Apple today announced HomePod, a breakthrough wireless speaker for the home that delivers amazing audio quality and uses spatial awareness to sense its location in a room and automatically adjust the audio. Designed to work with an Apple Music subscription for access to over 40 million songs, HomePod provides deep knowledge of personal music preferences and tastes and helps users discover new music. HomePod features a large, Apple-designed woofer for deep, clean bass, a custom array of seven beam-forming tweeters that provide pure high frequency acoustics with incredible directional control and powerful technologies built right in to preserve the richness and intent of the original recordings. HomePod will be available starting in December, initially in Australia, the UK and the US.
“Apple reinvented portable music with iPod and now HomePod will reinvent how we enjoy music wirelessly throughout our homes,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. “HomePod packs powerful speaker technology, Siri intelligence and wireless access to the entire Apple Music library into a beautiful speaker that is less than 7 inches tall, can rock most any room with distortion free music and be a helpful assistant around your home.”
HomePod is designed for voice control with an array of six microphones, so users can interact with it from across the room, even while loud music is playing. By saying, “Hey Siri, I like this song,” HomePod and Apple Music become the perfect musicologist, learning preferences from hundreds of genres and moods, across tens of thousands of playlists, and these music tastes are shared across devices. Siri® can also handle advanced searches within the music library, so users can ask questions like “Hey Siri, who’s the drummer in this?” or create a shared Up Next queue with everyone in the home. HomePod, Apple Music and Siri deliver the best music experience in the home that streams ad-free directly to HomePod.
As a home assistant, HomePod is a great way to send messages, get updates on news, sports and weather, or control smart home devices by simply asking Siri to turn on the lights, close the shades or activate a scene. When away from home, HomePod is the perfect home hub, providing remote access and home automations through the Home app on iPhone or iPad.
Audio Innovation & Advanced Technologies
At just under 7 inches tall, HomePod represents years of hardware and software innovation:
– Apple-designed upward-facing woofer, paired with the custom A8 chip, enables bass management through real-time software modeling that ensures the speaker delivers the deepest and cleanest bass possible, with low distortion;
– custom array of seven beam-forming tweeters, each with its own amplifier, provides well-balanced smooth timbre as well as precise directional control of a multitude of beam shapes and sizes;
– Apple-designed A8 chip provides the brains behind the advanced audio innovations;
– automatic room-sensing technology allows HomePod to quickly learn its position in a room, whether it’s in a corner, on a table or in a bookshelf, and within seconds, is perfectly optimized to deliver an immersive music listening experience wherever it is placed;
– six-microphone array with advanced echo cancellation enables Siri to understand people whether they are near the device or standing across the room, even while loud music is playing;
– Siri waveform appears on the top to indicate when Siri is engaged, and integrated touch controls also allow easy navigation;
– automatic detection and balance of two speakers using both direct and reflected audio to deliver amazing audio wirelessly for an even more immersive experience; and
– easy setup that is as intuitive as setting up AirPods — simply hold an iPhone next to HomePod and it’s ready to start playing music in seconds.
Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of Apple hardware, software and services. With HomePod, only after “Hey Siri” is recognized locally on the device will any information be sent to Apple servers, encrypted and sent using an anonymous Siri identifier.
Pricing and Availability
HomePod will be available for $349 (US) in white and space gray starting in December initially in Australia, the UK and the US.* HomePod is compatible with iPhone 5s and later, running iOS 11.
* Pricing in Australia and the UK will be announced later this year.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: That is a surprisingly low price for such a device. Apple’s HomePods will sell like hotcakes!
Like anyone will chuck their surround sound system for this joke.
I guess its popularity will depend on whether its actually going to replace a surround system or be in one’s Home office away from everything else..
Course trying to hear one, when available, in an Apple Store will be a challenge, unless they actually intend to make an enclosed listening area for one.
Gee botvinnik, you seem so smart and knowledgable.
You’re eminently qualified to win a Darwin award.
Hope that happens soon…
Re: date…a missed opp to not have ready early/mid fall. Of all the news today, this tops the items fitting for a Christmas gift. Maybe Apple has under-promised, but will over deliver.
Wow where is this fantasy world of his where everyone has a top quality surround sound system or indeed have one but wouldn’t be able to afford an additional device like this that is so much more flexible than that system as and when needed. The residents of cloud cuckoo land aren’t even that lacking in vision.
So you think this is marketed at people with surround sound systems, huh? I’m thinking about it for my bedroom.
I can’t speak to your needs and desires, but in our bedroom is a clock radio that already has an iPhone dock. It is infinitely more useful than this thread bobbin thing. I don’t think we’ll waste the space on this music rental interface.
Really, a clock radio is more useful than this even though you haven’t even tested it as yet to make a comparison. Those long retired designers of the clock radio must be throwing their dementia medicine in the air to hear that fulsome praise of their work.
Might not replace my surround sound system, but will work great on my patio or bedroom or kitchen or front porch. It’s mobile.
Wow someone who has more than half a brain, sad mind when that is a compliment on here these days.
If the pairing sucks as much is the AirPods do which constantly have to be re-paired what a joke this will be. . Then throw dumbass Siri into the mixed and it will be a big mess in space gray or white. Lol
I have never had to re-pair my AirPods – these things pair and work better than anything else out there.. Maybe you have one part that is defective?
I switch my AirPods between iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro, and I have endless problems with the pairing. Sometimes when I take both out to talk to someone, the phone defaults back to playing through the phone speaking, and I have to manually re-select the AirPods. And sometimes have to do that twice before it “takes.”
Well, I don’t think this is a failure of the Airpods. If I am in my living room with my iPhone, iPad, MBook, and Apple TV, my Beats BT (with the same chip) doesn’t know which of the multiple devices it is paired with is the one I want to listen to. I have to tell whichever device I want to connect to PowerBeats. The devices all perfectly paired and ready for action; I just have select which device I want to hear. Maybe at some point the “ears” will be able know what device has my attention, but they can’t do that now, and I don’t know of any BT headphones can.
Not according to Apple Store employees. They recognize the issue with no answers. AirPods suck!
… and yet they continue to get mostly superb reviews, clearly an overblown sense of self importance creeping in there Mr Skeletor.
How about you listen to it first, you terminally-negative, major asshole, knee-jerk fuck?
I actually like the simplicity of it. no wires or multiple speakers, sort of like a sound bar. I love minimalism
You’re always such a shit bot-wipe.
Hell, not so smart are you?
Look up “Darwin Award”….
New for 2017: Hi Fi Mono Sound, in the comfort of your own home!!!
Apple dives to the lowest rung on the audio ladder. No single device, no matter how many speakers it has, is going to sound great. Unless it gets lazy, Sonos should not have anything to worry about.
This is just an Apple Music interface intended to push more people into renting music. The herd mentality just never dies. Apple claims it has so many songs but all that these services push ad nauseum is the usual overproduced big label payola.
One plug a Mac or iPad into any decent stereo system for the price of a wire, and it will sound 1000% percent better.
I am very reluctant to claim that something would sound better or worse than some hing Lear before actually hearing both. Based on the engineering, though, I suspect this thing will sound quite well. Perhaps not as good as a $1,000 home theatre system, but that would be unrealistic to expect. It would likely sound better than the cheapo $400 home theatre packages from Best Buy.
I can’t remember when was the last time I saw anyone listening to stereo sound the way it should be (with speakers separated at the distance equivalent to the distance from the listener). Those Bose, Sonos or JBL “stereo” Bluetooth bricks (or pills) are ridiculous. The L / R speakers are barely inches apart, there is literally no discernible stereo image.
Firstly, for all you nay-sayers out there – RELAX!
You haven’t even been in the same room as the product, let alone heard the sound quality so NO ONE on this forum is qualified to rip it to shreds!
Secondly, for the people saying the sound quality will be crap – re-watch the keynote! Phil Schiller said that you can have many of these in a room so if you want you can have quad sound!
Thirdly, you’ve all missed the point of this product.
It’ a HOMW HUB. As this device develops it will be the centre for everything connected to your Mac, your home, your entertainment.
Apple will also open it up to developers so expect an announcement at WWDC18 announcing ‘Homepod kit’!
This is version 1.0 of a new platform for Apple that will be expanded on – think VR!!!!
For example you could ask home hub “show me photos of Washington” and it could project VR images of Washington.
The scope and potential of this device is absolutely massive!
This speaker system also interfaces with Siri. It also interfaces with all HomeKit devices. Yes, they probably want more people to rent music, but I’d say it’s just as much a stealth attempt to get a voice activated home control device into the house.
So does the iPhone I already own.
So what does this little thing do that any decent Airplay compatible speaker setup doesn’t already do?
This speaker at least offers stereo speaker separation:
I like the idea of it, but since I already have a Bluetooth Bose speaker and Siri is already on my phone… I don’t personally feel compelled to buy one.
I didn’t realise there are people who still have surround systems in their homes. Well, those most likely won’t be replaced by this device (nor do I think Apple really wants to do that).
People of my generation grew up coveting high-end stereo systems. In our middle age, we were putting together home theatres with surround sound.
Today’s young and middle-aged folks have Bose soundbars under their TVs and can’t be bothered by multiple speakers, wires (or wireless setups), receivers/power amps, more wires…
This home speaker is for them. It is a pretty large market. And if it ‘rocks the house’ (as Schiller implied), it will be what a stereo system was for people of my generation (and older, like Botvinnik here).
When listening to Crapple Music’s 128 AAC Lossy Files you do not need a good speaker. That is what Beats d.b.a Apple Music streams.
I have CDs ripped to iTunes in Apple Lossless and have a nice set of Focals hooked up which sound very nice and a set of B&W Headphones.
The two questions I have yet to see answered are these:
1- Can you stream to these as an AirPlay device?
2- Will a pair of these work with an Apple TV as the sound system?
If it is just linked to rental music no thank you.
You lost me at Crapple. Go fuck yourself?
Compressed, DRMed, low bitrate is not quality and not worth $10 a month. Apple under Tim Cook has turned into another company that wants to scratch your wallet every month like clockwork.
Another Apple let down. They didn’t even sell it as a smart speaker at all, the new Siri capabilities were underwhelming too, they don’t seem to want to promise too much. We were hoping for an Alexa competitor and what we got was an Apple Music accessory. Hey, at least Siri has a new voice!
Jeff Bezos is laughing his ass off right now.
I am buying two. I used to have two huge Infinity tower speakers. Bigger is not necessarily better. My current surrround system has four tiny speakers a sub woofer and a center speaker. And sure when I am properly seated, they sound great. But most of the time, I end up listening to JBL Bluetooth speakers for the convenience.
Keep your old Hi Fi system. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect this Home Pod thing will not allow you to plug in a server with your own music, or play back any other source besides what Apple serves you.
As for the fidelity of sound: it is true that bigger is not necessarily better, but in audio, that is predominantly the case. Ultimately, a speaker needs to move air in order to create sound. A dinky speaker array does that very poorly, especially when the speakers are all in one point of the room.
You have only begun down the audiophile journey. For next to nothing, you can now buy lightly used audio equipment that will amaze you. Don’t be tempted by cheap and easy noisemakers. A proper hi fi system is a lifetime investment, you can upgrade components as your budget or living situation allows, and even the casual listener can sense the dramatic difference. And if Apple Music is what you must have, your real amp with real speakers will make that sound better in every way than a HomePod or Bluetooth speaker ever could. My brother has his audio system set up so that his music, archived on a NAS, is playing on his Klipsch speakers before he even walks in the door. A touch of his iPhone will bring up any music he has ripped from his enormous CD collection acquired since ~1985.
A desktop $350 device will not do anything like that. You will talk, shout, and argue with it, but you can’t have a nice playlist shown to you on the coffee table iPad. And then to top it all off, your $350 device will have have enormous distortion and bandwidth limitations. It will have no bottom end. The drummer’s cymbals will sound like static instead of a crisp response. The speaker typically introduces more distortion than any other component in a modern sound system fed with digital source material. That’s okay by some people. Some people care more about their home decorating than the quality of sound they hear. They just don’t have an ear for detailed music, a common problem with much of the overproduced electronic crap that we hear everywhere now. It’s a real shame.
I see this HomePod thing as Apple’s attempt to lure people down a path of forever renting music. People who own these dinky speakers will never know truly high fidelity music. They will never inherently set up their room to naturally take advantage of (or solve problems with) the acoustics of the room. They will never hear the billions of deep cuts from old artists that are unavailable on Apple Music, or in any nondigital form. These people will never hear the full dynamic range of an SACD, DVD-A, AIFF, ALAC, or FLAC file with speakers that can actually recreate the whole acoustic range with a very low noise floor. They will never feel the bass. They will never hear the “flaws” of a live concert recording. Apple Music provides computerized overproduced commercial shlock. When you stop paying your monthly fee, the noise stops.
Don’t fall for false economy and false convenience. If you care about music, collect it and own it. Play it back on a system that sounds great. It music matters, act like it really does.
Gosh, that thing is UGLY. Looks like a mutated spindle of thread. Yuk.
Maybe there’s an option similar to the Google Home device that allows you to customize the outside.
But… But….. it’s designed by Apple of California! Aka China
BTW – It is “Designed by Apple IN California”, and that is where they are designed; not China.
That thing will be a dust magnet and every kid will want to touch it- especially the white one.
You may think its ugly but I can guarantee the sound is far superior that Googles and Amazon’s offerings.
Why?
Because every in of the device is a speaker!
There is no solid panels around the sides which will dampen sound quality and volume.
The design is totally right for what the device is, you may think it’s ugly but I bet the sound quality will wipe the ass off the others!
Steve Jobs would never announce a speaker device, would he?
Wait..
What?!??
This will outsell echo by multiples. You are clueless.
One can listen to what a person says or one can look at what he actually does:
http://blogs.kcrw.com/music/2015/03/steve-jobs-hi-fi-system/
If you think Steve Jobs placed fashion in front of audio quality, you would be sorely mistaken. Jobs’ Wilson Audio speakers are monsters known for everything but cute appearance.
http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/wilson_grand_slamm_review.htm
At $349 isn’t that almost 2x the price of the standard Echo? How is that a “surprisingly low price”? Was MDN expecting some higher price multiple? Amazon is having another Prime Day next month where I suspect they will discount the line for a day or two selling even more units. This may fill the ‘need’ for some segments of the potential Apple HomePod market now that we have some info on the product..
I think MDN as well as Apple showed during the presentation, they are “combining” two things: something like a Sonos speakers (around 400 USD for the model 5) and Echo (180 USD)
Interesting. So the expectation is at least the sum of the capabilities of the two with no degradation of the utility of either ‘source’ devices?
I’m buying two the day they’re released.
Re: MDN take – LMAO! Best Buy has the Google Home for $109. I could buy 3 to cover the whole house with sound and have enough change left to buy a different colored base.
I’m sure Home Pod will sound better than either Google Home or Amazon Echo, but 2-3x as good? Google Assistant is so far ahead of Siri in what it can do. I think it was said the recordings will be sent anonymously to Apple, meaning nothing done on Home Pod will be personalized. Hey Siri, how’s my commute? Siri: Sorry I can’t help with that.
You cane have those crappy Google Homes… The more you have the more they listen to everything in your house.. I’ll pay a bit more for better sound and MUCH better (or should I just say) Privacy..
You know they all work the same way, right? They listen all the time for a trigger phrase then record and transmit what’s said. The apparent difference is that Google and Amazon associate those recordings with an account – and give the option to review and delete them. Do you have Hey Siri turned on? Apple doesn’t give the option to delete those recordings.
If Google can dedicate terabytes of data storage to constantly record the sounds in my kitchen they’ll be very, very disappointed.
Yeah, but they are not secure or well engineered. I will buy three or four. Homepod will eat all the profits from smart speaker sale. And what will be the driver for sales becides the great unit specs?… The Apple ecosystem. I, and millions of iOS users will forego all business models that use personal info to make a profit. You will see.
I predict it will be every bit as successful as iPod Hi Fi.
Oh, and the rumor was it’d look like a shiny Mac Pro. Instead it looks like Deadpool’s face.
Hey, sorry we’re late to the party. Here is the same thing at twice the price. (Arguable worse AI)
I find it interesting that it won’t be available until almost the beginning of next year depending on when in December it becomes available Boy, how did Apple get so far behind? This announcement was made to try to “freeze” the marketplace. I think I like the design and don’t find the speaker ugly at all. Don’t be fooled, it is being made to go after Google and the like. Music is just the ticket into the door.
If the aim is to get a foot in the door by being a ‘music’ first device, how would it be more convenient than getting a bluetooth speaker that paired with your iphone/ipad? Seems it would lose a portability advantage if Siri constantly needs to have a wireless connection.
I think Apple will be forced to compete head-on with Echo and Google Home from the get-go or suffer poor (relatively) sales.
“How did Apple get so far behind?”…taking the time to do it right.
Yep – History has proved countless times that the company who is first rarely makes the money.
Sony Walkman > iPod is a prime example!
I will be definitely be getting one for my house.
First, I have been an Apple lover and user since 1988 as well as a stockholder for many years.
I hope I am completely wrong, but this does not look like a good strategy. They are charging double the cost of an Amazon Echo to serve a very similar purpose. And the Echo already does it very well. People are not unhappy with it.
When the iPod came to market, there were already plenty of MP3 players. But the iPod provided a far superior experience, so Apple could charge more. It was a game changing device.
Amazon and Google already have their home devices. People love the Amazon Echo and say Alexa is great. It has great functionality and it just works. It’s open to developers and gains new apps and functionality all the time.
Now Apple comes along and announces the HomePod. It serves the same purpose as the Amazon Echo ($180) or Google Home ($130) but uses Siri. Apple is charging $350.
They are coming to the game late. There is already a very strong and well liked competitor on the market, and Apple is charging double. It also looks like their design and interface isn’t radically different than the Echo.
With the iPod, there wasn’t a super popular player already dominating the market at a good price. The iPod was worth the extra cost for the experience it provided. I’m not sure this is the same situation. Apple’s device isn’t significantly different, and there is already a popular model that works well.
If Apple announced it at $199, I could understand it. But $350?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I underestimate how well it will integrate into the Apple ecosystem and how much people want that. It’s main selling point is Apple Music. I don’t use Apple Music and have no intention of ever using Apple Music.
I understand they may be charging more for high quality sound components. I’m afraid they may be misunderstanding the appeal of the device. Most people probably prefer good sound quality on a $150 voice-assisted device over great quality on a $350 voice-assisted device. We’ll see.
The iPod, iPhone, and iPad were unique enough to revolutionize their markets. This looks like a “me too”.
This opinion of yours is exactly inline with the negative opinions coming from people when those other products were introduced. The iPod, iPhone and iPad were all also considered “me too” products. And they were all very expensive and didn’t do anything that other products didn’t already do.
I don’t think Apple cares if it out sells the other “Smart” speakers – it doesn’t need to. As I’ve always said, Apple doesn’t really need this product. In case anyone missed it, there are currently 375 million iOS devices from which Siri is used regularly.
This product is about mindshare, not marketshare. Now whenever anyone talks about “smart” speakers, Apple’s name will be mentioned, when it wasn’t before.
Going first class only costs a little more…….
Yes, first class means using a real stereo system. I will continue to use my Yamaha receiver which supports AirPlay.
Amy old stereo equipment will do. For the same price as Apple’s latest bauble you can add AirPlay to any legacy stereo.
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/wireless_streaming_amplifiers/wxc-50/index.html
I currently have an Amazon Echo, and was excited to see Apple’s version of the home assistant, as most Apple lovers. But, I will wait to see more features before I commit to purchase the HomePod. I was not very impressed with the price, nor the features shown at today’s WWDC. I hope more information will be revealed before the HomePod appears in the Apple Store.
So Amazon and Google still have home systems that can order food, delivery pizza and do other things and Apple just gives us a music speaker of which there are tons out there already. WHAT A LET DOWN
Ugh….looks like a roll of toilet paper….:(
Apple has been notoriously poor at audio products. This one is no different.
Years ago, self-promoter audio charlatan Tomlinson Holman went to “work” at Apple – hired by Steve Jobs when Holman was retained to advise Jobs on an audio system for his new yacht.
This is the best Holman could come up with after all these years? And it isn’t THX Approved?
Too little too late
Does this new item have the functionality to replace Sirport?
$350!! Come on people! $350!!! Really?? Apple does not care about its customers… Apple cares about Apple…. Wake up people! $350 for a Bluetooth speaker???
What am I missing besides Apple logo?
My $100 Google Home sounds awesome
The Home’s audio quality is greatly dependent on placement. After much experimentation I found that it works best backed up to a wall under kitchen cabinets – really directs the sound out. I’m not a fan of bass-heavy systems, but the Echo sounded so tinny and didn’t work well unless it was placed in the middle of a room.