HomePod is an Apple’s long-awaited smart speaker that is introduced in the market. The HomePod, which is not quite 7 inches tall, will be offered in white and space gray. It can be ordered at Apple’s website for US$349. Unlike other smart speakers, which support a variety of music services out of the gate, HomePod will support the Apple Music subscription service exclusively. Although Apple Music has a catalog of 45 million songs, that limitation could curb initial sales of the product. If you are a subscriber of Apple Music, the HomePod is the best product to take advantage of that.
Apple’s intelligent agent, Siri has expanded the music knowledge significantly. Among other things, Siri can learn someone’s musical preferences and tastes. Apple is restricting Siri support for third-party applications, which may hamper growth of the product ecosystem and plays as an advantage to competitors. HomePod has a number of technologies that contribute to its high-quality audio. Through software, it can do real-time acoustic modeling, audio beam-forming and echo cancellation. It has 6 microphones and having the ability to obey commands when music is playing loudly.
It can send messages, set timers, play podcasts, and check for information on news, sports, weather and traffic. Apple is making plans to add multi-room support, which means commands issued in one room will be executed in other room. Siri has an advantage over competitors, which is language support. Comparing to Alexa, Google Assistant and others, Siri led the pack in multi-language support.
