HomePod First Impressions
I jumped on the bandwagon yesterday and purchased the Apple HomePod. I have been using Amazon Echo (Alexa) for almost two years now. I have my entire home (lights, thermostat, etc.) automated and there is an Alexa-enabled device in nearly every corner of my house — always at my beckon call. One of those devices is a Sonos One
So why did I get HomePod? Well curiosity primarily. A small part of me also wanted the tight integration I expect with Apple products. I use to-do lists often and it frustrated me that I could not get Alexa (without jumping through IFTTT and Todist hoops) to simply manage my iOS Reminders and Alexa’s iOS to-do app is awful. Alexa is amazing! Amazon’s app UIs not so much.
I also subscribe to Apple Music and playing music over Sonos is cumbersome as it does not support AirPlay (or even Bluetooth). It requires a separate Sonos app and manages its own separate playlists and queues for playback.
First Impressions
Apple defines HomePod as first an amazing sound and second a smart assistant. This is very much the truth; however, smart assistant is a very, very distant second.
It is immediately evident Apple has packed the HomePod with a ton of audio tech.
The HomePod sounds far and away better than anything I own — it beats out my Sonos PlayBar, despite it’s compact size, and Sonos One. The bass is deep and palpable. It sounds clear and vibrant. Listening to familiar songs I notice now new parts of a track I never noticed before.
Siri is unfortunately Siri. Compared to Alexa or Google Assistant, Siri has lagged behind in capabilities and comprehension compared to other voice assistants. It’s gotten better in iOS 11, but still isn’t leader of the pack but in catch-up mode. HomePod Siri (because there is a different Siri for every Apple device, each with different capabilities) lacks a lot of functionality at launch you assume it would have.
Diving Into the Details
Sound
HomePod is a speaker, first and foremost. This is immediately evident when you play your first track on it. Apple has packed the HomePod with a ton of audio tech, and the Apple audio engineers should feel proud about what they accomplished.
There are arrays of microphones and horns that power the sound behind HomePod. Around the base sits an array of seven tweeters. Above the tweeters are an array of six microphones, with a seventh buried in the middle of the device. Throughout the core there is a compact bass driver. The top sports a touch display and the A8 chip, which makes up the advanced audio processing brains.
Within 10 seconds of first playing, HomePod self-adjusts to the room it is in. It does this using the seventh microphone buried deep inside the device. This microphone listens to changes in the sound waves reflecting off nearby objects (like walls). It then uses that information to decide how to bounce ambient tracks in the music (like background vocals) off nearby objects vs beam forming other parts of a track (like lead vocals) straight into the room. The bass is also mixed in so it isn’t too strong but is very much discernible. It does all this on its own without any input from the user and calibrates within seconds for its location. It then can later detect if it’s been moved and recalibrate automatically. In short the HomePod will have consistent high-quality sound regardless where you put it.
Other Stuff
Before I dive into Siri lets go over some other things. The HomePod comes in two colors: black (or space grey) and white. I own the white one and it looks great! The top display is also white and shows no fingerprints, unlike the black one which I’ve heard can show a lot of smudge marks depending on how the light hits it.
The HomePod is wrapped in a very interesting rubbery fabric. The mesh design looks elegant. It also is probably very tempting to bored cats. If you’re a pet owner consider getting AppleCare+. The repair costs for a HomePod is almost equal to the original cost of the device, so adding a $39 AppleCare+ plan to your $400 scratching post is probably wise.
Other than the power cord there are no other external ports. HomePod’s power cord is attached to the device. Unlike other Apple products that use a soft rubber the power cord is wrapped in a cloth mesh. The US version uses a simple two-prong plug, no 3rd ground. There are no aux out, line in or any other means to play anything on the HomePod except through AirPlay (and eventually AirPlay2). There is no bluetooth playback support.
The touch display at the top can be used to invoke Siri, adjust the volume, or show the Siri waveform so you know it’s actively listening. (Like all smart speakers HomePod is always passively listening for the “Hey Siri” wake word.) The only complaint I have about the touch display is when you adjust the volume it doesn’t show the actual volume level. Is it at 50, 75, 20 percent? It seems like they could display a number between the + / — icons that magically appear. Instead you have to ask Siri “what’s your volume set at?” There is also no touch control to mute the microphones. It’s annoying.
Siri Sucks More
Invoking Siri works really well. Across the room with music playing, not even facing the speaker it hears me. Sometimes (about 20% or so) my iPad, iPhone or Watch also hears me and responds instead of the HomePod, which is kinda annoying.
Alexa simply does more and everything better in this category. Sorry Apple.
HomePod Siri has the most bare minimum of features and is far behind competitors in the smart speaker space. HomePod Siri can do some basic things: tell you about the weather, add and read items on your to-do list, play a few specific news podcasts (NPR, Washington Post, CNN or FOX News). It also can play select business and sport news pod casts as well. It can tell you how long it’ll take to drive somewhere. And answer other “general knowledge” questions. It also has support to set alarms and a single timer.
The problem is Alexa does all this and more. Alexa’s news briefings are fully customizable. With Siri I have to say “tell me about the weather” then follow up with “tell me about the news,” and then “tell me about business news.” Each invocation (except for weather) plays a daily podcast published by a few news sources. (The Washington Post doesn’t update on weekends by the way.) There is no support for skipping stories, only cancelling the entire podcast playback.
With Alexa I say “Give me my flash briefing,” and I get everything to start my morning: local weather, local Austin news, national news, world news, business news, tech news from a few sources along with a “manager’s tip of the day” from Harvard Business Review. I designed the order and sources in the Alexa app and it’s totally personalized for me. Apple just doesn’t have the content or customization features to compete here yet. I can also skip individual stories I already heard.
Alexa supports multiple timers. If you’re cooking one timer isn’t often enough. You have pasta boiling, something in the oven, etc. So you need multiple timers. Siri only supports one. It is a small thing but it’s also super helpful.
HomePod Siri at launch also cannot tell you anything about your calendar, work with any music service other than Apple’s, make phone calls, or answer random questions (outside the “general knowledge” category). It doesn’t know anything about Apple TV so you can’t say “Play my unwatched episodes of The Magicians on the living room TV.” Both Alexa/FireTV or Google Home/Chromecast can do this.
It also doesn’t work with any of my home automation except the thermostat. Alexa simply does more and everything better in this category. Sorry Apple.
One User to Rule them All
Currently HomePod uses machine learning to improve your music suggestions. It can also manage your to-do lists, notes and text messages.
HomePod fails to recognize different people’s voices. This is a huge miss on Apple’s part and an ongoing frustration I have with all their home appliances — like AppleTV. Apple brags about their machine learning algorithms and how Siri gets to know you better and suggest music, tv and movie content to you. The only problem is none of their devices support multiple users! So if you live alone great — but most of us have roommates or families and so you find your Apple TV app or Apple Music becomes polluted by other people’s content choices. HomePod only exasperates this problem.
Worse is that other people can read and send text messages as if they were you — without your knowing — so long as you’re in range of the HomePod. If you’re out of the house it is supposed to not do this. However, you could be upstairs and another person downstairs can inquire about your messages, to-dos, and send text replies to their heart’s content.
Unless you live alone you’ll probably want to disable the personaliztion feature of HomePod — which defeats one of it’s major selling points of being a musicologist and neuters much of the voice assistant features that are actually useful.
