Slashdot Mirror
Apple Homepod Review: Locked In (theverge.com)
On Tuesday, the review embargo lifted for full reviews of Apple's new HomePod smart speaker. The Verge's Niley Patel shared his thoughts on Apple's new HomePod in video and written form. Patel found that while it offers best-in-class sound for the price, Siri is frustratingly limited and the voice controls only work with Apple Music. Furthermore, Siri can't tell different voices apart, therefore raising some privacy concerns as anyone can come up to the speaker and ask Siri to send and read text messages and other private information aloud. Here's an excerpt from the report: The HomePod, whether Apple likes it or not, is the company's answer to the wildly popular Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. Apple is very insistent that the $349 HomePod has been in development for the past six years and that it's entirely focused on sound quality, but it's entering a market where Amazon is advertising Alexa as a lovable and well-known character during the Super Bowl instead of promoting its actual features. Our shared expectations about smart speakers are beginning to settle in, and outside of engineering labs and controlled listening tests, the HomePod has to measure up. And while it's true that the HomePod sounds incredible -- it sounds far better than any other speaker in its price range -- it also demands that you live entirely inside Apple's ecosystem in a way that even Apple's other products do not. The question is: is beautiful sound quality worth locking yourself even more tightly into a walled garden? As for technical specifications, the HomePod comes in at 6.8 inches high, 5.6 inches wide, and weights 5.5 pounds. It features a high-excursion woofer with custom amplifier, array of seven horn-loaded tweeters, each with its own custom amplifier, six-microphone array, internal low-frequency calibration microphone for automatic bass correction, direct and ambient audio beamforming, and transparent studio-level dynamic processing.
-It has an Apple(tm) Logo.
-It comes in Apple(tm) color scheme.
-It has an Apple(tm) power plug.
-It has an Apple(tm) App.
-It has an Apple(tm) Case.
-It runs Apple(tm) software.
-It has Apple(tm) pricing.
It checks all the boxes, it's much better than Google, Amazon et-al put together, since none of those check ANY of the above boxes.
Recommendation: PURCHASE! Purchase One for every member of the family! for every room!
C'mon. HiFi has been around since the 1950's. It doesn't take six years for a multi-billion dollar company to R&D good sound.
Getting good sound by sitting between two medium to large-sized speakers properly located (rule of 3rds) and toed in is easy. Getting good sound from a small cylinder placed arbitrarily in a room is difficult.
Considering Apple is the leading vendor in low-fidelity head-phones. I suspect the trick is simple to TELL people is has great audio, and most of their customers would believe it without having anything to compare to.