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Apple Will Release Its $349 HomePod Speaker On February 9th (theverge.com) 98

Posted by BeauHD from the long-overdue dept.
After it was delayed in mid-December, Apple finally announced the availability of its new smart speaker. The company announced it will release the HomePod on February 9th and that preorders for the device will start this Friday, January 26th. The smart speaker will initially go on sale in the U.S., UK, and Australia. It'll then arrive in France and Germany sometime this spring. The Verge reports: The company's first smart speaker was originally supposed to go on sale before the end of the 2017, but it was delayed in mid-December. That meant Apple missed a holiday season where millions of smart speakers were sold -- but the market for voice-activated speakers is clearly just getting started. And at $349, Apple's speaker is playing in a very different market than Amazon's and Google's primarily cheap and tiny speakers. The HomePod is being positioned more as a competitor to Sonos' high-end wireless speakers than as a competitor to the plethora of inexpensive smart speakers flooding the market. Despite the delay, Apple doesn't appear to have made any changes to the HomePod -- the smart speaker appears to be exactly what was announced back in June, at WWDC. The focus here continues to be on music and sound quality, rather than the speaker's intelligence, which is the core focus of many competitors' products. The speaker will still have an always-on voice assistant, but Apple's implementation of Siri here will be more limited than what's present on other devices.
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Apple Will Release Its $349 HomePod Speaker On February 9th More

Apple Will Release Its $349 HomePod Speaker On February 9th

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  • You can't buy real friends.
    But lobotomized Siri's
    a close substitute.

  • Amazing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's truly amazing that people are willing to pay to have a bug planted in their home.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Difference being:
      Apple makes money by selling you stuff

      Google makes money by selling your information, this requires spying and Google has been caught numerous times doing the wrong thing.

      Amazon makes money by finding out what you want so they can be the middle man, this requires spying. Amazons goal is to be the ONLY store at the expense of everyone else.

      I have ZERO intention into buying any of these, however I do trust Apple a little more to not sell my information than I do the others.
      If Facebook gets in

      • I admire the patriotism of you west coast USA citizens but why not support eastern Pacific economies for a third of the price, where any conversations are personally monitored by Xi Jinping?

      • Difference being:
        Apple makes money by selling you stuff

        *Currently*. The same apology was made for Microsoft, and then they pivoted and started hoovering up the data too.

        And you don't actually know that, that's just what you're assuming based on their well-oiled public relations machine.

      • Difference being: Apple makes money by selling you stuff

        Google makes money by selling your information, this requires spying and Google has been caught numerous times doing the wrong thing.

        Amazon makes money by finding out what you want so they can be the middle man, this requires spying. Amazons goal is to be the ONLY store at the expense of everyone else.

        I have ZERO intention into buying any of these, however I do trust Apple a little more to not sell my information than I do the others. If Facebook gets into the act, they will offer the WORST of all possible worlds.

        You deserve mod points. Of the four evils you mentioned, Apple is the least evil

    • Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:53PM (#55990459) Homepage Journal

      If you want a smart speaker and are concerned about privacy and spying, Apple is the only way to go [cnet.com].

      For Siri, voice recordings are saved for six months on Apple's voice recognition servers to understand a user better. After that, they're deleted automatically and another copy -- without any identifiers -- helps improve Siri for up to two years. With anonymized IDs, Apple's speakers have a much more compelling argument for not handing over data: They can't find it. In the game of hide and seek with your voice data, the advantage -- for now -- goes to Apple.

      • Does Siri allow you to access and delete your voice recordings like Google does on its privacy dashboard?
        That's right. I didn't think so.

      • Given how Google's core market is the analytics on your data, your data is their "coke classic recipe". If you want to ensure your data is protected and not shared with 3rd parties you wouldn't give it to any company which doesn't focus on your data as their sole core business.

        That includes Apple, but is most specifically focused on Amazon. The former has only reputational reasons to protect your data, the latter has no reason at all.

      • That makes no sense and complete shit. If they keep it for 6 months and know it's tied to a specific user, they just need to have the physical homepod to determine the unique identifier to match up. All they fucking did was increase the bills for lawyers. Cocksuckers. Fucking trying to pull a fast one because they don't have a shit ton of integration features, so they are trying to spin LACK OF FUNCTIONALITY as a feature. This is going to pack a lot of fail in a small box.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MushMouth ( 5650 )

      Hope you keep your cell phone in a soundproof case. It even has it's own network that you can't audit to transmit everything you say

    • A "Smart" speaker for dumb asses!

  • Uhhh... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DigitAl56K ( 805623 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:04PM (#55990219)

    And at $349, Apple's speaker is playing in a very different market than Amazon's and Google's primarily cheap and tiny speakers.

    The Google Home Max is a direct competitor and so far very well reviewed.

  • $349? (Score:3)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @09:06PM (#55990235)
    Seriously? I can buy 4 ecos for that with the current promo. Not that I want to, but still. I get the sense they're only doing this because their investors insist they do, cause it feels like they're setting themselves up for failure.

    • Or one Google Home Max. There is a market for a high end smart speaker too.

  • $350 for Apple's version of Google Home? It better be a grand slam.

    Which it won't be.

    Steve Jobs had the perfect sense of exactly how to package something at exactly the right price point for the consumer. But I think even he would consider $350 to be ridiculous. If he could find a way to create an Apple-esque combination of a portable bluetooth speaker with a wi-fi connected Siri-backed search tool, he'd price it around $200, not too low that it looks cheaper than Apple's "standards", but not too high th

    • I imagine it's supposed to compete with the similarly priced Google Home Max. However, the Max exists in an ecosystem, not as an island. So I can have a Google Home Mini in rooms where a voice assistant is useful, but I don't need music. I can have a Google Home for $100 in rooms where I'd like music, but it doesn't need to be loud. And I can put a Max in rooms where I might host a party.

      And, if I already have a hifi, I can use a Chromecast Audio and a Google Home Mini to get excellent quality sound with vo

      • There’s also something rather important missing from Siri: 3rd party plugins. Apple doesn’t allow these (unless you’re building the next Waze, Uber or WhatsApp) while the competitors do. On its own, Siri isn’t all that useful as a voice controlled assistance. For Alexa there are tons of useful plugins.

        Then again Apple are pitching this thing mostly as a hifi product, according to TFA. A hifi product that doesn’t do multi room audio or even stereo (yet). If they add those fea

        • Thereâ(TM)s also something rather important missing from Siri: 3rd party plugins. Apple doesnâ(TM)t allow these

          This tells you what Apple thinks of Apple users. They're not competent enough to manage plug-ins. All software Apple makes is designed on a holding-your-dick-for-you basis.

      • One of my complaints about Google is that they don't have a headphone or audio out jack on the Home Mini. I have Echo dots hooked up to speakers around my house and would love to replace all of them with Google's product, but having to deal with Bluetooth audio adapters to use the speakers I already have is not worth it.

      • If you're thinking of price, you're not Apple's target customer.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You should aim your comment for Google Home Max which is 220 more than its direct competition. Apple does not sell your information, does not spy, does not use your userid with your voice and does not keep your date beyond 6 months. So spying google is not its direct competitor.

    • Steve Jobs had the perfect sense of exactly how to package something at exactly the right price point for the consumer.

      In most instances, yes. However, this isn't the first time Apple has decided to get into the speaker business; the last time was on Job's watch, and it failed pretty hard in the marketplace: the Apple iPod Hi-Fi [macworld.com].

      Like the Apple iPod Hi-Fi, it looks like they're going to try to position this as an audiophile speaker. I have little doubt from that perspective it's probably a better music device than its competitors; the thing to watch for is to see if people are going to care enough about that this time aro

      • The iPod hifi speaker was actually remarkably good sounding and loud for the price. I think that what held it back was that it was visually a big brick.

    • The iPod Hi-Fi retailed at the Apple Store for $349 in 2006. Hopefully Apple nails it on their second crack.

  • Mouser has speakers for a couple bucks (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You just need to solder some wire on it.

  • Local iTunes Server? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @10:04PM (#55990515) Homepage Journal

    The one thing that the Echo and Google Home both fail at is playing the music I already own from my own server. Both want to sell you a subscription to their music service. Sure, I can use them as dumb bluetooth speakers, but then I don't have the voice control, defeating the purpose. I was hoping that Apple would make their Home Pod work with your local iTunes server, which would be a compelling feature for me, but from the page at apple.com, it doesn't indicate that this is allowed. Instead, they're focusing on their music service.

    • It works as an Airplay2 speaker--anything you can play on any Apple device can be redirected to any airplay device.

    • Phlex creates a voice interface for Plex. Or, as also suggested, you can upload your own music to Google Play and pay only for storage. $24/year is pretty reasonable for 100GB.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by adolf ( 21054 )

      Sonos, then?

      No subscriptions. Just point it at an SMB share somewhere on the LAN.

      • That’s what I like about solutions like Sonos, Kodi and LMS (Squeezebox): they aren’t part of a monolithic ecosystem and they don’t try to hook you into using their rubbish services. Sonos and LMS both play local music files and streams from services like Spotify.
  • I get a far better response from my dog.

  • Pity about no line-in. (Score:3)

    by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @11:31PM (#55990803)
    I would conceivably be interested in a pair of homepods (if the sound is good enough) to replace my good but bulky floorstanding speakers. I do like the streaming concept.
    However, unless I overlooked it, it has no external input. That is a dealbreaker for me; because I would like to use it as a speaker for everything, including tv, dvd/bluray/cd, a console when the kids grow up, etc. Hence ideally I could go with a line out from my audio amp to these speakers so they would be truly universal.
    It looks like this is not possible, or is there a workaround?
    • For example, is there a simple device that takes line in, converts to digital and transmits the sound over airplay? That could be a workaround.

  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2018 @11:34PM (#55990825)
    And the crowd goes mild.
  • I mean, $349 is a joke, right?

  • Home, Open the Pod Bay Doors!

  • Will it be placed in the cellar? Will it make an alien copy of me while I sleep?
  • APPLE Bravely Sells Overpriced Crap You Can Buy Better And Cheaper Elsewhere! #drunkonthierownkoolaide. All Are ONE In APPLE! (Apple might as well file the paperwork to the IRS and apply for a religious exemption on their taxes. I mean, its already a cult, right?)

  • That I will never allow into my home.

  • do not care. There I said it.

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