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Posts tagged with "homepod"

HomePod Supports User Presence at Home for Personal Notifications→

Refinery29’s Madeline Buxton has spent one hour testing a HomePod ahead of preorders going live tomorrow, and, like others noted at WWDC ‘17, she came away impressed with the small footprint of the device and its audio quality compared to other smart speakers.

This bit from her story is interesting:

Secondly, although everyone in your apartment will be able to use the speaker, only the person who sets up HomePod on their iCloud account will be able to send texts, set up reminders, and get calendar notifications via voice commands. Google Home and Amazon Echo, meanwhile, can recognize different voices and provide personalized content accordingly. (If you do set up personal notifications on HomePod, these will only be available when you are on the network, so you don’t need to worry about your texts being read aloud at home when you are at work. If you don’t want them read aloud when you’re home, you can go into your HomeKit settings and turn off the notifications.)

To my knowledge, this is the first time we hear that HomePod does indeed support calendar notifications (which aren’t mentioned on Apple’s HomePod webpage). As Benjamin Mayo notes, details on how personalized calendar alerts would work are still unclear.

Update: Refinery29 has updated their story to clarify that HomePod will not support calendar notifications.

In addition, I assume that the ability to detect when the HomePod’s owner is at home is powered by the new user presence feature added to HomeKit in iOS 11. Even without a HomePod, iOS 11 lets you set up HomeKit automations with conditions that determine whether you or someone else is at home. The HomePod, as a HomeKit hub, will likely take advantage of the same API, which, in my experience with HomeKit automation in our apartment, has worked well since my girlfriend and I updated to iOS 11 on all our devices in September.

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Apple Announces HomePod Available to Order This Friday, In Stores on February 9

Today in a press release, Apple announced that its HomePod device will be available to order beginning this Friday (January 26) for the previously announced price of $349, and will ship for a release date of Friday, February 9. HomePod will be available in two color options: White and Space Gray.

HomePod was first unveiled last June during Apple’s WWDC keynote, with an announced ship date of December. It wasn’t able to make that date, receiving a new ‘Early 2018’ estimated release in mid-November. Historically, that kind of designation has meant anytime up through April is possible. Fortunately, prospective HomePod buyers won’t have to wait quite that long.

As Apple’s first entry into the smart speaker market, HomePod is the company’s answer to popular products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Unlike those other devices, however, HomePod is being marketed more as a premium-quality speaker, primed for music playback, than as a digital assistant hub. Siri is certainly an important component of the device, but at least for now, its role is being somewhat downplayed. At WWDC Phil Schiller announced that at launch, the HomePod’s version of Siri will only support a limited number of domains.

While these domains cover the majority of Siri’s normal functionality on iOS devices, some notable categories missing that would make sense for the HomePod include calendars, audiobook playback using iBooks, and Notes. With the HomePod’s release so early in the year, it’s possible we’ll receive word on additional domains at WWDC this June. Until then, what you’re getting with HomePod is exactly what Apple announced onstage: a powerful home speaker with Apple Music integration, which also happens to be a HomeKit hub that includes Siri, but in limited capacity.

One standout piece of news in today’s announcement is that the HomePod’s multi-room audio capabilities won’t be available at launch, but instead will come later through a software update. This seemingly supports previous rumors that AirPlay 2’s development may have been what led to HomePod’s initial delay.

Update: The HomePod page on Apple’s website confirms that not only is AirPlay 2’s multi-room support delayed until later this year, but so is the previously demoed capability to have two HomePods pair together for offering stereo sound.

The HomePod website also provides new details on how users will be able to interact with HomePod in non-voice ways. In addition to using the ‘Hey Siri’ trigger phrase, you can also touch and hold the top of the HomePod and talk to Siri. There are also controls for audio playback tied to different sets of taps on the HomePod’s surface, as shown below.

Apple Delays HomePod

Apple issued an official statement to TechCrunch and other news outlets today saying that the release of the HomePod would be delayed until 2018. Originally announced at WWDC in June with a promised ship date of December 2017, Apple’s statement says the HomePod will be released in ‘early 2018,’ and the smart Siri-enabled speaker will be available initially in the US, UK, and Australia.

The full text of the statement made to TechCrunch is as follows:

“We can’t wait for people to experience HomePod, Apple’s breakthrough wireless speaker for the home, but we need a little more time before it’s ready for our customers. We’ll start shipping in the US, UK, and Australia in early 2018.”

SiriKit Support Will Be Included on HomePod for Certain Third-Party App Domains

In an update on its developer site today, Apple announced that SiriKit support will be included in the forthcoming HomePod device.

iOS 11.2 introduces SiriKit for HomePod, the powerful speaker that sounds amazing, adapts to wherever it’s playing, and provides instant access to Apple Music. HomePod is also a helpful home assistant for everyday questions and tasks. With the intelligence of Siri, users control HomePod through natural voice interaction. And with SiriKit, users can access iOS apps for Messaging, Lists, and Notes. Make sure your SiriKit integration is up to date and test your app’s voice-only experience today.

When the HomePod was first unveiled at WWDC in June, there was no word regarding whether it would support third-party apps through SiriKit. While some expected further details on HomePod to arrive in September’s keynote, that event came and went with no news. Today marks the first time we’ve learned anything new about HomePod from official sources since its initial introduction.

Messaging, Lists, and Notes are the only SiriKit domains that will work with HomePod at launch, but it’s likely we’ll see more added over time. This means the HomePod will be able to do things like send messages in Telegram, create tasks in Todoist or Things, and create notes in Evernote.

Information about how SiriKit on HomePod will work is included on Apple’s full SiriKit site, which contains the following detail:

Siri recognizes SiriKit requests made on HomePod and sends those requests to the user’s iOS device for processing.

This means SiriKit support on HomePod will take a fundamentally different path than that of competing products like the Amazon Echo. In most cases the Echo’s set of third-party Alexa skills can be operated completely independent of another device. For the time being at least, third-party support on HomePod will rely on a nearby iPhone or iPad.

There are still many HomePod details that remain unclear. For example, we don’t yet know if SiriKit requests or iCloud requests will be tied to a single user’s device, or if a family will be able to interact with the device in a user-specific way. Time will bring the full story into view, but for now, knowing that HomePod will launch with at least some third-party app support is good news.

HomePod Follows in iPhone 4’s Steps

The HomePod firmware that was accidentally posted last month by an Apple employee has led to a wealth of knowledge about Apple’s upcoming iPhone.

Most leaks in recent years have come from Apple’s expansive supply chain. A rear shell here and a camera component there slowly fill in the details about unreleased hardware. It’s a slow process normally, but one the rumor cycle has become accustomed to over the years.

The HomePod is obviously different. While the accidental leak contained just software, inside its depths were details about all sorts of unannounced features. Developers even found icons depicting the next-generation iPhone.

Whoops.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has leaked from the top about an upcoming iPhone.

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Apple Introduces HomePod, a Siri-Equipped Smart Speaker

Apple is entering the smart speaker space, and it’s doing that with a new product launching this December called HomePod.

Introduced at the end of today’s WWDC keynote, HomePod is a Siri-equipped smart speaker that specializes in music. Rather than solely competing with products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, Apple is positioning HomePod as a hybrid product that does more. It contains many of the same capabilities of those assistant-equipped speakers, but adds one more thing: high quality audio. This makes it not only a competitor to the Echo and Home, but also to home audio systems like those offered by Sonos and Bose. This latter market is where Apple has so far focused its marketing, as reflected by the title of its introductory press release: “HomePod reinvents music in the home.”

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