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Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

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Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#261

Post by adamparsons »

ubermonkey wrote: post #71
perardi wrote: post #46

Is it time to complain about Siri again? Sure is! I am an old-school Apple fanboy. I learned HyperCard on a Macintosh SE/30—I am that old. I still appreciate the Apple ecosystem, and I do like certain aspects of my HomePod mini…but Siri. C’mon. Get it together. It just fails at the absolute basics. https://imgur.com/q0H788Y The basics being: please add stuff to my shopping list when I yell it into the aether while in…

We have an original large-size HomePod in the kitchen. Its MAIN job is music-in-the-kitchen, and it excels at that. It's secondary job is "Siri portal" for random information or timers or whatever (btw, did you know you can set multiple timers and give then names, like "set a pasta timer for 10 minutes" and then also "set a simmer timer for 30 minutes" and ask it for status on those by name?). I have an ongoing sort-…

> I think my history with software make me subconsciously better able to formulate a question for Siri in a way that produces an answer other than "I found some web results...".

Hah, very much the same. My partner will always end up asking me to ask siri to ask something because my slightly differently worded requests tend to succeed more often

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#263

Post by garblegarble »

kybernetyk wrote: post #241
garblegarble wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "Hey Siri überspringen" work? Voice assistants really need to get away from their pretense that they're magical at understanding languages and just provide a long documentation page showing what you can say... and also take feedback on that page so people can provide more idiomatic ways to express that same command. Apple do actually have such documentation[1 English][2 German] but it's far from comprehensive, a…

>überspringen Even if it works - it's still way too long. "weiter" is a very short word. "überspringen" is like having a deep conversation with my mp3 player :)

If you do insist on speaking German, is it any wonder you need to use long words? :-) /s

I think I have worked out a way to do this with a custom Shortcut (using an If condition on Device Name to use the Music Skip Forwards action on the device executing the Shortcut), but I'm pretty sure it would end up as a longer interaction.

Edit: Drat, Shortcut approach doesn't work, looks like the Shortcut runs on your iPhone, so the device name is always the iPhone's

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#264

Post by secabeen »

astrange wrote: post #243
perardi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That what confuses me about the market fit here. It’s not an amazing voice assistant. It’s OK as a wireless speaker, but Sonos is almost assuredly better, and similar aesthetics and ease of use. So this is targeting…uh?

HomePods sound better than Sonos One. (But also cost more.) https://www.rtings.com/speaker/tools/compare/apple-homepod-v...

Yeah, the equivalent Sonos product was the 3, but it's EOL and there is currently a hole in the Sonos line there. Not sure if they'll bring something back, maybe now that Apple has Homepod 2 they will, or the medium-sized bi-directional speaker we saw go through the FCC last month.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#265

Post by BostonEnginerd »

CameronBanga wrote: post #143
trafnar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use mine all the time and haven’t had these issues. Just the occasional Siri misunderstanding. My family loves it for playing music and a few other simple tasks like timers.

Echo this - I have 5 of these OG HomePods across two different places, and they've always "just worked" for me. Great multi-room audio, fantastic sound, and good for tasks like timers. The biggest critique I have is that after relatively major OS updates, it may take a day or two it seems for them to get "in sync" and have stuff like multi-room audio work without funky issues. Mostly happy about this announcement bec…

How is it as a speakerphone? I've considered getting one for conference calls.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#266

Post by abirch »

dkonofalski wrote: post #188
novok wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is really bad on many basic things that they could hard code. Like 'turn off lights' become 'turning on the the lights'. There are many weird ass bitflips for basics like that in Siri that is incredibly frustrating that alexa and google are significantly better in understanding reliably. Whats even worse is Siri could hard code these basics and not use ML which tends to work %90 of the time, but bitflips %10 of…

I know we're just exchanging anecdotes but I never have this issue. On top of that, I have scenes and automations dialed in so "Good Night" (and similar scenes) do full-house automations for night, morning, and all kinds of different things. I even have some set up so that, when my car pulls into the garage after work, it kicks off a few automations.

We're a google household but I'm interested in switching. Do you know if it's possible to use YouTube Music or do I need to do a line change and replace all of my Google Hubs?

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#267

Post by dzhiurgis »

Hippocrates wrote: post #162
brutuscat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might try it with the stereo setup for the home cinema tv setup. I agree on everything about Siri. Though in the kitchen I bought those 100 bucks Ikea Sonos made speakers that sound amazing too. Much cheaper... One issue though is that I can not pass thru audio over the Apple TV, so the cinema setup would only work when using the Apple TV.

This should work if you enable ARC (must be enabled on Apple TV settings, and on your HDMI switching device. You also need to use an ARC compatible HDMI cable and to be using the ARC port on your "switching" device, since often there is only one such port. This is how I have it set up and my HomePod outputs all inputs that come into my TV.

When it works - it’s magical. You can turn tv on/off.

Except sometimes volume control goes haywire and only one side adjusts.

Then there’s weird stuff like asking “play the beatles” responds “I couldn’t find Beatles in your library” even when you got music subscription.

Overall biggest pain point is same as all apples - debugging

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#268

Post by Terretta »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #14

Seems like Apple executed the way Google should have with their Google Home Max. They've added stereo pairing, so you can have two of them sync up together and then connect them to an Apple TV 4k and you basically get a pretty nice wireless sound bar with Dolby Atmos enabled. Still, at $300 per pod, I really need Siri to do better than the "dumber than a bag of rocks" vibe she currently gives off for this to be at al…

> They've added...

HomePods OG do stereo pairing, and with ATV can act as eARC playback so you can play your console sound via HomePods stereo pair.

For a couple years now, though weirdly the full firmware revamp landed after discontinuation.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#269

Post by Terretta »

nerdjon wrote: post #86

I am very happy to see the bigger HomePod come back. I have a several big ones and a few of the small ones and they just don't compare for sound so I put off putting them everywhere I really wanted. Will for sure be getting a few of these. As far as Siri being "Stupid", idk it does exactly what I need it to do for playing music, controlling my home, measurement conversations, timers, and the occasional ask about if s…

Not sure it's bigger. It seems neutered.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#270

Post by 72deluxe »

jsjohnst wrote: post #76
perardi wrote: post #46

Is it time to complain about Siri again? Sure is! I am an old-school Apple fanboy. I learned HyperCard on a Macintosh SE/30—I am that old. I still appreciate the Apple ecosystem, and I do like certain aspects of my HomePod mini…but Siri. C’mon. Get it together. It just fails at the absolute basics. https://imgur.com/q0H788Y The basics being: please add stuff to my shopping list when I yell it into the aether while in…

> Buy $299 or something that has artificial stupidity like Siri? Well, in fairness, it’s designed first as a music device, the Siri seems like almost an afterthought. That said, Spend $299 on a wireless speaker where the stereo pairing often fails, has random Wi-Fi connection issues (that no other Apple device has), and is otherwise hindered by issues? Nah, fooled me on the first gen, fooled me again on the HomePod m…

I avoided all this smart speaker stuff by going for a Marshall Acton II in the kitchen (music via Bluetooth). My wife uses Amazon or Apple music and I use Subtracks on Android to play to it.

I run a Pi4 running a Navidrome instance after spending a long time ripping all my thousands of CDs.

The Pi goes via a USB audio interface (better than the audio output on the Pi) and an EQ (Behringer DCX2496) to a set of Yamaha HS8s. I am pretty sure that works out cheaper than buying a pair of Apple speakers.

You can use Mopidy to get it to play audio on the Pi over the speakers (as in, use Mopidy mobile to tell the Pi to play from its local library of mp3s, out to its connected speakers). I use this for playing guitar along to songs without having to look at a computer screen.

Alternatively the Pi also acts as an Airplay receiver so you can play from your iPhone to it, either from your Apple/Amazon music subscription or via a Sonic API compatible app.

From Windows you can pipe your audio remotely to it using palink to stream your local audio to the Pi (it runs a pulseaudio player via SSH if I recall correctly). I actually use that to run Studio One on a PC in a room upstairs but sit on a Linux laptop in the sunshine, RDPing to the PC but listening to the audio over palink (better quality audio than RDP).

Adding a Wireguard server to the Pi (and pihole) and putting the VPN on my phone and I can stream my music whilst out and about and also get all adverts/home dialling blocked. I also gave my brother VPN access but to the specific IP instead of routing all traffic over it so he can enjoy my music too.

Best of all worlds and no vendor lock-in.

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