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HomePod Mini

apple.com

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Re: HomePod Mini

#381

Post by jen729w »

72deluxe wrote: post #372
jen729w wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 must be getting old because playing an audio track, looking up some information or changing the volume seems a first world "problem" and is still incredibly easy just by using the device that is performing the task, eg. playing music. Back in the day, using my CD player or cassette player didn't seem like hard work. The gulf between the "issues" that these devices solve and real problems in the world (starvation, w…

A sign of getting old indeed: when the technology at stage `n` is surely good enough and you see no reason for `n+1`. ;-)

You also set up a nice straw man there. Nobody’s saying that these things are “solving problems”. They’re just cool new technology. Being able to ask for an album while I’m chopping the vegetables for dinner is cool. Why not?

Re: HomePod Mini

#382

Post by jen729w »

jshen wrote: post #353
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t own one personally, but I use one at the office daily. They sound incredible. I have some google smart speakers and they’re pretty underwhelming in terms of sound. The voice assistant is excellent, though. I’d much prefer the sound of the HomePod but it’s hard to justify the expense when I have something that works fine. If I could do it over, I’d absolutely spend way more for the better audio experience. Whi…

You can connect an echo to other speakers.

But now you have other speakers, and a bunch of wires and power cords.

One of the things I appreciate about the HomePod is its single power cord. Super neat (as in actually neat not ‘cool’).

Re: HomePod Mini

#383

Post by jen729w »

bsimpson wrote: post #340
noodlesUK wrote: post #281

One feature I wish Apple would build into this would be a 3.5mm jack or optical audio out. I have a lot of very nice speakers already in my house, but no multi-room audio, or voice assistant. I know the echos can do this, but I don’t want them spying on me.

My dad watches Craigslist for old Airport Expresses because he wants to replace their Chromecast Audio with something that can talk to Apple Music, but Apple bafflingly doesn't have any current AirPlay offerings to connect external speakers.

I have an AirPort Extreme he can have? It’s just in a box in the garage, I’ll ship it to you for nothing.

Bit bigger than the Express obviously. Hmm I may even have a really old one of those, too.

Re: HomePod Mini

#384

Post by lxgr »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #284
dweekly wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: on-device computation, you'll note from the presentation that they said that no data is sent to Apple _until you say "Hey Siri"_. They're still doing transcription in the cloud which requires sending your voice for Apple to process and store. I have no issues personally with using cloud services like this but they very much used weasley language in the presentation and website to obscure the fact that Apple's clo…

Pretty sure they do transcribe locally and only send text to cloud to interpret it. So still not private, but no audio is sent (unless for special cases).

No – Apple does transmit the audio samples and interprets server-side: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210657

Re: HomePod Mini

#385

Post by alecthomas »

lilyball wrote: post #301
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.

I’ve never even heard of a HomePod bricking itself, nor does it sound plausible that Apple would charge to fix a device they bricked themselves, especially at $1 less than the price of a new device. I feel like you’re omitting something here.

My previous Apple TV (pre 4K) bricked itself twice. I got a refund after the second time.

Re: HomePod Mini

#386

Post by michaelbrooks »

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…

I know exactly what you mean, but if you say "cancel", it will shut it off faster. It is still a big annoyance which I hope gets fixed at some point in the future.

Re: HomePod Mini

#387

Post by tinus_hn »

dweekly wrote: post #253
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…

re: on-device computation, you'll note from the presentation that they said that no data is sent to Apple _until you say "Hey Siri"_. They're still doing transcription in the cloud which requires sending your voice for Apple to process and store. I have no issues personally with using cloud services like this but they very much used weasley language in the presentation and website to obscure the fact that Apple's clo…

They can and have for many years, it’s just much less powerful than Siri.

On device you can only ask it to play songs on the device, calling people in the phone book etc.

Re: HomePod Mini

#388

Post by nateroling »

noodlesUK wrote: post #281

One feature I wish Apple would build into this would be a 3.5mm jack or optical audio out. I have a lot of very nice speakers already in my house, but no multi-room audio, or voice assistant. I know the echos can do this, but I don’t want them spying on me.

My understanding is that the HomePods cannot play audio in real-time, due to the processing involved.

Re: HomePod Mini

#389

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: HomePod Mini

#390

Post by occamschainsaw »

ehsankia wrote: post #276
varenc wrote: post #233

The U1 ultra-wideband chip means the HomePod can be used a fixed reference point for general purpose indoor location finding! Would be great for AirTags, if those ever become a reality. At the moment, the U1 is only be used for the nifty hold-your-iphone-close move, but I have no doubt Apple has other applications in mind. Ultra-wideband is amazing for its indoor high-resolution position finding. Down to the inch is…

I really wish of a future where I can just point my phone at one of my cast devices to cast to it.

A very limited version of this feature is used in AirDrop with U1 equipped iPhones. Just point your phone to the phone you are transferring to and it shows up in the AirDrop share sheet.
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