“Apple has officially stepped into the market for stationary speakers powered by virtual assistants, a product category that Amazon.com pioneered in 2015 with the Echo,” Evan Niu writes for The Motley Fool. “Apple has never put all that much weight into being the first to market provided it can be the best when it finally gets there.”
“Consumers will have to consider the HomePod’s premium price tag of $349. That’s nearly twice the $180 that the standard Echo costs,” Niu writes. “Of course, premium pricing is Apple’s typical strategy, and the company attempts to justify this premium by saying that the combined cost of a Wi-Fi speaker and a smart speaker can easily run $400 to $700. That argument implies that the Echo’s sound quality is rather poor, even if it’s connected and smart.”
“HomePod’s integration with Apple Music will be an advantage,” Niu writes. “Apple Music is already the second-largest paid music-streaming platform behind Spotify. Amazon bundles Prime Music into a Prime membership, but most people don’t sign up for Prime for music streaming. Prime Music offers a paltry 2 million songs in its catalog, while Apple Music is now up to 40 million songs.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As for home automation functions, Amazon’s Echo cannot compete with the breadth and security that devices which are compatible Apple’s HomeKit offer.
See all home automation devices that are HomeKit enabled here.
SEE ALSO:
CNET: Apple’s HomePod offers superior sound quality vs. Amazon Echo and Sonos Play:3 – June 6, 2017
Apple’s new HomePod sounds incredible! – June 6, 2017
Apple HomePod takes on Amazon Echo – June 6, 2017
Apple reveals HomePod smart home music speaker – June 5, 2017
Newsflash: Apple sells premium products at premium prices to premium customers – October 23, 2012
Can you connect homepod to your TV (not appletv)
Not with legacy TVs. New TVs could bundle Airplay 2 (unlikely)
Only if your TV supports WiFi speakers and has AirPlay2 compatibility.
As is typical with anything and everything Apple releases, people miss the point of the product and its intended audience. The HomePod is not meant to compete with the likes of Echo or Google Home. It is primarily designed for people with an Apple Music subscription. This same product confusion can be applied to the AppleTV, which was always designed to be an iTunes bridge for your living room TV.
If you don’t use either of those Apple services, these devices ARE NOT GOING TO DO MUCH FOR YOU. And that’s fine. There are other products on the market that will work for you.
I could just as well say the Echo is worthless becuase 1. It does not playback my iTunes library, and 2. I do not shop at Amazon. There is an intended group of people every product is designed for. IF it doesn’t fit your needs or has “features” that are useless to you, then you’re not a target user.
Useless versus overpriced and useless.
Exactly! For everyone living in the 19th century!
“HomePod’s integration with Apple Music will be an advantage,”
One is a Home iPod for playing music while the other is a digital assistant.
iWill get one (1), maybe two (2) of these HomePods. iAm willing to shell out an additional $169.00 ea. for sure. WHY? Because Apple does not SELL YOU OUT!
What is your personal information worth to you? WELL?
The LAST THING iNeed is some BOZO razor thin margin “TROLL MAN” company creeping into (LISTENING IN ON MY CONVERSATIONS WITHIN MY HOME) to attempt to sell me some type of shite product MADE IN CHINA! WAKE THE FCK UP PEOPLE!
What IS …. Your personal privacy WORTH? iWill tell YOU…. A HELL of ALOT more than $169.00 Dollars!
Here we go. Please note, if your connected to the Internet, no matter how, somebody, somewhere has all your information. Don’t be so naive to think you can dodge that bullet by going all in on Apple.
Wife clicks her shutter button on her iPhone and does NOT touch a single additional button. Then walks into our family room and asks for a photo to appear and auto-magically the TV turns itself on, the input sets, and the photo with very fine detail appears. But here is the kicker. It appears in 4k!!
Does my wife have the new HomePod? No she simply purchased a Google Home and a 4K Chromecast. She also installed Google Photos on her iPhone. The work to tie everything together was simply logging into her Google account and that is it. Google made it all just happen.
Honestly, Apple just feels like they have lost their way. One button press the lowest friction you can get! But it is Google doing it with Apple hardware and NOT Apple.
Then consider the ONLY way to see your iPhone photos in 4k on the largest screen in the house is from Google.
BTW, I am talking like crazy fine details you can ask and get with this setup. So say show me Johnny building a sandcastle. Or pretty much anything you can think of. Sally tea party. Sunset. Photos from last month. I mean basically any place, time, person, object, and even color objects, etc.
Amazon echo (dot) connected to a bad ass bluetooth speaker setup (whatever your BT speaker costs), echo dot, got it for $39, Amazon unlimited music, $7.99 a month. Done.
I’ll stick with the echo