is the clincher: this is where Apple is aiming. In the presentation of the HomePod mini, Apple showed a family in a cut-away house on a stage, demonstrating how this device can control the home, and help communicate within the family. (The new Intercom feature is quite interesting.) On the HomePod mini product page, there’s a screenshot of the Home app, with a new Discover tab. This tab is not yet available in the app, and will presumably be added when the HomePod mini is released. It will offer “recommendations on top‑rated accessories that work with HomePod mini, and connect to the Apple Store app for additional details and effortless shopping.”

You can, of course, control your smart home with your iPhone; the HomePod mini is just an interface. But it serves an important purpose: it can be a HomeKit hub, and it is the cheapest device that can serve this purpose. While you don’t need this to control simple smart home devices, you do need it to share your devices across your family, or to control them remotely. Currently, you need either a HomePod, an Apple TV, or an iPad to have a HomeKit hub. The first two devices set themselves up automatically, and you have to turn on specific settings on an iPad for it to work. But the iPad must remain in your home, and not run out of power, in order for it to serve this purpose.

Apple is clearly banking on the smart home as their Next Big Product. While it’s not a “product” as such, and certainly will not rival the iPhone, if Apple can get a large number of users to buy into the smart home idea, there’s lots of money to be made. The smart home needs a killer app to take off; so far, it’s been Amazon’s Alexa, but lots of people don’t trust Amazon. Hence the fourth point: “Private and secure.” I’ve heard from several people already, who are Apple users and have Alexa devices, who are going to buy two or three of these, and ditch Alexa.

Back to the price; $99 is the cost of some of Apple’s watch bands. It’s the cost of the Magic Keyboard. It’s cheaper than the Apple TV. It’s the cheapest product that, on its own, actually does something.

This isn’t to say that it’s cheap; compare it with Amazon’s Echo Dot, which you could get for $19 on Prime Day. That product is a loss-leader to get you into the Alexa platform. Apple would never sell the HomePod mini that cheaply, but perhaps we’ll see it discounted as a bundle with other devices, or why not even for free when you buy, say, a new Mac?

The HomePod mini is a Trojan horse. If Apple succeeds in selling enough of these, they can get a strong foothold in the smart home.

As smart speakers go, Apple’s HomePod has a few points that make it stand out. It has better sound than most Alexa and Google Home devices. There are a number of smart speakers made by audio companies that focus on sound quality, and that include the ability to use one or more of the voice assistants, but the HomePod is the only smart speaker that uses Siri. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, this is a compelling reason to use it.

In this article, I’m going to tell you what you can do with your HomePod: how you can tell it to play music, give you information, make phone calls, and more.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

I can’t believe I actually have to ask Apple to add stereo-paired HomePods as a Mac sound output device! It’s the most ridiculous Feature Request yet, because it’s absolutely nuts that this isn’t already built into macOS — especially that it isn’t baked into Catalina.

Apple’s own audio apps will happily allow you to select stereo-paired HomePods as a single output device. You can see in the photo above that the Music app sees both my Office and Winter Garden HomePods as a single device.

Not so the Mac itself, however…

I can output Mac sound to Office Left or Office Right, but not to the stereo pair.

So I have the utterly ridiculous situation of having a pair of HomePods on my desk but not being able to use them with my Mac unless it’s through an app that recognizes stereo pairs.

A agree, sort of. On an absolute level, it is very odd, but, do people really want to do that, to have all their audio come out from a pair of HomePods? To be honest, the HomePod isn’t designed to be on a desk so close to the listener; its tweeters are at the bottom, so ideally they should be on stands. (The tweeters should ideally be close to ear level.) Given the way the HomePods work, I’m not sure that putting them on tilted stands, so they are leaning back, would work very well in all situations. I mentioned this in this article, where I also pointed out the inability to use them as general Mac speakers, but here’s how it would look; the HomePods are already bassy, you wouldn’t hear much treble in this position.

You can stream from the Music and TV apps, for example, so if you want to listen to music or watch a movie and hear its audio on a pair of HomePods, that’s easy to do.

Source: Stereo-paired HomePods need to be a Mac sound option – 9to5Mac

Update: Apple has released an updated version of the software which should resolve these issues.

“Apple today released new 13.2 software for the HomePod with long-awaited features like Handoff and voice detection for different family members, but unfortunately, some users are running into problems with the update.”

This is disgraceful. It’s not just that they don’t work, but that there is nothing users can do. Apple is having them ship them back to the company to get them fixed. All this because there’s no USB port to restore the device.

What a blunder.

(To be fair, it’s not clear how many people this is affecting. As often with this sort of problem, the media attention makes it appear bigger than it is. Mine both work fine after the update.)

Source: New 13.2 Update Bricking Some HomePods [Update Pulled by Apple] – MacRumors