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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2018-02-12, 16:32

Well, we finally got them in stock and have one set up. Here are some quick notes:

- The setup is a breeze. Like Airpods and Beats Wireless, it is ridiculously simple. Hold your iThing within 2 inches and a message pops up to pair.

- HomePod does, in fact, support all that Airplay has to offer.

- I have read some reviews that Siri does not work with an Airplay music library. Have not yet tried it on a Mac, but Siri works just fine with my iPhone's music library.

- Even with the speaker at 100%, you don't have to raise your voice to talk to Siri. Just speak normally. The only time I needed to raise my voice was if I was standing across the room and the listening mics could not hear me due to distance.

- Siri is not "all that" on Homepod. However, if you are looking for music, Siri is quite clever. It will give you the weather, stocks, etc., but don't expect answers to complex questions. Just say "Hey, Siri, play me some AC/DC" and she plays Ackee Dackee from some dude I've never heard of before. That aside, Siri was able to source whatever I had on my phone with almost no trouble.

- Volume control, playback controls, etc., are very easy to access/use in a normal voice and from a reasonable distance.

- Our sales floor is 3000+ square feet and, at 100% volume, the HomePod is strong enough to fill the entire space with sound.

- The crazy thing sounds incredible.

- My only real grumble (so far) is the need to tie the thing to an Apple ID. While this may not seem like a big deal, it is rather annoying if you don't want it to be anymore. To get our demo unit working, we needed to tie it to my phone, since our demo-units have Apple's kiosk demo software on them and none of them could be bothered to talk to the HomePod. At the end of the day I deleted the device from my phone, but it remained attached to my Apple ID. Without a device to talk to, the fool thing kept calling my Apple ID and I kept getting pinged that a device was trying to get into my account. This, even after I logged into iCloud and removed the HomePod from my device list.

Overall, the HomePod is an exceptional little speaker. It is small, looks nice, is easy to set up, easy to use, and it sounds better than any sound system we have ever had in the store. For $349, it is a bargain. However, if you want your speaker to be able to order Cheerios or search for the latest fad in boobs, AirPod is not your thing. It is a very good speaker with good voice controls, basic information requests, single-user workflow queries, and that's it. It is not trying to be anything else, although I suspect Apple will issue numerous software updates as new features come available. Significantly better than the old Hi-Fi for the same money, and many reviewers say it is as good as or better than $1000 systems.

If you want a very good speaker for your music library, HomePod is a very good speaker.

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