“Apple’s HomePod starts with a simple setup and it ends with you forgetting you didn’t always have music surrounding you,” William Gallagher writes for AppleInsider. “In between, though, there are details to consider about that first setup and many options for when you move the HomePod to a new room.”
“If you’ve just got a HomePod then you’ll use your iPhone to set it up and we’ll show you what you need to do. Yet after that initial setup, it’s very unclear what you can do if, for instance, you move the HomePod to another room,” Gallagher writes. “if you’ve initially identified the HomePod as being in your den and now it’s in your office, good luck figuring out how to change that label… The problem is that HomePod doesn’t get its own app as the Apple Watch does and it’s also not found under Bluetooth the way AirPods are. Instead, it’s part of the Home app and each HomePod is a separate accessory that can be included in automation. ”
“Open the Home app on your iPhone. Under its Home section, there will be a button somewhere with an icon of a HomePod and the name of the room you said it’s in,” Gallagher writes. “Tap and hold on that button. If you just tap it, the HomePod either starts playing or pauses its playback if it’s already working. Tapping and holding gets you a very bare screen with a small image of a HomePod and then two buttons. Alarms is just like the alarms section of your iPhone’s Clock app and it’s where you can set new ones or see when your existing ones are going to sound. Then there’s the Settings button and that’s the one to tap.”
Much more, including many screenshots, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is a must-read for most any user of HomePod(s)!
BTW: If you’re on the fence about adding another HomePod to stereo pair, it’s a significant improvement on an already great sounding setup. Do it!
This is a device with a market. You can get a half dozen echos for the price of just on Homepod.
To top it all off, greedy Cook no longer allows parallel streaming (using two or more Homepods to stream music from more than one device). When Cook found out consumers were doing it, they turned the feature off. Now Apple requires a higher priced subscription plan to do parallel streaming. Gotta love Tim Cook’s way of putting Apple customers first. 😳
But I would never allow an Echo in my home. I don’t care if it was free. I don’t care if they paid me.
I have a loft. Wide open space. When playing singularly or in stereo they sound beautiful. It’s hard to believe, even in this day and age that such small devices could fill a large space with music the way they do.
They’re playing Mozart, The Great Piano Concertos right now while I chase down network problems for a client in another state. Isn’t the Internet wonderful?
That being said, the user interface is crap. It took me forever to figure out that Apple just doesn’t allow you to have stereo content from anywhere except iTunes on the Mac.
Another FU finger from Apple.
On the iPhone you can get stereo content from other sources like Tidal. Just apparently not on the Mac. As usual. So if you’re a Mac user and you’re not an iOS user, I can’t recommend them.
gee tim,
what ever happened to the principal of “it just works” ?
the set up and interface sounds more like “it’s a lot of work”
i have no personal, or first hand experience with the home pod, but from what i read and hear, they sound great, although they are a bit on the spendy side.
so for the premium one pays for what is a basically assessed as an excellent product, why not make the set up and operating interfaces simple and straightforward? all it should take is some well thought out and well written code -how much trouble is that?
and then why, as zero and thelonius point out, do you clap iTunes only restrictions on stereo content streaming sources ?
this particular example of enforced participation in mr. apples walled garden ecosystem is beginning to take on some rather trumpian qualities.
by and large those of us who have willingly entered and ensconced ourselves in the apple ecosystem have done so willingly because of the quality of the products and the ease with they work with one another. we like to feel we are there because we chose to be there, rather than feeling like we got lured in and trapped there.
how about reviewing your predecessors decision to expand the iPod beyond the boundaries of the walled garden, and open it up to non apple players…. that seems to have worked out pretty well and greatly expanded sales of those handy little gizmos.
so, here’s a quarter to buy a clue. steve set the original course ethic of “it just works” and let the iPod out of the garden and into the wild.
it worked then, it can work now, you can likely make a bunch more money by expanding your market and making everybody happy than you can by squeezing your captive market – and pissing us off in the process.
just an idle thought
i should qualify the phrase “open it up to non apple players” a poor choice of words. i didn’t mean non apple devices i meant make it open to use to those who were trapped in the windows system
@dr. S
👍👍