Ondrej Holzman Tim Cook saved it until the very end of the more than two-hour keynote that opened the WWDC developer conference on Monday. Apple's executive director, or his colleague Phil Schiller, presented the HomePod as the sixth and at the same time the last major innovation, with which the Californian company wants to attack on several fronts. It's all about music, but HomePod is also smart.
It has been rumored for a long time that Apple will also want to enter the growing segment of smart speakers, in which assistants such as Amazon's Alexa or Google's Assistant are hidden, and indeed the iPhone maker has done so.
However, at least for now, Apple presents its HomePod in a completely different way – as a wireless music speaker with great sound and elements of intelligence, which remain a bit in the background for the moment. Since the HomePod will not start selling in Australia, Great Britain and the United States until December, Apple still has half a year to show what it actually has planned with the new product.
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But we already know quite a lot, at least on the musical side. "Apple changed portable music with the iPod, and with the HomePod, it will now change how we enjoy music wirelessly in our homes," said Apple's marketing guru Phil Schiller, who has always focused on music.
This differentiates Apple from competing products such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, which are speakers, but are not primarily intended for listening to music, but for controlling the voice assistant and completing tasks. The HomePod also integrates the capabilities of Siri, but at the same time it also attacks wireless speakers such as Sonos.
After all, Sonos was mentioned by Schiller himself. According to him, HomePod is a combination of speakers with high quality music reproduction and speakers with smart assistants. Therefore, Apple has focused significantly on the "sound" internals, which even drive the A8 chip known from iPhones or iPads.
The round body, which is a little over seventeen centimeters high and can resemble, for example, a flower pot, hides a bass speaker designed by Apple, which points upwards and thanks to the powerful chip it can deliver the deepest and at the same time the cleanest bass. Seven tweeters, each with its own amplifier, are supposed to provide a great musical experience, and together they can cover all directions.
This is related to the fact that the HomePod has spatial awareness technology, thanks to which the speaker automatically adapts to the reproduction of the given room. This is also helped by the A8 chip, so it doesn't matter if you put the HomePod in a corner or somewhere in the space - it always gives the best possible performance.
However, you will get the maximum musical experience when you connect two or even more HomePods together. Not only will you get greater musical performance, but in addition, both speakers will automatically work together and retune the sound according to the needs of the given space. On this occasion, Apple presented the improved AirPlay 2, with which it is possible to create a multiroom solution from HomePods (and control it via HomeKit). Still doesn't remind you of Sonos?
HomePod is of course connected to Apple Music, so it should perfectly know the user's taste and at the same time be able to recommend new music. This brings us to the next part of the HomePod, the "smart" one. For one thing, it's as easy to connect to HomePod with an iPhone as it is with AirPods, you just need to get close, but more important is the six microphones, waiting for orders, and the integrated Siri.
The voice assistant, in the form of traditional colored waves, is hidden in the upper, touchable part of the HomePod, and the microphones are designed to understand commands, even if you are not standing right next to the speaker or loud music is playing. Controlling your music is thus very easy.
But of course you can also send messages, ask about the weather or control your smart home this way, because the HomePod can turn into a smart home hub. You can then connect to it via the Domácnost application from your iPhone or iPad from anywhere, in addition to turning off the lights in the living room with a simple call.
It can be expected that Apple will continue to work hard in the coming months to improve Siri, which gradually becomes a much more proactive assistant and Apple uses this technology to power more and more activities. By December, we should be wiser in this regard, because so far it has been mainly about music, but the competition is not sleeping in that smart area either.
The price of the HomePod, which will be available in white or black, was set at $349 (8 crowns), but it is not yet clear when it will go on sale in other countries outside of the three mentioned. But it won't happen before the beginning of 160.
My guess is that the HomePod will cost CZK 10 here. I wonder if they will be treated when "Hey, Siri" comes from the TV, for example :-)
Voice recognition is already on iOS. :-)
I would also like to know if they will have a multi-user approach, so that the HomePod knows who in the household is asking it and chooses an answer accordingly
The recognition already works, as if someone else can't hack my Siri (at least from my experience). If it then gives relevant results to each user, it would be appropriate (and I would expect it).
Yes, I also added VAT and the price is around 10499 :-). Ideally they should get under 10k. Tech 9999 would look nice ;-).
Otherwise, voice recognition really works now. I tried it with the iPhone and my daughter wanted to hack my plans and chatted on the phone and it didn't do anything, so it's probably taken care of ;-).
Thanks for confirming the voice recognition; aren't they the only ones who already have it working? :-) I came to the price by comparing similarly priced products on the US website and comparing them with the prices on the CZ website; I think it cost me something like 11 CZK for the three-person package (I only looked at the iPhone and Watch, where there was nothing for 200 USD)
Like I didn't try to fool it somehow and I didn't try it on 50 people, but it worked ;-). I haven't even tried it on twins :-D.
But as long as we don't have a lot of HomeKit stuff, it probably won't be that interesting, we'll see. I enjoyed it on my mobile phone for a few days, but it doesn't work in Czech and sometimes it didn't understand my English ;-). Usually it was some kind of mistake like bad word order rather than pronunciation.
Although I consider myself an early adopter and a fan of new technologies, I still have trouble putting cameras or microphones in my apartment with a constant connection to the Internet. I do trust Apple a bit more than Google or Amazon with their approach to privacy, but still - recording a voice for a few kbps is no problem sneaking that data stream out.
You hit it right. I wouldn't mind if he pulled music from his own library, managed to control blinds, air conditioning, lights, and even flush the toilet, all without the need to connect to the Internet.
I thought about that too, but on the other hand, it's probably not entirely relevant. Every phone / tablet / computer in the home already has a microphone / camera in it. So it probably won't happen that much again :),
For me, it's definitely a step in the right direction, last year I almost bought such a smart speaker, but luckily I happened to find one that wasn't completely ideal, but 5 times cheaper ;-).
With the price of the idelane under 10k, it will be great competition even just for the reprak, so definitely quite competitive.