Gadgetory

so this is the home pod the home pod is Apple's answer to the Google home and the Amazon echo and every other smart speaker out there with a voice assistant it's a $350 speaker that has Siri the basic idea is pretty simple it's covered in a weird spongy fabric there's a touch display on top and it's surprisingly heavy but the home pod is pretty limited Siri just can't do as much as other assistants and the only music service you can control your voice is Apple music if you're a Spotify person the home pod is probably not for you and I think Apple knows it's pretty limited because all of the company's focus is on sound quality the truth is most other smart speakers sound crappy and the home pod sounds incredible so I'm a huge speaker nerd my house is full of speakers there's a vintage all analog system in the living room a brand-new Atmos home theater downstairs Sonos everywhere and all kinds of smart speakers tucked into every other corner so there's a lot here to compare the home pod to especially since Apple says the home pod is all about music first and smart assistant stuff second and the home pod sounds incredible for its size and price we've been comparing it to the new Amazon echo a bunch of sonar speakers including the new stone s1 and a play 5 the Google home and the Google home acts and even Bluetooth speakers like the UE mega boy and it's just obviously better than all of them it's the home pot isn't just one speaker it's actually eight of them all controlled by an a8 processor and tons of custom software there are seven tweeters that fire down and out from the bottom and a single four inch woofer pointing out at the top for low frequencies there's also a total of seven microphones six around the middle for Siri in a seventh inside that measures the location of that woofer so Apple can precisely control the bass when you first plug in the home pod and start playing the music it goes through a series of steps that tune the speaker to the room it's it first it uses the mics to detect any walls nearby so it knows how sound will bounce off of them second it uses of seven tweeters to form a virtual array of sound beams that are assigned at direct and ambient sounds like vocals and applause the ambient channels are pointed at the walls to reflect and the direct sounds are pointed out at the listener sometime during all of that it detects the walls again to refine the model of the room itself then it analyzes the difference between the left and right channels of the music you're playing to figure out what sound should go into what beams ambient or direct and then it measures the position of the subwoofer and the reflections of the bass constantly as you're playing music to make sure the bass doesn't overwhelm the rest of the music and all of this happens at once within like 10 seconds if you move the home pods an accelerometer inside detects motion and it does it all over again in terms of ideas I'm into a virtual array of sound beams that points guitar solos at my face is super high on the list so here's the thing the home pod sounds great but I don't think it sounds so much better than other speakers that you should switch away from Spotify or give up all of the features of Alexa or Google if you're a huge audio nerd you will definitely be able to hear it but if you're just a regular person you might get more from another speaker that sounds almost as good something like the Sonos one sounds almost as good and you get a huge array of alexa skills google assistant support in the future and you can use almost any music service you want and when you get away from sound quality the home pod just isn't a very smart smart speaker series just can't compete with alexis huge array of skills or Google assistance ability to answer questions there's this display on the top of the home pod but it doesn't show information just blurry colors to let you know what it's doing the Amazon echo show and the echo spot actually show information Google assistant devices are coming out with screens too there's just something missing there you can control smart home devices like locks and light switches but you have to use homekit which is way more fiddly than what amazon lets you do with alexa siri can't even set more than one timer which is the main thing I use my Alexa devices for in the kitchen it's crazy and in the weirdest omission of all Siri on the home pod can't recognize multiple voices this doesn't sound like a big deal but if you just power through this setup without thinking about it literally anyone can ask the home pod to read your text messages if you're on the same Wi-Fi network so if I'm in the basement and the home pod is up here someone can there's a roll up to it and start sending I messages or ask it to read my most recent message and I'll never know your most recent message from Phil Amy Leigh I don't know what kind of lonely audio nerds Apple designed the home pot for but I think you should turn off all the personal requests features of the home pod until the company adds voice detection to this thing would you like to reply yes what do you want to say hey it's me like I believing that guy runs the virtual your reply to Phil says hey it's me I'm leaving Becca runs the verge now ready to send it yes that's a huge glaring weakness in a home pod if you have roommates you have kids you live with any other people at all you should turn off personal requests on the home pod settings until Apple adds detection for multiple voices and I still just don't know why it's not there Amazon can detect multiple voices Google can detect multiple voices Apple can detect multiple voices if you say hey Siri only your phone responds the home pod is running an a8 chip same as the iPhone 6 should be able to do it it's just not there the home about is limited in other ways too a lot of people on Twitter asked me if you could use it as TV speaker and the answer is basically no you can set the Apple TV to airplay to a home pod but the second you ask it to play music it loses a connection and then you have to set the Apple TV to airplay again when you want to watch something so you can do it it's just super inconvenient you also can't tell Siri on the home pod to place something in the Apple TV the way that you can with Alexa and a fire TV or a Google assistant and a chromecast until air play 2 comes out sometime this year you can only use one speaker at a time you can't have multiple speakers going at once you can't use it as a Bluetooth speaker at all and you can't even set it up if you have an Android phone you have to have an iOS device and then there's Spotify and other music services I've mentioned this a couple times already but Spotify has way more subscribers than Apple music and the home pod doesn't really know Spotify exists you can play Spotify on a home pod over airplay if you want but you won't really be able to control it with your voice and Spotify is everywhere you can get a ton of devices that support it direct Apple music is pretty much as limited to Apple's ecosystem so you lose a ton of flexibility about where your music is available if you switch to Apple music it's a huge and frustrating limitation look Amazon makes the echo and they own Amazon music but they still let you set Spotify is the default Google makes cool home devices they own Google Play Music and YouTube they still let you said Spotify is the default Apple just wants to lock you into that ecosystem and it's incredibly restrictive I am an apple music subscriber it's my primary music service and I still think this is frustrating as a speaker the home pod is a huge accomplishment it sounds incredible apples audio engineering team should be so proud of itself I actually went to Cupertino a couple days ago and toured apples audio engineering lab and got to see all the rooms they test it in they've put so much work into this thing and it totally paid off but apples audio engineering team should be pretty frustrated with the executives at Apple who decided that this thing needed to be restricted entirely to Apple's walled garden if the home pod would just open up a little bit and let you use the music service you wanted let Siri be a little bit more extensible and would just be a little bit more capable it would be the only speaker to that absolutely look if you're a huge audio nerd you use entirely Apple products and you subscribe to Apple music you should get a home pod it sounds really really good but if you use Spotify you should get something else there are other speakers out there that sound almost as good and fit your life better and ultimately Apple needs to compete with that man I really put a lot of words in this video [Laughter]