This is the big differentiating feature, along with the seamless integration within the rest of Apple's product line.
EDIT: HomePod does this too but it was not at a price point nor size that competed with other assistants.
For my family members that already have Apple products for their tablet, phone, etc., but have either Amazon Echo or Google Home smart assistants, I'm definitely looking that these as an option for holiday presents.
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 system while watching a movie/show. When this happens (and it happens a lot), the audio volume of the show is lowered significantly to allow Alexa to hear the rest of the command.
Pause the show, wait til "she" stops listening, rewind the show very slightly because I missed whatever was just said due to the volume shift, resume the video, instantly pause again at the moment she was originally triggered until she stops listening, resume the show, this time without having to rewind since I paused soon enough not to miss any dialog.
Maddening.
And the fact that all of these false positives get sent straight to Amazon doesn't make me feel great.
I didn't need a HomePod for its audio quality since I already have great quality with the Sonos system, and couldn't justify the original HomePod's price as a command/control-focused smart speaker with a home already filled with Alexa devices.
All of that to say, HomePod mini is perfect for me.
I can throw out my Echos, disable Alexa on the Sonos system, and scatter a couple of Minis to replace the Echos.
This is something I didn't realize I wanted.
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 cloud absolutely will get access to your unencrypted raw utterances following their wakeword detection, and cause people to conclude that that wasn't happening.
As a side-note I find it a bit surprising that with all the history Apple has with Siri and the meaningfully powerful on-device ML acceleration that they still can't download and run a recognition model on-device that wouldn't require streaming your speech to Apple's servers...
One thing I've learned is the identity is absolutely everything in (mass) surveillance.
The more places we can disconnect or obscure this as end users (or ideally consumers) the better.
He cited several real incidents where vendors like Amazon had been caught listening in and sending audio clips to random subcontractors for analysis.
Several huge companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon have made it their business to maximally violate the privacy of the general public.
This rubs off on companies like Apple that treat customer privacy seriously.
The "free market" doesn't stop rampant abuse, and doesn't stop damage to unlucky bystanders. If everyone cheats, then the incentive will be to cheat also. If everyone violates privacy, then there will be little to no benefit in not also violating privacy. Certainly not if consumers simply won't believe you.
It's the same logic as: "Every politician is corrupt, so why should I vote for you Mr Honest Guy? You must be corrupt also! I'd rather vote for Mr Clearly On the Take, I like the way he smiles".
I solved this problem for my HomePod by denying it outgoing internet access on my router. Bonjour-based AirPlay support works great, and if Siri somehow became activated by accident despite my disabling it on the device, nothing could be sent to Apple.
This is the way to do it ...if you insist on putting smart microphones in your house.
The HomePod Mini uses Apple S5, which was in the Apple Watch 5 (2019)
For someone who isn't a fan of providing audio, you seem to have willfully done so.
I am genuinely confused.
I've tried their intercom feature on an iPhone using Hey Siri. The message doesn't get recorded if you don't speak english. It works fine if you press and hold side button tho (my preferred way to use Siri anyway).
I would probably consider Homepod or Homepod mini if they've got batteries and bluetooth. Heck they could've even used MagSafe chargers for them. Now I've got two Soundcore Motion+ that got amazing hifi sound.
There's no way I will buy one of these until I hear from multiple people I know that they have one and it's truly amazing.
edit: typos
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
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 <whatever>” 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.
It doesn’t answer all the same answers as the Google Assistant but I feel like that’s worth the privacy trade off.
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).
Some reviews:
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&i...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16976906/apple-homepod-rev...
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 MrMC app can mount the NFS file share and play my music just fine. The AppleTV is plugged into and HDMI splitter that strips audio and outputs it to an amp which goes to my speakers. This just works, and I can remote control it with my an app on my iPhone.
Given that the HomePod will not be able to access my music collection, it is useless.
I would be happy with the HomePod being able to steam music from an open Music app on a Mac somewhere. I have enough spare Macs that it would be simple to just run Music on it (which mounts the network share.) But of course, I would be wasting power.
Oh well.
It would also be really nice if the AppleTV would just support SMB again.
You'd have to look at alternatives for the media server (Plex) if you want to use a Homepod though .. I'm pretty sure Plex doesn't support AirPlay.
If it's just wireless audio you're after and not a "smart speaker" then there's some not-too-tricky ways to do this in the DIY space. snapcast for instance supports AirPlay and might integrate nicely into your current setup: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast
What is the best way to remote control a device that is wired to my mixer (XLR or 1/4 in or 1/8in jack)
After seeing your comment I setup HomeBridge and the homebridge-camera-ffmpeg plugin in about 10 minutes, and now I've got what I wanted. Thanks!
https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/specs/ (Audio Sources)
[0] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/packages/iTunesServer
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 also supports syncing music with multiple devices at a fraction, if any, of sonos or similar costs.
There is a plethora of plugins available including an AirPlay bridge to stream to your Apple tv.
You can use the excellent iPeng app (paid but recommended) as a phone remote (and even a source with an IAP).
I use the LMS ecosystem to stream from my NAS to my linux workstation (using squeezelite), to my tv/speakers on an nvidia shield, to my phone via iPeng and to another chromecast.
https://homeassistant.io https://github.com/johnpdowling/custom_components/tree/maste...
Also, as stated in earlier comments, you’ll be able to use AirPlay to stream anything from your NAS via an iOS/Mac device.
The only feature you’ll lose is the ability to say “hey Siri, play song x”
AirPlay is lossless, too.
The current setup works very well, except I have to us a physical thing (remote or remote app on iPhone) to play something.
Infuse is missing the sort-ability of KODI (e.g. sorting by Director, or by rating), does MrMC have these features?
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.
Disclaimer: I don't use Plex for music or have any Apple smart home devices. Just trying to throw out an idea that maybe possible. I use Plex with my NAS for video content and stream it to all my devices.
I'd love to see them reintroduce AirPort routers powered by an A-series chip.
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.
I'm really dreaming big now, but some sort of AirPort central base station with SFP+ for my FTTH connection and 4xPoE to power and feed a bunch of HomePods would be brilliant.
May be Apple TV in the living room should take the job of Routing as well. ( They said the AirPort Extreme team were folded into Apple TV team. )
I want a WiFi 6 AirPort Router.
It seems like they always bring a new SoC in under their last commoditized SoC. What's the next smallest thing for them to stuff a new SoC into? Airpods?
Apple Watch S5 - Sensors + Speaker + Markup = $99
/s jk jk
Surprisingly, it also supports peer to peer play if you don't have a wifi connection.
[1] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/specs/#specs:~:text=Audio...
[2] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/specs/#specs:~:text=Wirel...
It's one thing for phones to have these lock-in properties, but not being able to aux in audio into a speaker feels wild to me.
You can see that this documented [1] in a footnote [2].
[1] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/#overview-sound-handoff-1...
[2] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/#footnote-2:~:text=speake...
(text fragment highlighting links only work in Chrome)
From the Apple website
If he's interested, please let me know.
Bit bigger than the Express obviously. Hmm I may even have a really old one of those, too.
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 possible. But the more reference points you have, the faster/more accurate it will be.
When used with the U1 chip also in your iPhone, having a HomePod mini around could enable Apple's forthcoming AirTags to be located more quickly/precisely. Or enable a better AR experience. They're basically GPS satellites for in-home position finding. (Ultra-wideband uses time-of-flight, just like GPS)
One thing I don't get, why Apple doesn't push them more as computer speakers. Mojave still doesn't support them as a pair, and the latency is too big for normal speaker usage. Should be a relative easy sell with a new Mac, if macOS supported them as a proper pair with low latency.
I would have switched back to Spotify but after the Apple One announcement, it’s too late. They lost me.
"Not compatible with non-HomeKit Thread devices."
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.
It seems like Apple is the problem here, not Spotify.
It has a 2-second lag, and still regularly loses sync for me.
Apple didn't even bother to update macOS to support stereo homepods over Airplay.
Just the other day:
> "Hey Siri, favorite this song on Spotify."
> "Sorry, Spotify hasn't added support for that." (paraphrased)
I've looked on the Apple store, the local electronics store, but everything I would expect to see in a range of smart devices are very notably absent.
For example, I can't find a reasonably sized multi-port Apple HomeKit power board.
I can't find motion or person presence sensors.
In fact, just about the only products that seem to exist are "smart" light bulbs, but I don't see what's so smart about paying AUD 150 for a light bulb...
Power strips: https://www.imore.com/best-homekit-power-strips
Most philips hue products are Homekit compatible, if you have a hue bridge.
As far as the “best” lighting/switch products, I would recommend Lutron Caseta. Not cheap though!
If you’d like to reliably detect when someone is home (their phone is on wifi), you can dive into Homebridge. The plug-in you want is this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-people
With the homebridge-people plugin, you can expose an occupancy sensor in Homekit, and trigger a scene when everyone leaves the house, for example. Or the inverse, when someone arrives home. This is more reliable than the built in Homekit location based triggers, because those work with GPS. You don’t always want your lights turning on just because you drove past your house. :)
It seems that vendors aren't manufacturing these for all regional power outlet formats.
You wouldn't be able to get the audio from an Xbox for example?
This system doesn't work when we're playing Nintendo Switch, in which case the audio just comes out of the projector. For our purposes, that's fine; but I could see how someone playing Xbox would want that to be hooked into their audio system. I wonder if there would be some way to pipe audio through an old Mac mini to accomplish this. At that point it's probably worth just paying the Sonos tax.
Fwiw, it does look like they are advertising stereo pairing as an out-of-the-box feature
I use a Google Home in my kitchen almost exclusively for hands-free timers and music control when cooking/cleaning. My Home got bricked by an update last month and was going to just forgo replacing it because I am getting tired of Google's diminishing support of their products and the privacy concerns.
My only concern is Siri is easily the worst assistant when compared to Google or Amazon. I just hope it is good enough to handle my music and timer requests.
There's already a way to use Siri skills to access OK, Google through your iPhone [1] without letting Google listen in on everything you say. It would be awesome if there were a way to do this from HomePods...
1: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3393159/how-to-use-hey...
I'd judge it to be 80% reliable in picking up commands (but the way human memory works, it's likely much higher than that but the times it fails are more memorable)
But HomePod is a phenomenal speaker.
At least that was my experience before I gave away a gifted Google Home because it refused to let me proceed through setup without disabling a bunch of privacy settings across my entire Google account.
If you have other Apple devices, it works just like Siri on your phone. I've got one in my kitchen and it can hear me anywhere in my 3 bedroom house. It's pretty impressive from an audio recognition standpoint.
Amazon and Google both have much better home assistants built in.
However, it is more expensive than the HomePod mini, not wireless (needs to be plugged in), & although it integrates tightly with iOS it can’t be as smooth as HomePod probably is (I haven’t tried the HomePod myself).
It's actually really decent at the use cases it's explicitly designed for, but completely falls apart if you have any edge cases. Bear in mind though, these are what Apple thinks of as edge cases like "What if I prefer Spotify over Apple Music," not necessarily a reasonable person's idea of an edge case.
I, personally, didn't notice much of a difference between the HomePod and the Sonos 5 though I know people who say the HomePod is markedly better. The Sonos, however, has a line-in and works with an Alexa unit if you have it (though, strangely, it's not built in). If not for the privacy sensitivity with Alexa I'd probably go for the Sonos, but the privacy and integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem kind of tips it back to Apple for me.
I have only used an Echo in the past but fwiw Google does specify what they store and how they use it. https://store.google.com/magazine/google_nest_privacy
I also use it with Apple Music and from time to time as an AirPlay device. It also works really well for those purposes.
I don't typically use Siri for reading emails, text messages, or other things like that. I will ask it what the weather is as I walk out the door to determine whether I need to grab an umbrella or a hoodie or something. It also works well enough for that.
Assistant wise, you'd get better results from Google Assistant/Alexa. Apple has been lagging and playing catchup (from not having multiple timers in the initial HomePod release to adding voice recognition last year when Google had it earlier). The answers are more limited like your iOS Siri (don't expect anything better). Even worse, it seems like HomePod's Siri backend is different than say an iPad's which generally means it's a generation behind. For instance, the HomePod doesn't really support continuous conversations/follow-up questions.
Siri is ok finding popular music, but if you ask it to play the "The A-List: K-Pop playlist" vs. "The A-List: Pop Music" for instance, it's a tossup on which it chooses dependent on the alignment of the planets. The same goes for musician names where if it kinda sounds like the more popular musician, it will tend to choose the more popular one. Furthermore, if you have a specific version of a song (say acoustic/live version), then the HomePod always tends to pick the most popular version of the song even if you say "acoustic" or any other hints.
There are "Shortcuts" on the HomePod. You can use it to add Todos to third party apps (if you don't want to use the Apple Reminders integration) or play a podcast from a third party player from your iPhone/iPad. Not as useful as Alexa skills and every now and then it takes some magical phrase to correctly activate them. The main problem with Siri beyond lacking knowledge is that Siri lacks consistency. While it's ambitious in letting you say anything versus the narrower "scripted keywords" that Alexa understands, if you say something one day that it perfectly understands and repeated it exactly a week later, you have no idea if Siri will still understand you. I read about this complaint before against Siri, but having experienced it more than a few times now, it is incredibly frustrating. And Siri sometimes (unintentionally) mocks you by repeating all the main parts of your request back to you correctly, but it does the wrong thing.
Hardware wise, the HomePod sounds better than a Google Home, Google Home mini, and Echo Dot. But of course, the others are cheaper. Two HomePods do sound better than one. Besides the better output, the mics are significantly more sensitive even in a loud environment. If you're putting the HomePod in a noisy kitchen or playing music loudly, then a HomePod can pick up your voice without you shouting at it.
The Apple TV integration has gotten better, but even with two HomePods, a relatively cheap home theater setup sounds better and can be used for all your TV content instead of just from your Apple devices. If you place the HomePods right next to the TV at roughly the same height, they sound good but if you move them too low/high or around the room, it does sound "off". The whole spatial two HomePod thing kinda does work for music in a room, but for TV content, it does not.
Really the other assistants are as good if not better than the HomePod, then the only distinguishing (non-privacy) feature is if you want a premium and pretty good way to listen to Apple Music. Maybe a few more music services which hopefully will be available soon. I don't regret buying the HomePods at all because I do like listening to music on them, but all of the assistant and "smart" tech is available on your iPhone if it can hear you.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...
Google and Amazon need to work harder to get presence so they push them out using aggressive pricing.
I'd prefer to swap out the cable in case it comes with a standard 6' and I want to tuck the speaker next to an outlet on a shelf.
Every 6 months or so I try Siri and am shocked it still can’t understand basic things my kids are using Alexa for.
But it's not 100% clear if when they say Intercom supports all iOS/WatchOS/MacOS devices, they mean you can communicate from one of those devices to a HomePod, or whether you can communicate amongst any of those devices (no HomePod required).
I can’t wait for reviews and comparisons on the sound of HomePod vs. HomePod mini.
How did you arrive at that? Is $20 really the deciding factor for you?
Echo Dot: 100 x 100 x 89 mm HomePod Mini: 98 x 98 x 84mm
Without having dedicated Apple TV/iPad/Homepod at home, you can't access devices in Home app, even if you have VPN.
This meant that even at home I had to unlock the phone and wait for it to connect to Wifi before Siri would do anything with devices. This delay made it impractical to use Siri for controlling devices through Siri.
Maybe it's possible to make it work with VPN by also forwarding some autodiscovery packets, but I'm not sure.
I'm sure my wife is going to drive me up the wall with the intercom feature though!
A personalized experience. For each person in the family. Together with Siri, HomePod can learn and recognize up to six different voices and create a personalized listening experience for everybody at home. So when they say “Hey Siri, play some music” they’ll get a mix of songs customized just for them — picked from Apple Music based on their listening history and personal preferences. And with Personal Requests, they can access their own messages, reminders, lists, and calendars, and make and receive phone calls.
Generally speaking, while the sound is excellent that user interface and implementation are atrocious.
...
Nope. Not useful enough yet.
As long as it's sending data to Apple, it's anything but private.
This is a full 5 years after the Amazon Echo was introduced.
This just adds to my creeping feeling that innovation is dead at Apple.
Oh wait, it’s not available in my country...
HomePod mini works effortlessly with your Apple devices.
and only apple devices.
Burned myself on apple years ago, got myself an ipod, learned my lesson with itunes, sold it, never come back.
Too bad it seemingly relies so much on Siri. I haven’t been able to make Siri play me any music what so ever, despite multiple attempts. Once I’ve started playing, I can’t even make Siri skip tracks forward or backwards. Absolutely worthless.
Caveat: not using Apple Music.
So unless this has some other redeeming quality over “Siri in your living room”, I don’t think it will sell well. The original HomePod regularly went on sale for 33% off already.
The name is a big mistake (they should call it just "HomePod", and the larger one "HomePod Max / Studio". Right now they are forcing people to compare it to the $30 smart assistants by the other two. It's not evident from the name that the HomePod "Mini" isn't competing with the Google Home Mini or Amazon Echo Dot.
Google / Amazon / Apple
Low end: Home Mini / Echo Dot / None, but people will think HomePod Mini sits here
Mid: Home / Echo / HomePod Mini
High: Home Max / Echo Studio / HomePod
