The first wave of Apple’s new smart speaker are out. The short consensus is that HomePod is a great-sounding speaker, but suffers from a Siri dumbed down by its confinement inside Apple’s ecosystem.
It’s got better separation and bass response than anything else in its size and boasts a nuance and subtlety of sound that pays off the 7 years Apple has been working on it . —TechCrunch‘s Matthew Panzarino.
There’s a but: Apple’s tuning of the bass. The HomePod’s bass is impressive for the size of the speaker, but in many songs, it’s far too front-and-center in the mix. If we can trim the bass and treble in our cars, why not on your speaker, Apple? —Wall Street Journal‘s Joanna Stern (paywall)
Siri is behind Alexa and Google Assistant. Apple’s voice AI can’t tell jokes, play games or turn on an Apple TV or your favorite Netflix show. It doesn’t support making direct calls . . . or calendar appointments and forget about using it with Android devices. — CNET‘s Megan Wollerton.
I started thinking of the HomePod as “lonely.” It feels like it was designed for a very demanding person to use while living alone entirely inside Apple’s ecosystem. –The Verge‘s Nilay Patel.
Normally, I never worry about Apple’s pricing, but in this case, I do think the price tag is going to be hard for many consumers to swallow. –Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin.
Fast Company will be getting its own HomePod very soon. We’ll try to fill in any blanks on whether or not the HomePod is worth its $349 price tag.
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