Dan Moren, Macworld:
Late last year, Apple announced that it would delay the promised release of its HomePod smart speaker to early 2018. It was a disappointment for those customers hoping to score one for the holiday season, but in an interview with Dutch site Bright.nl, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller said Apple needed “more time to make it right.”
And:
A new report from Canalys says that the smart speaker market is forecast to spike this year, outpacing other technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality. In a rare moment of (for it) transparency, Amazon said it had sold tens of millions of Echo devices during the holidays. (Though many of those sales are likely for the low-cost devices that Apple won’t compete with.)
And:
By all accounts, the version of the HomePod shown to press during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference last year was far from a fully functional prototype. Those to whom Apple gave access reportedly got a demonstration of the device’s audio quality, but not much beyond that.
Add to this mix, is a new survey (reported by CNBC) on the impact of smart speakers on people’s smartphone habits:
Two thirds of people who use digital voice assistants like the Amazon Echo or Google Home use their smartphones less often, according to a new survey published by tech consultancy Accenture.
The results suggest that the next big wave of consumer technology will be centered around these digital assistants, and may spell trouble for smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung— who lag behind Amazon and Google in this emerging space.
Here’s a link to that survey. Be sure to click Key Finding #1.
No matter what Apple ships as HomePod 1.0, I suspect there is already a team hard at work on HomePod 2.0, and perhaps on HomePod satellite products. I wouldn’t waste a second worrying about the impact of the smart speaker market on iPhone sales, nor about the first HomePod being the be-all and end-all of smart speakers.
Just as they did with Apple Watch, Apple will revise and tune, learning from every sale, with HomePod eventually landing in a sweet spot that makes money and extends the ecosystem for iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple Music, and Siri.
Does anyone besides me expect HomePod to be a mesh router in addition to its already known capabilities?
Expect? No. A great way to leap ahead of the market? Hell yes.
My thinking: Apple abandoned AirPort in late ’16. HomePods are designed to be aware of one another and work together, which suggests some type of mesh networking capabilities. Why not merge the two products? My guess is that the audio aspects of HomePod were ready to show at WWDC but the networking capabilities were not. Perhaps mesh networking turned out to be harder than Apple expected, hence he delay. There may also be hardware issues, like integrating a T2 chip, or perhaps even a T3. In any case, I strongly suspect the delay is due to some unannounced feature.
In all of the rumors leading up to the HomePod’s announcement, I was expecting it to be the reason that the AirPort line had been quietly killed off, and was genuinely surprised when it wasn’t an announced feature.
Being a wifi extender would be an excellent way to distinguish the product from other smart speakers and undercut any “but it’s more expensive than an Echo” arguments.
So should we then expect at least one variant of HomePod to have an Ethernet port?
I am endlessly amused when the press fails to consider HomePod as anything other than a “Siri speaker.”
Good question. That would seem likely. When Apple killed AirPort I made the leap to the Orbi ecosystem, in which the “router” has an Ethernet interface but the “satellites” don’t. This is certainly a possibility.
I hope you’re right, but I’m dubious.
You know that I love Apple product apps, right? Well, not the Smart Keyboard but all the other stuff.
I’ve been using an Amazon Echo Dot connected to my Bose speakers for a while now. It’s pretty awesome. Based on my experience I would buy a Sonos One before a HomePod now.
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blockquote>Goo-g-le is payi-n-g $97 per hour,w-i-th w-e-ekly payouts.You can also avail th-i-s.
On tuesday I got a b-r-and new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $11752 this last four weeks..wi-t-h-out any doubt it’s the most-comfortable job I ha-v-e ever done .. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t che-c-k it
!wx173d:
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blockquote>G-o-ogle is payi-n-g 97$ per hour,with w-e-ekly payouts.Y-o-u can also ava-i-l this.
O-n tuesday I got a brand new Land Rover Range Rover from having ear-n-ed $11752 this last four weeks..with-out any dou-b-t it’s the most-comfortable job I have ever done .. It sounds unbelievable but you wont forgive yourse-l-f if you don’t check it
!wx107:
Hmm. So much for that theory.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/01/11/apple-carries-first-ever-in-store-third-party-wi-fi-router-in-form-of-linksys-velop