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HomePod Mini

apple.com

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Re: HomePod Mini

#311

Post by lostgame »

haswell wrote: post #229
qchris wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 App…

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…

>> The absolute worst part being a false positive activation of my Sonos system while watching a movie/show.

South Park, being; well, South Park - actually did an episode taking advantage of this and trolling thousands of viewers:

https://mashable.com/2017/09/14/south-park-alexa-google-home...

(not really SFW content, strong language)

Re: HomePod Mini

#312

Post by acwan93 »

lilyball wrote: post #304
ibdf wrote: post #290

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 a…

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.

It’s part of the SiriKit Media Intents that was introduced in iOS 13.

Re: HomePod Mini

#313

Post by jen729w »

Angostura wrote: post #198
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

I was gonna say it, but then you did.

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 ” 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.

Re: HomePod Mini

#314

Post by lostgame »

ibdf wrote: post #290

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 a…

Strange. Spotify seems to work fine with my Apple Watch (Series 3)?

Re: HomePod Mini

#315

Post by ulfw »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #25
ChrisLTD wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that’s why my HomePod feels so slow?

The SoC in the Homepod is old . It's the Apple A8, which was used on iPhone 6 (2014). The HomePod Mini uses Apple S5, which was in the Apple Watch 5 (2019)

Yea but who says that a watch chip from 2019 is faster than a phone SoC from 2014?

Re: HomePod Mini

#316

Post by baggy_trough »

jen729w wrote: post #313
Angostura wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was gonna say it, but then you did. 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 ” while we make dinner. “Hey Siri, turn it up!” Hey Siri good morning, turn the lights on, set a timer, she m…

I'm glad you're happy about it, but for me, Siri is a disaster. It only has about a 75% chance to get a simple music command right. Pretty hopeless.

Re: HomePod Mini

#317

Post by [deleted] »

haswell wrote: post #229
qchris wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 App…

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…

[deleted]

Re: HomePod Mini

#318

Post by Tagbert »

kevinlou wrote: post #292
reikonomusha wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine bricked itself on an update. No way to hard reset it. Apple would repair it only for $1 less than the full cost of the device.

You're kidding? That's such poor product 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.

Re: HomePod Mini

#319

Post by Tagbert »

jshen wrote: post #282
austinkhale wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really?? I love mine. I use it every day for Hue bulb activations, playing music, timers, etc. and it does the job perfectly. It doesn’t answer all the same answers as the Google Assistant but I feel like that’s worth the privacy trade off.

A $30 echo will do that. I have a few of those, why spend $200 for a HomePod if that’s all it is.

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.

Re: HomePod Mini

#320

Post by locusm »

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…

Get some HeOS speakers, they support all the sources you need including network shares from a NAS.
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