I had more success with their J River plug in, but the downside here is that it has to be running on a computer and that computer needs to play somewhere besides my office (where the computer is.). The funny thing is, I use Airfoil to tell the computer where to send the audio and then use Alexa to tell it what to play. Once I get the HomePod, I can point Airfoil to my the HomePod and then tell Alexa to control J River. In other words, Alexa will be able to control what is playing on the HomePod.
Well I appreciate where you're going with all that.. but I'm hoping the HomePod simplifies my life a bit. If I really need to hear a very specific song, that may only be in my local library, I have both Plex and Logitech Media Server to stream to a local iPhone/iPad, then AirPlay that to the HomePod.
Once Airfoil is setup with it pointing at the HomePod (which is a setup up and forget about it situation), it is easy as telling the Dot to "tell Houseband to play Van Morrison" and my lossless music file audio will come out of the HomePod. Hadn't thought about it until you brought up Plex. But that is pretty cool and is a way to hear any of my local music on the pod. It could work the same way with Plex running on a computer as long as you point it to play back on the HomePod. I don't remember if Plex has Airplay sending features built in, but if it doesn't the newer Macs can handle that even without Airfoil. I mainly use Airfoil since it can send to multiple Airplay devices (Chromecast and Bluetooth, as well) at the same time.
You could just permanently lock the sound output of the Plex computer to output to HomePod, but then you're going to get unwanted output much of the time. My HomePod will get "taken over" by my wife's music selection, which is fine. So I'd rather just use Apple Music for 80% of listening, 10% for my wife Airplaying something from her phone, and 10% for me streaming my local library, via iPhone/iPad via Airplay to HomePod.
The Mac Mini that runs Plex is only used for media server stuff and I could just lock the audio. Thanks for the suggestion.
I appreciate that Apple is aiming for superior sound and it might be a very good product, but there are so many dings against this that my mind boggles. The price, their timing, the closed Apple ecosystem...this is going to flop hard IMHO. I've been an Apple user since the late-80s, but I'm starting to see Apple running out of creative and innovative steam here... dan c
They are about to announce their biggest quarter ever. Nothing really closed about the ecosystem. It just has rules that have to be followed. I am intrigued by the HP, but there’s too many folks speculating on it when there are very details on its functionality. I want to know if it can operate without a connection to Wi-Fi and act as a speaker extension to your phone or iPad.i love my Killburn, but curious how the HP would do on the go, say a hotel room.
Very different product. We are on a forum where some people spend more on a cable. $350 isn't exactly breaking the bank when it comes to audio. I don't see Sonos as a competitor to HP for people that want to control Apple Music by voice with the speaker's mics or for people that care about their privacy. I think we have to figure out how we define "flop". Apple has never put market share as a top concern. What they want is a product to sell that will make a profit and also create more "stickiness" for their ecosystem. This is just another accessory that will make it harder for users to leave the Apple ecosystem....which I believe is their main goal with the Watch, Airpods, AppleTV, Airplay/Airplay 2, CarPlay, etc. None of these hold a candle to the iPhone in their financials, but they help with the goal of keeping people buying iPhones because of the way they interweave services. A while back, I had an iPhone 4s. It was small and my buddy got a huge Android phone and I was envious. Apple went to the "candy bar" design of the 5 and 5s. I thought about leaving the iPhone then. However, the one thing that made me hold out for another year was Airplay. It is these extra accessories and services that will do the same thing for them with some of their other customers. It is about building the ecosystem and building more stickiness. Just to compare, Amazon is reportedly selling Echos at a huge loss. They want to leverage the information you feed them to sell you more stuff and make money on the backend. Apple probably made more profit on the HomePod in the first week than Amazon has shown in 3 years of the Echo (there were analyst reports that estimate that they lost over 300 million in 2016 on the Echo and was set to rise to 600 million in 2017). However, we can't measure the Echo's success purely on profit at the register....it would be a huge flop if it was judged that way. Needless to say, the two companies have different goals and have a different philosophy for defining success.
What's closed about them? OSX is just Unix with a customized UI, unlike Windows which is really closed. Airplay is available on plenty of devices, even my Raspberry Pi works with it. Seems there are a lot of folks who like to repeat nonsense. As I said, see how the Homepod sounds vs the Develiet Phantoms and then tell me that it is overpriced. That's a comparison I'd like to see but no one will do it.
I have no interest in Apple's 'consumer toys of distraction' for the unwashed masses, but I do love their professional machines!
With respect - I think you should write "HomePod" rather than "HP" as you are confusing the heck out of me when I read your posts. Sorry, but "HP" is a registered trademark for the Hewlett-Packard Company.
HP is Harry Pearson, late founder of the Absolute Sound, not to be confused with the current magazine of that name.
HP can be an abbreviation for anything with capital initials of HP. They are calling the HomePod "HP" in forums all over the internet in the same way they call the Airport Express "APE" or "AE" (depending on the poster). If Apple has a copyright on APE, let me know. Also, if I was referring to the HP trademark, I would probably use HP® instead of just HP. If I was writing an article for a publication, I wouldn't abbreviate the initials, but this is a thread specifically discussing the HomePod, so it shouldn't be THAT confusing when people shorten it to HP (which if you look above, I was not the only person doing it). If this was a thread about HP® laptops and I wanted to discuss how they work with the HomePod, I would use the full name of the HomePod. It is just typical forum shorthand. Most people that read forums shouldn't really find it confusing. Now when I first ran across "ROFLMAO", I was confused, but luckily I eventually figured it out. All that being said, I will make and effort to refer to the HomePod by its full name in the future.
HP is steak sauce, to which my friends across the pond will surely attest. That is a universal constant.
NIFOC used to be popular, but that was a different forum.... I see that they have given more details on what and how it streams, and is seems to be limited to Apple's cloud driven services and Airplay. I guess that makes it about as flexible as you can get from Apple. Seems closed, but there are lots of apps for accessing Airplay from other platforms. I am not planning on buying one, but I can see where is would be a nice device for an extra bedroom or maybe the kitchen or a portable to easily move around the house. Kinda what I used to do with my Play5. I wish it had a more durable exterior, maybe someone will come up with some aftermarket socks for it. Hmmm, the more I think about it, the more likely I will end us with one....
I have one order, but as you mention the product is limited to people in Apple's ecosystem and best for those that use Apple Music. Personally, I will also use it alongside the Echo Dot with Plex (most likely from my AppleTV) or J River Media on my media computer as I mentioned in an earlier post. However, I subscribe to Apple Music, so it is more about convenience combined with decent sound than anything. Also, the Airplay 2 control will be very useful for adding voice control convenience to listening on my main system or systems around the house that already have AppleTV 4s. I plan to put mine in the area that my kitchen and living room intersect, so when I am cooking, eating etc.. it can be heard in both spaces.
it may help when a speaker has to be placed in a corner (like my office system) some listening tests put it above a KEF X300A... also, the technology can be licensed for use in real HiFi speakers $350 is not a huge price (or $700 for 2) but I could maybe buy used or refurbs just to stick them around the house in any spot I'd like hackers ot be able to listen to (say near a toilet)
The HomePod will have more security of your privacy than any of the other speakers that are always listening in. Of course, if you have a phone, computer, or tablet, then hackers already have a point of interest in your home. Seriously, I doubt that the HomePod would be worth a hackers time. The relatively small marketshare compared to the sub-$50 units of Google and Amazon alone will deter them...not to mention having the task of cracking Apple's encryption. Of course, if you want to hack something with a microphone, Windows computers and phones both have them in addition to getting access to a camera in many cases.
David Pogue reviews the Homepod (and notes the helpful lighting arrangement during Apple's shootout demo): "In a devastatingly effective demo, Apple lines up four of these things: The Google Home Max ($400), Sonos One ($200), Amazon Echo ($100), and the HomePod. They’re volume-matched and rigged to an A/B/C/D switch, so a single song can hop from one to the other. (Apple even installed a halo backlight behind each speaker that illuminated to show you which one was playing.) "The HomePod sounded the best. Its bass, in particular, was amazing: full and deep, but also distinct and never muddy — you could hear the actual pitch of the bass notes, not just the thud. That, unsurprisingly, is where other small speakers have trouble." Every description of the sound quality of the Homepod sounds to me like what every decent conventional two-channel hi-fi at any price point has been able to achieve since the 1950's.
