Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HomePod Mini

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 446 posts

Re: HomePod Mini

#191

Post by room500 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #84
thomasfl wrote: post #47

No Spotify support. Spotify’s market share is probably so large that Apple will sell fever of this speakers because of that.

The APIs required for Spotify to support HomePod are available, but as usual Spotify has yet to take advantage of them.

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.

1 : https://developer.spotify.com/use-cases/hardware/

2 : https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

Re: HomePod Mini

#193

Post by chendragon »

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.

Re: HomePod Mini

#194

Post by myrandomcomment »

timothyduong wrote: post #186
myrandomcomment wrote: post #146

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 M…

How is MrMC these days? I stopped using it about a year ago and migrated to Infuse as the MrMC UI was gross. Infuse is missing the sort-ability of KODI (e.g. sorting by Director, or by rating), does MrMC have these features?

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.

Re: HomePod Mini

#195

Post by turtlebits »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #146

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 M…

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)

Re: HomePod Mini

#196

Post by radicaldreamer »

gnicholas wrote: post #101
jagger27 wrote: post #23

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.

eero is a great mesh system and the closest to a spiritual successor to the AirPorts.

Re: HomePod Mini

#197

Post by Whatarethese »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #146

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 M…

Clearly you are not the customer that Apple wants and honestly I dont blame them. You probably represent the .001% of potential customers.

Re: HomePod Mini

#198

Post by Angostura »

jshen wrote: post #174

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 hea…

Whereas my family say that it is the best Apple gizmo we own. It sits in the kitchen and typically only gets used for

Playing music setting timers adding things to the shopping list answering stupid google queries during dinner.

All of which it does with aplomb. But it was bought because wanted a great sounding smart speaker

Re: HomePod Mini

#199

Post by gh02t »

crooked-v wrote: post #31
actuator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a new Nest audio device out which apparently has good audio and is at the same price as Homepod Mini.

...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.

Re: HomePod Mini

#200

Post by myrandomcomment »

ndaiger wrote: post #164
myrandomcomment wrote: post #146

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 M…

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.
Post reply on HN