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February 24, 2018
A look at Apple's HomePod
by David MacNeill
I am the target market for HomePod. It’s an all-Apple house, subscribed to Apple Music and iCloud Drive — we’re all in. You can AirPlay other music services and devices to HomePod, but it’s really designed for fanboys like me. Can I order corn flakes from Amazon with it? No. Would I ever want to do that? No.
As a speaker, it is not overly expensive. The sky’s the limit for audiophile-grade speakers so $349 is not outrageous. One aspect that no one has raised in the reviews is that you don’t need a pair of them to fill a room. Pro audio studio monitors like my Yamaha HS system ($400 for the pair plus another $400 for the matching subwoofer/hub) and computer speakers like my Mackies ($100) are always sold in pairs. You only need one HomePod per room. I say it’s the best home sound you can get for the money.
Siri control is very well done — you can talk to it from across the room and it just works, even if music is playing. There’s room for AI improvement, certainly. I asked Siri to play KBSU (local NPR news station) which it streamed perfectly, but when I asked “her†to play KBSX (sister classical station) she couldn’t do do it, saying it could not alter my cue while it is playing. I could not find a voice command to clear the cue. This only happens when streaming internet radio stations, not with music playlists — bug!
These are mere software issues, of course — the hardware is brilliant. We have entered the era of computational audio. Concepts like “stereo†and “surround 5.1†are obsolete. HomePod knows where it is, where the walls are, where the reflective surfaces are that might echo or create standing waves (the muddy sound you get when you place a speaker in a corner). It beamforms the center channel to be in the middle of your room, while ambient sounds mixed left and right go where you’d expect — it’s uncanny. This is the most three-dimensional speaker I’ve ever heard. There is no sweet spot, it’s just loud and clear and everywhere. And if you move HomePod, it recalibrates in seconds. HomePod has iPhone 6-level computing power making it the smartest in its class by a huge margin. That’s a lot of CPU potential — voice apps, anyone?
HomePod is Apple at its best. The thing does exactly what it says it will do, then gives you more than you expected. Best of all, Apple has zero interest in monetizing what you say to your HomePod. Nothing is stored, everything is encrypted end to end. It lives to serve and is totally trustworthy.
Posted by conradb212 at February 24, 2018 8:39 PM