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HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

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Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#41

What’s innovative about this? I feel like I’m reading an Amazon Alexa or Google Home ad.

It's “innovative” because it serves people who are already fully invested in the Apple ecosystem, rather than either the Google or Amazon ecosystem, or not being deeply attached to many of those ecosystems.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#42
Things I want from HomePod:

1) To work with only the tracks I have downloaded in my iTunes library. Currently I have to use a 3rd party music player because the stock music player won't respect my wishes in this regard.

2) To be able to turn Siri off

3) To sync with an existing audio system, so that I can play music through my home audio system in my living room, and HomePods in my bedroom and bathroom

4) To avoid the weird situation where latency causes music to not sound synced, so that if I'm listening in one room, I'm not hearing music from the other room with a half-second delay.

I am hopeful on all counts except for the first one. Apple seems dead set on forcing their idea of music enjoyment onto me. Then again, perhaps the behavior forcing me onto a third party player is/was just a bug.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#43
post #30
post #8

>Coming this year in a free software update, users will be able to play music throughout the house with multi-room audio. Interesting that a key feature that the competition already has won’t be shipping at launch. I wonder if this is related to the Homepod’s previous delays.

You can already AirPlay to multiple devices (including homebrew kodi boxes) from iTunes in MacOS. AirPlay 2 just brings this to iOS.

The changes in AirPlay 2 will be a little more than that. To make it work more like Sonos, it requires that the receiving device buffer a lot more of the audio to make it resilient from wi-fi instability, and it probably requires some changes to that devices are synced up at all times. And I sure hope they're doing something with latency.

As I understand it, Sonos can do some of these things because their audio is transmitted over a proprietary wireless connection, so it's not competing with Internet traffic. I use AirPlay today over ordinary home wi-fi, and it's awfully unreliable — stutters all the time, sometimes doesn't play, long pause before audio will start, etc. — and larger buffers would certainly help here.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#44

Things I want from HomePod: 1) To work with only the tracks I have downloaded in my iTunes library. Currently I have to use a 3rd party music player because the stock music player won't respect my wishes in this regard. 2) To be able to turn Siri off 3) To sync with an existing audio system, so that I can play music through my home audio system in my living room, and HomePods in my bedroom and bathroom 4) To avoid th…

Get a Sonos?

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#45

What’s innovative about this? I feel like I’m reading an Amazon Alexa or Google Home ad.

Apple typically isn't the most innovative. People just feel that way about them because in the past they get things right. This will probably be like Apple Watch where its true value is subtle and only apparent once you own a bunch of other Apple stuff and use them in conjunction with one another. In this specific case since Amazon and Google are so far ahead & haven't stumbled, Apple's only real advantage now is pri…

> Apple's only real advantage now is privacy

Apple's main real advantage is lots of the high-disposable-income market is heavily invested in their ecosystem. The big ecosystems are real competitors, but the individual offerings within them are rarely direct competitors because the utility of the individual offerings depends on degree of pre-existing investment in the ecosystem.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the chosen people, whom have had developmental access bestowed upon them by the grace of Apple. Seriously though; there is little to no chance that this will not be another locked down device with which Apple will try to monetize your home to the fullest possible extent.

Or: people who paid Apple's $99 developer fee? Hardly a group of "chosen people". This would make sense if you were talking about something like CarPlay, but there's no discrimination here other than the one I mentioned.

Try launching a new browser on the iStore. You're free to compete, as long as you don't compete against Apple.

Microsoft was fined 561 million Euros for doing the same.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#47

Things I want from HomePod: 1) To work with only the tracks I have downloaded in my iTunes library. Currently I have to use a 3rd party music player because the stock music player won't respect my wishes in this regard. 2) To be able to turn Siri off 3) To sync with an existing audio system, so that I can play music through my home audio system in my living room, and HomePods in my bedroom and bathroom 4) To avoid th…

Get a Sonos?

I wound up buying a cheap AmazonBasics Bluetooth device to transmit music to my receiver. It works well enough. I suppose I could get on with Sonos, but I don't want to replace my current working system with all-new hardware.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#48

What’s innovative about this? I feel like I’m reading an Amazon Alexa or Google Home ad.

Apple typically isn't the most innovative. People just feel that way about them because in the past they get things right. This will probably be like Apple Watch where its true value is subtle and only apparent once you own a bunch of other Apple stuff and use them in conjunction with one another. In this specific case since Amazon and Google are so far ahead & haven't stumbled, Apple's only real advantage now is pri…

Never underestimate the power of hype.

Apple has had the MSMs attention for so long it is silly. I have seen articles about Apple products in places that normally could not care less to cover consumer electronics or computers.

Basic thing is that Apple has long been the go to computer for doing media production, and thus the people writing for MSM is more likely to notice Apple news than other tech news because it affects them directly. And thanks to the typical fan myopia, if it affects them it affects the world...

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#49
post #10

What’s innovative about this? I feel like I’m reading an Amazon Alexa or Google Home ad.

I’m interested in one as a new speaker. I don’t expect I’ll enable Siri. I want to use it as an AirPlay target. I was previously considering a Sonos, but the Airplay2 support will be baked into the OS so I don’t need to use a clunky 3rd party app.

I avoid anything with proprietary protocols, mostly out of principle, but also as I occasionally write a Python script to control these things. I wrote a script to use a €30 Chromecast Audio as an alarm clock, for example. It uses the DLNA standard.

It's connected to my existing nice hifi and speakers. I have a choice of clunky 3rd party apps, and some not-so-clunky.

It's possible the HomePod's clever design is as good as they claim, but I'd guess the same money spent on normal hifi speakers will give better sound.

Re: HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday

#50

How can you release a music player when your music ecosystem is completely broken? iTunes is so bad I have to pay for an app (Waltr) to put music on my phone. And Apple music sounds like garbage. I don't need a high-quality speaker to stream garbage.

If you're not satisfied with 256kbps AAC then may I suggest https://www.ponomusic.com/ ?
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