0:00:00Ahoy HomePod! Play podcast upgrade.
0:00:02Now playing podcast upgrade.
0:00:04[Music]
0:00:13From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 180. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,
0:00:19Casper, and FreshBooks. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.
0:00:25Hello, Myke Hurley, how are you?
0:00:26Very good. We have a largely music device focused show today.
0:00:31We're going to be discussing our thoughts and impressions of using the home part.
0:00:36So I figured that our #snowtalk question, which comes from Connor this week, could be music themed.
0:00:42Connor wants to know, "Jason, do you use any EQ settings when you listen to music?"
0:00:47Is this some kind of setup? This is the kind of question that I have no good answer to.
0:00:53because people have, as we're going to find out
0:00:58as we get to the HomePod, people have opinions
0:01:01about how you properly to listen to music, some people.
0:01:05So, okay, in truth, I use EQ settings on some devices
0:01:11where I feel like it is necessary.
0:01:14It sort of varies by device because the devices vary.
0:01:18I looked on iTunes on my Mac and I do have the rock EQ set.
0:01:23That happened a long time ago,
0:01:24but that is for the iPod Hi-Fi
0:01:28because it didn't sound good enough.
0:01:30So I used an EQ preset there
0:01:33and that is most of the stuff I listen to
0:01:35sounds better with that.
0:01:37On most other things, I don't.
0:01:41- So you use it when it feels like the device
0:01:44could do a bit of a helping hand?
0:01:46- Yeah, when the thing I'm listening to
0:01:48doesn't sound right to me in some way,
0:01:51I will, it needs to be at that level of a threshold where I finally decide, oh boy,
0:01:59I need to change this, this doesn't sound good, but that really happens.
0:02:03Thank you to Connor for asking the question. If you would like to submit a question to
0:02:08open the show, just send a tweet with a hashtag SnellTalk and it may be picked out for a future
0:02:13episode. Now we do have some follow up today, Jason, first of which is the iOS 11 battery
0:02:20information is now appearing in the beta of iOS 11.3 and Apple have updated a support
0:02:28document which was talking about the battery and CPU throttling stuff.
0:02:33So I'll give you a little bit of details.
0:02:35So there's some new screens.
0:02:36There will be some new screens inside of the settings app in the battery section and it's
0:02:41called battery health beta and you tap that and it takes you through to another page.
0:02:45And if you have an iPhone 6 or later, this is where you'll be able to see if your phone
0:02:50is being performance managed, which is the term that Apple give to what everybody else
0:02:55is calling throttling, right?
0:02:56Performance managed.
0:02:57Well, it's the first step before you fire your battery.
0:02:59Yes.
0:03:00You put it on a performance management plan and then if it still doesn't perform, then
0:03:04it's time for it to find other employees.
0:03:06Oh, boy.
0:03:07Manager humor.
0:03:08We've both been in those situations.
0:03:09Yeah.
0:03:10So this performance management screen, like if your phone is being performance managed,
0:03:15it will only appear with any options or any information after the first unexpected shutdown
0:03:22has occurred after iOS 11.3 has been installed. So none of this information about performance
0:03:30management or none of the options will even appear until there's been a problem and
0:03:35then it tells you you have these options because your phone has experienced an unexpected shutdown.
0:03:41So the option to turn it off is kind of not what you would expect, which is very telling
0:03:47to me. The option to turn off the performance management, so therefore your phone may shut
0:03:53down and you won't be throttled, it is not a button nor a switch. There is a paragraph
0:03:59of text that explains that your phone has had a shutdown and that performance management
0:04:03has now been applied to it. The last word of this paragraph is the word "disable"
0:04:28of informing people which we were all hoping they would do in the first place.
0:04:32If the battery health has seriously degraded on your phone, because you also get battery
0:04:37health information here, if you have or have not got the performance management option,
0:04:41in the battery health section you will see a percentage of your battery health.
0:04:46And if your battery health has seriously degraded, another warning will pop up to recommend that
0:04:51you get your battery replaced.
0:04:53You can also see what your battery's maximum capacity is here so you're able to check what
0:04:57the health of your battery is like. So they're the options. I would still hope to see that
0:05:03Apple would do something to actively bring you to this screen, like a notification at
0:05:08some point. But I think that this is this is a step in the right direction from them.
0:05:14But the I take a look, I recommend looking through the support document just to look
0:05:18at the screenshots because they are quite interesting.
0:05:19Yeah, and this is fitting with, you know, what they've been saying part of the thing
0:05:23that they have to do is this is matching their statements on this, which is, "This is complicated,
0:05:30and here's what goes on, and here's why it's there." And I think what's interesting about
0:05:34it is you can kind of see—I mean, it depends on how you view this, but you can see now,
0:05:43like, when people say, "Well, why does Apple not let me do X? Why does Apple put that in
0:05:48the black box and take care of that for me, and then I don't ever see it?" Well, here
0:05:53Here now we've got an example, this is rare, where Apple has for various reasons decided,
0:06:00been dragged into pulling this out of the black box. And what you get is something that
0:06:06is kind of complicated. So you can see on one level why somebody at Apple would look
0:06:11at the whole thing around battery performance and battery health and say, "Wow, if we put
0:06:15a UI on it, what is that even going to look like? And it's going to be like complicated
0:06:19and it's not going to be easy and have somebody say,
0:06:23"Oh, well, let's not do it then.
0:06:24Let's just not give anybody any choice.
0:06:26We're just gonna just do it in the background.
0:06:28It's gonna seem magical."
0:06:30Which I can see both sides of that, right?
0:06:33Like I understand the drive for simplicity,
0:06:36but it does lead you into places
0:06:38like where Apple ended up with the battery issue,
0:06:40where everybody was accusing them
0:06:43of doing all sorts of things,
0:06:45some of which they were doing
0:06:46and some of which they weren't doing.
0:06:48So it's just a fascinating little lab of user experience
0:06:53when you see a design like this one.
0:06:58- Yeah, it's like maybe this is the way
0:07:00that they maybe discussed about it initially
0:07:02and decided not to do it because they felt
0:07:03the only way to do this was to put this text there.
0:07:06So like, you know, just Apple being Apple,
0:07:08like no, we don't wanna have a confusing setting,
0:07:10so we'll just, we'll take care of it for people.
0:07:12But in this case, it came to bite them
0:07:14because I mean, I think a lot of people in agreement,
0:07:17I'm also in agreement about this, that a little bit more upfront would have been better, and
0:07:22I think that that's proven to be the case.
0:07:25I saw you tweet an article from VentureBeat in the past couple of days about tablet sales,
0:07:32which was interesting to me just to compare this to our discussion on Apple's earnings
0:07:37last week and just kind of the overall tablet market.
0:07:40So this is from the IDC research group, and they are stating that the tablet market as
0:07:46as a whole, has declined 7.9% year on year in Q4, which is the 13th straight quarter
0:07:53decline. So year over year quarter just keeps going down for 13 quarters in a row. Amazon
0:07:58is now the second place tablet seller overtaking Samsung and they estimate that they sold 7.7
0:08:05million tablets in Q4. So again for comparison, it's just interesting to compare this against
0:08:09what's happening with the iPad, because the iPad sold basically close to double what the
0:08:14second place did, Amazon, so that Apple sold 13.2 million to Amazon 7.7 and saw a year
0:08:21of year increase. So Apple is bucking the trend. They are going against what the market
0:08:26is doing.
0:08:27Right. We talk about this a lot in the context of the Mac where, you know, PC sales are down
0:08:32and the Mac sales are flat to up from time to time. And that is, you know, you grow market
0:08:39share in a shrinking market by not declining, but we don't talk about it so much about the
0:08:45tablet market and that was what struck me about this is according to IDC the tablet
0:08:49market has declined 13 straight quarters and we know like the iPad has declined, declined
0:08:58for many many straight quarters.
0:08:59For like 11, right?
0:09:00Like, you know, it was in line.
0:09:01But in the last three it has sort of turned it around and this is more impressive when
0:09:09you see what the overall tablet market is and how huge the iPad is in the in the
0:09:16tablet market that it's number one by twice and that's over Amazon which is
0:09:23selling a very different kind of product right because I imagine a lot of the
0:09:27tablets Amazon is selling are there you know $60 $90 tablets which Apple's not
0:09:33even attempting to sell something like that so the talent market is is a is
0:09:38is rough and if you imagine it without the iPad, it's rougher.
0:09:42Alright, let's do Upstream. So we have some media news
0:09:46for you. Viacom has acquired VidCon. VidCon
0:09:50is the YouTube and online video
0:09:54conference. You may have remembered hearing me talk about PodCon.
0:09:58Well, VidCon and PodCon, they were run by the same company and were
0:10:02kind of intertwined, right? It's a similar idea. So PodCon was
0:10:06the VidCon for podcasts. There are no details on the terms of the deal, of how much money
0:10:12was paid, or if it was stock or whatever the situation was. Hank Green, who created VidCon,
0:10:19he had stepped away from running the company, I think maybe like six months ago. And Jim
0:10:24Laudeback was the CEO and he is remaining the CEO. Apparently Viacom have said, and
0:10:30the VidCon team have said, and so did Hank in a video that he posted, which I'll put
0:10:34in the show notes, that VidCon will be running independently as a part of Viacom and they
0:10:39wanted to do it because they wanted support and assistance both financially and in expansion.
0:10:46Quite interestingly for me, PodCon is not a part of this deal and the PodCon team including
0:10:54Hank Green have confirmed that they are currently attempting to run another PodCon within the
0:10:59the next 12 months. I found that interesting. So it's like a separate, it was kind of like
0:11:04it was a part of the same company, but they obviously set it up differently, and whilst
0:11:08it was the same people running it, it's not going to be, and it isn't a part of Viacom
0:11:12now. It's a big deal, because who knows what VidCon's going to look like going into the
0:11:17future now, as it's becoming part of a big media machine, as opposed to being run by
0:11:21independent creators.
0:11:22Yeah, I'm fascinated by this story mostly because I, you know, unlike you and Gray and
0:11:28other, you know, YouTube oriented people, I don't really care so much about VidCon.
0:11:34I am fascinated by the fact that Viacom bought it, like a, that an entertainment conglomerate
0:11:40got this thing that is a fan event about, and a creator event too about YouTube, basically.
0:11:47That is fascinating on a few levels. It's interesting. The PodCon is not included in
0:11:51that. And then, uh, and yeah, yeah, I actually know Jim louder back, at least tangentially.
0:11:57I figured you did. I figured you would have crossed paths at some point. He used to work
0:12:01as if Davis and was involved in the early days of, um, tech TV when it was ZDTV. And
0:12:07uh, so I crossed paths with him. One of my old bosses worked for him for several years.
0:12:12So it's kind of funny to see that that's what he's doing now. But anyway. It is also
0:12:17funny if there's something in your mind where you're like, "Why do I know Viacom and YouTube
0:12:23in the same sentence?" Well, because many years ago, maybe like 2006 or something, I
0:12:27think before Google acquired YouTube and YouTube was being dragged through the courts, they
0:12:31were being dragged through the courts by Viacom, like for copyright stuff. So like, it's very
0:12:37interesting to watch this kind of all start to turn around now where Viacom want this
0:12:42is part of their business, like this, the YouTube creators. It's just a funny turn of events.
0:12:46Showrunners Brian Fuller and Hart Hansen have exited Apple's Amazing Stories anthology.
0:12:54What is going on here? So this is really interesting. So Brian Fuller,
0:12:58I made a joke on Twitter about this because this is the third TV show that Brian Fuller has bailed
0:13:02on or I think what Variety always called it was "Ankeled," which I don't even know what that means,
0:13:07but it makes me laugh. The three shows, like he bailed out of American Gods, he bailed out of
0:13:14Star Trek Discovery, and he has now bailed out of Amazing Stories as well. So I think Brian Fuller,
0:13:18even if he had really good reasons for all three of those, that is fascinating in terms of like
0:13:24getting a reputation maybe as somebody who can't finish what he starts. But the backstory here is
0:13:30really interesting in that it sounds like Brian Fuller was developing an amazing stories
0:13:37relaunch before Apple got involved, before Steven Spielberg got re-engaged in it, and
0:13:43he was really viewing it as a brand that he could use to do Black Mirror, basically, to
0:13:49do his take on an anthology series, a sort of sci-fi/fantasy anthology series in the
0:13:55vein of Black Mirror which is a fairly adult themed TV series that's on Netflix now. So
0:14:05then Apple gets involved and is going to write a bigger check and Spielberg is going to get
0:14:10involved at some level with it. And it sounds like, one, it sounds like Apple's desire to
0:14:18have this be something that they could show on a screen at an Apple store. In other words,
0:14:23TVMA-like adult material like Black Mirror is. Something you can't watch on an airplane.
0:14:30And/or depressing and anti-technology as Black Mirror can sometimes be.
0:14:36It could be. It's unclear on whether the themes and the kind of like darkness of it or whether
0:14:41it's the adult themes of it were about that, but it sounds like what Apple, who had written
0:14:45the check, wanted from it was not really what Brian Filler wanted to do with it, and so
0:14:49So he bailed out of it. And I think it makes more sense in that scenario, right, where
0:14:54he wasn't building it for Apple. Like, he was not brought in as part of the deal to
0:15:00do this show, which is sort of how they put it out there. He had been developing it, and
0:15:03so he was already attached. But regardless, you know, he left, and then when he left,
0:15:08they announced, well, Hart Hansen, who is a very talented writer on his own, he's
0:15:13still there. And then he also bailed out on it. So they are seeking a showrunner now,
0:15:19means that this thing has basically been pushed back again to zero, right? They've got to
0:15:25reset the whole thing and find somebody else to run this thing.
0:15:27It's dead in the water for the moment, right? Like it's just laying there. They need to
0:15:29pick it up.
0:15:30Well, the deal is made, but they have to hire somebody new. So creatively, I mean, who knows
0:15:33if they've got scripts and if any of those scripts are going to be deemed acceptable
0:15:37by Apple and Steven Spielberg and everybody else involved in this. So that one announcement,
0:15:44this is going to happen. It's like everything else. Now that Apple's in this business, stuff
0:15:47like this happens in this business but it I do wonder if it tells us something
0:15:50about Apple and the relationship it's got with some creators in terms of what
0:15:55kind of content it wants on its service and whether that's gonna rub some of
0:15:59these creators the wrong way but I think most of the creators who have signed
0:16:02with Apple have done so knowing who they're getting into business with and
0:16:06in this case it sounds like Brian Fuller kind of came with Amazing Stories and he
0:16:12didn't you know enter into that knowing what he was gonna get in terms of
0:16:17of Apple launching it.
0:16:19- YouTube have taken a page out of Amazon's book
0:16:24and they have updated their Apple TV app
0:16:26to look like their Smart TV app and their Android TV app.
0:16:31The new YouTube app on the Apple TV
0:16:34basically follows no Apple TV design conventions.
0:16:38It doesn't have a standard media player.
0:16:40It doesn't have standard controls.
0:16:42It doesn't do any of the, what is it called?
0:16:44Showcase or show something
0:16:45that specific way they do the,
0:16:50when you're on the menu and you get things up at the top,
0:16:52right, when you're on the basic home menu,
0:16:53I can't remember the names of these terms,
0:16:55and the focus stuff and all of that,
0:16:57all of that has been completely ripped out
0:17:00of the Appletv app.
0:17:01I will say, as a frequent user of the YouTube app,
0:17:05whilst it is now clunky in places
0:17:07and it's not great to scrub through that kind of stuff,
0:17:10like scrubbing through the video feeds now
0:17:12is a bit of a mess,
0:17:14this app looks a billion times better
0:17:17than what YouTube had made.
0:17:19Like, YouTube made what I assume
0:17:23is the most standard UI kit version of what an app could be.
0:17:27It was just black with thumbnails and headers.
0:17:31Like, it was the worst. - Right, really generic.
0:17:32- And like, if you wanted to try and,
0:17:34like sometimes if you wanted to reload what was on a page,
0:17:37you'd have to like go to different tabs
0:17:39or force quit things, it was a bit of a mess.
0:17:41So my feeling is whilst this might not be perfect,
0:17:44if it means that there's actually going to be some features and development going on
0:17:47in the app, then great. And for example, there is a great one where you can now link your
0:17:52phone to the Apple TV app so you can be on your iPhone and like almost like Chromecast,
0:17:58send a video to your TV. So that's a feature that you can get now that YouTube has decided
0:18:03to bring this in line with their other applications. I just think that like this is a sign to me
0:18:08me that the Apple TV is not going as Apple maybe would have expected it to go for whatever
0:18:14reason. Either the SDK isn't good enough or there just isn't enough buy-in. I don't know
0:18:20what it is. But even developers that tried to do it Apple's way have moved away from
0:18:26that.
0:18:27Well, I don't know. I feel like this is a trend among everybody who's got multi-platform
0:18:33experiences, which is they wanted to look the same. This is the classic argument. This
0:18:38is the same thing. I had an hour-long, loud discussion at XOXO with a Google employee
0:18:44about a thing I wrote about how I was bugged by the fact that Google's iOS apps use Android
0:18:49conventions and of course his argument was, "Well, no, those are Google conventions."
0:18:54And this is the question, is when you're using a platform, do you want everything on the
0:18:59platform to feel like the platform or is the platform the app you're using, right? So which
0:19:04Which is more important, to have every Apple TV app feel like Apple TV, or to have every
0:19:08Netflix or Amazon Prime or YouTube experience to feel the same no matter what device you're
0:19:13looking at?
0:19:14And I can see both sides of it.
0:19:16From a traditional computing, especially Mac perspective, right, there was nothing more
0:19:21offensive than having Microsoft roll into Mac OS with Windows UI conventions and say
0:19:26basically "Well no, this is Word.
0:19:29the good news is if you use Word on Windows and then go to the Mac it'll
0:19:33feel familiar and all the Mac users are like I don't do that. The argument with
0:19:37mobile devices and and home boxes and stuff is totally different because we do
0:19:41use multiple devices on multiple platforms so I can understand that
0:19:46argument that the YouTube that you see and with with Google you know because
0:19:50they've got so many web interfaces they have to build their own interface on the
0:19:52web anyway there's no like platform specific really way to do that so they
0:19:57got to build it one way for the web and they want the design language to reflect
0:20:00on their apps. I get it and that includes the iOS app and it includes the
0:20:05Apple TV app. So that seems to be really what's going on here is that there are a
0:20:09lot of multi-device, big platforms multi-device and they want their
0:20:15experience to be the same on or at least similar on all those platforms and this
0:20:19is just like the Amazon app and the Netflix app looking the same
0:20:24time across platforms. It's almost like YouTube did the minimum, like you said, required to
0:20:30get it on Apple TV, and now they've got their real version. And the real version doesn't
0:20:34look like the Apple TV because that was just because they were not making an effort to
0:20:38make it look like YouTube, and now they are.
0:20:41- Annoyingly, the new YouTube app shows you if a video is in 4K, but you can't play it
0:20:46in 4K because nobody, neither Apple or Google, have moved on the codec problem.
0:20:50So yeah, they're using their codec for 4K video and Apple doesn't support it and they
0:20:59won't re-encode in a codec supported by Apple and Apple won't support their codec and we're
0:21:06left with this thing where you just don't get to see those videos in 4K, which is really
0:21:10dumb.
0:21:11Brilliant.
0:21:12It's really annoying and I stand by my personal position on this is that Apple should support
0:21:15YouTube in this instance.
0:21:17I think Apple should move to YouTube rather than YouTube move to Apple because I think
0:21:21it's more important that Apple support YouTube than YouTube support the Apple TV. That's
0:21:26my opinion on it anyway.
0:21:27All right. And lastly, uh, Apple has added some live TV news options to the TV app on
0:21:34Apple TV and I think on iOS as well. Uh, this is currently US only and there is support
0:21:38for CBS, CNN, Fox, Cheddar, CNBC and Bloomberg. So if you see a live stream in the TV app
0:21:45of live news, you tap it, it will open the application
0:21:48for that news company and start playing the video for you,
0:21:52or it will take you to the app store
0:21:54to download the relevant application needed
0:21:58to watch the live TV stream.
0:21:59- I'm not sure this makes the TV app any more usable,
0:22:04but I think this is Apple's,
0:22:05this is like a long game for Apple.
0:22:07Like they just wanna keep adding things to the TV app
0:22:09because their goal ultimately is to have that be the place
0:22:12everybody goes for everything.
0:22:14I don't like the TV app on my Apple TV. I don't feel any benefit over just the videos
0:22:21and movies and iTunes applications. I don't really know what it's giving me personally.
0:22:26It doesn't really do anything for me. I would actually like the simplicity back of just
0:22:30how it was before but such is life.
0:22:33Okay today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Casper. They're the company
0:22:38focused on sleep dedicated to making you exceptionally comfortable one night at a time. Casper are
0:22:43inviting you to take advantage in an awesome limited time President's Day offer for the
0:22:49first time ever. Casper has three mattress lines to choose from, all at a competitive
0:22:54price. They have the original Casper, the innovative Wave mattress and the streamlined
0:22:59Essential mattress. Casper isn't just a mattress company though, they offer sheets and pillows
0:23:03and bed frames and dog beds, so everyone in the family can sleep comfier than ever before.
0:23:08You can sleep in superior comfort for the rest of 2018 and beyond with the help of the
0:23:13internet's favorite mattress brand and you can be sure of your purchase with Casper's 100 night
0:23:18risk-free sleep on it trial and returns a hassle-free if you're not completely satisfied.
0:23:23Jason Snell can you tell me something that you love about your Casper mattress?
0:23:28Um sure it used to be that when I sat on the bed uh the cat would be ejected out the other side of
0:23:39The old mattress was a little trampoline-like. Like, like somebody sits on the bed, the other person is is jostled or if one is a cat ejected from the bed.
0:23:49And the Casper mattress doesn't do that. It's much more isolating in terms of, you know, you just, you just lay down on it and it's solid and you don't bug the other person or animal who's on the bed and then it's comfortable to sleep on.
0:24:03So what else can I say about it?
0:24:05It's President's Day or not.
0:24:08It's a nice mattress to sleep on.
0:24:10- But this is a special offer we have here
0:24:12for a limited time.
0:24:14If you go to casper.com/savings,
0:24:17that is casper.com/savings,
0:24:19you can receive up to $200 off your purchase
0:24:23of $2,000 or more.
0:24:24The special offer expires on February the 20th, 2018.
0:24:29Go to casper.com/terms for more details.
0:24:32Once more, that is casper.com/savings
0:24:34to receive up to $200 of your purchase of $2,000 or more.
0:24:39But this offer ends on February the 20th, 2018.
0:24:42So check it out right now so you will not miss out.
0:24:43Our thanks to Casper for their support of this show.
0:24:46All right, Mr. Jason Snell.
0:24:50- Yes sir.
0:24:51- Time to talk home parts.
0:24:52We both had it over the weekend.
0:24:54I think we've probably both picked us up on Friday, right?
0:24:56- Yep. - I had no idea that,
0:24:58I guess you did too.
0:24:59So I've been putting it through its paces
0:25:02over the last few days.
0:25:04And I figure we'll kind of go through this piece by piece.
0:25:07There's a lot to talk about with the hardware
0:25:08and the software of this product.
0:25:10And I guess we'll start with where it begins.
0:25:13Packaging, very Apple, very nice, right?
0:25:15Like it all, I like the plastic you pull off the top
0:25:19and it all just like slides down the sides
0:25:21and you do the friction fit,
0:25:24taking of the box off the top.
0:25:26It's all very, all very Apple-y.
0:25:28And of course, something that people were mentioning a lot,
0:25:30like the fabric covered cable, stuff like that.
0:25:34It's all very nice.
0:25:35- Yeah, it's, did it feel smaller
0:25:40than you thought it would be?
0:25:41- I mean, I know I've watched a bunch of videos,
0:25:43I've read a bunch of reviews, everyone says it.
0:25:45I know it's become like a meme, but yeah,
0:25:47it is smaller and heavier
0:25:50than I could have imagined it being.
0:25:52It is a hefty piece of equipment.
0:25:54- Yeah, it's definitely dense, it is smaller,
0:25:57Despite all of the other coverage of it,
0:25:58it still feels smaller.
0:25:59I don't know what I was thinking it would be,
0:26:01whether I thought it would be like
0:26:03the weird jellyfish subwoofer that came with the,
0:26:07with those Harman Kardon speakers back in the day,
0:26:10you know, a big tub, but it's not.
0:26:12It's bigger than the Sonos One, I guess, but not by much.
0:26:17It is compact and that surprised me.
0:26:22And yeah, the packaging is super simple.
0:26:24It's just, you know, I mean,
0:26:26there's almost nothing to it because there's like nothing,
0:26:29there's nothing in the box, right?
0:26:31Other than the HomePod, the cable is already attached.
0:26:34There's no additional stuff
0:26:36that you don't get a lightning cable with it
0:26:38or anything like that.
0:26:39So there's like, the HomePod is sitting in the box
0:26:41and then there's a little like piece of paper in the bottom
0:26:43that's like your getting started guide for the HomePod
0:26:45and that's it, it's super, super simple.
0:26:48- Did you go black or white?
0:26:50- Well, black, which is of course space gray,
0:26:54the color of space being gray, apparently.
0:26:58That's what I did.
0:26:58I saw some people who had the picture of the white ones
0:27:00and that looks nice.
0:27:01And I just thought, I don't need a white object
0:27:04that is gonna get visibly dirty very quickly in my home.
0:27:07- Exactly.
0:27:07- Plus almost all the electronics I have are black
0:27:12and almost all the, you know,
0:27:14it would fit better in my house being dark
0:27:16rather than being white.
0:27:18I didn't really want it to stand out.
0:27:20I wanted it to just fit in.
0:27:21And so the black one was the right one.
0:27:23Yeah, I went with black because if it's white plastic, right, you can do something about
0:27:30that. You can wipe it down. But my thought is like, if it gets dirty over time and it's
0:27:34white cloth, it's probably, it's going to be really hard to clean it, was my thinking.
0:27:39So I went with black. But also in the same way for you, like, black would meet the aesthetic
0:27:45of my front room more than white would. Like, if it was white, it would super stick out.
0:27:50would really draw attention to itself in a way that black doesn't. So yeah, it works
0:27:56pretty well. I guess obviously the biggest part of the hardware is the audio, but we're
0:28:03gonna talk about that in a moment. I wanna talk about the microphones first. Now I wanna
0:28:10like park the idea of multiple devices and how they all interact with each other, because
0:28:16I've got a whole big thing I wanna talk about with that. But just from like a perspective
0:28:20So how well did the microphone hear you when you were shouting the Ahoy telephone or Ahoy
0:28:26HomePod command at it?
0:28:28Did you find that to be pretty reliable?
0:28:31Yeah, I found it to be spectacularly reliable even at high volume, which people who have
0:28:37been testing it out have reported and I feel the same way, which is even when it was loud,
0:28:44I could trigger it very easily.
0:28:46And it seemed to understand what I was saying.
0:28:49Again, it didn't always do what I wanted, but it understood what I was saying.
0:28:56And even when it was noisy, it knew that I was talking to it.
0:29:01Yeah, I felt like if I wasn't looking at it, it struggled a little bit more, right?
0:29:09Like if I was just shouting into the room, it sometimes wouldn't pick me up very well,
0:29:13especially when, this is interesting, when I moved it.
0:29:16I moved it from its original location and it seemed to take a little while to get settled.
0:29:21Which I know it's doing something with the way that it's mapping out the room, but after
0:29:25I moved it for a little while it wasn't doing a great job of hearing me, which I thought
0:29:30was quite interesting because that kind of matches what's going on.
0:29:34But yeah I found the microphone to do a pretty good job.
0:29:36I turned it up.
0:29:37I can't turn this thing up very loud.
0:29:39I live in an apartment building and I'm genuinely concerned because this thing is loud, it's
0:29:46bassier than any other speaker that I own.
0:29:49I'm just concerned about it in general
0:29:51if it's too bassier and too loud.
0:29:54I mean, I will wait to see if I get any complaints.
0:29:57But like-- - Your neighbors
0:29:57are gonna be angry. - I moved it
0:29:58because I wanted it next to my TV,
0:30:01but my TV is next to like a neighboring wall,
0:30:04where I have my neighbor on the other side.
0:30:06And I was kind of uncomfortable with that
0:30:08after listening to it for like an hour.
0:30:09So I moved it over to the other side of the front room.
0:30:12so it's basically facing towards the inside of my house.
0:30:17'Cause it is, as far as speakers go,
0:30:20is a little bit more aggressive than normal,
0:30:21so it can get a bit loud.
0:30:22But I found that to do a pretty good job of hearing me
0:30:26at basically all volumes,
0:30:28which I thought was pretty good,
0:30:29but it is expected though,
0:30:30like I do expect that from it, and it met that.
0:30:33But in regards to the hardware,
0:30:35this thing doesn't have what I think every other device
0:30:39in its class has, which is a mute button.
0:30:41How do you stop it from listening to you?
0:30:45- Well, there's two ways.
0:30:46You can ask it to stop listening, and that totally works.
0:30:49- And then how do you get it to come back on again?
0:30:51(laughing)
0:30:52- You tap and hold on the top,
0:30:55like you're holding down the home button on an old iPhone.
0:30:58- Oh, okay, okay.
0:30:59- And it triggers the voice recognition at that point.
0:31:04You can also permanently put it in that.
0:31:06There's a setting on your iPhone
0:31:09that you can do to check, you can,
0:31:11there are a bunch of different settings.
0:31:13You may not realize that they're even there
0:31:15because they're not in the settings app.
0:31:17(laughing)
0:31:18Any guesses where they are?
0:31:19Any guesses where the HomePod settings are?
0:31:21- Home?
0:31:22- Yep, they're in the Home app.
0:31:24You have to go in the Home app
0:31:25and then you have to long press or 3D touch
0:31:27on the HomePod in the Home app.
0:31:30And you get a screen with basically nothing on it,
0:31:34which is really weird.
0:31:35It doesn't have controls or anything,
0:31:38but it's got a button at the bottom for details.
0:31:41And then behind that are what you would think of
0:31:43as the HomePod settings.
0:31:44Now, I think it's interesting that they chose to use
0:31:47their smart home interface for this.
0:31:49There might be some reasons in terms of like
0:31:52by having it present a profile as a certain kind
0:31:55of smart home device, they can just pick up
0:31:56the home interface and they don't have to write
0:31:59a special app and that's all good.
0:32:02They don't have to adjust the iOS settings app
0:32:04or something like that.
0:32:05So I can see why they did it.
0:32:06although part of me thinks one of the reasons they did it is to encourage people to explore
0:32:10the home app because they want more people to see that.
0:32:13Yeah I think I would prefer to have it here than have an app called HomePod like I do
0:32:18Watch. Right like I don't need another app on my iPhone.
0:32:21I agree I had the thought of like I'm a little surprised it isn't just in settings somewhere
0:32:27but where would it go because it's not a Bluetooth device and that's where the AirPods settings
0:32:32are. Honestly I feel like you could just throw
0:32:33line, right? When you connect to HomePod, it automatically shows up within your section.
0:32:37Just the HomePod settings shows up. Yeah, I thought about that, but they chose to go
0:32:42this way instead. So it's in the Home app and you click on or tap on details and you
0:32:45get a bunch of settings, including Never Listen to Me, Touch to Trigger is in there, and there's
0:32:54a bunch of other stuff in there that you can turn on and off. But that's where you have
0:32:58to do it is inside the Home app. And then the other thing, while we're talking about
0:33:02this that I wanted to at least mention was have you figured out how to remote control
0:33:07the HomePod from your phone?
0:33:09Yes.
0:33:10And that's unusual too.
0:33:11And this is done from Control Center, right?
0:33:14There is some weirdness going on there but I actually kind of like it.
0:33:18Yeah, the Control Center now, so instead of like opening the music app and picking the
0:33:24HomePod as a source or something like that, that's not what you do.
0:33:27That's what you do if you airplay to it.
0:33:29you do is you go to control center and control center shows you all of the air
0:33:32playable devices that you're connected to basically so like your device your
0:33:37iPhone but also the home pod and also any Apple TV's you've got so if you tap
0:33:41in in the audio controls and control center and then select home pod you can
0:33:46then control play/pause volume jumping around next track previous track from
0:33:54your phone which it's funny like sometimes I want to do that and I had
0:33:59that moment where I thought, can I not do that
0:34:00from this device?
0:34:01Do I always have to talk to it?
0:34:03And the answer is no, you can, but it's through this,
0:34:07through the control center UI.
0:34:08And something that I found that was a little bit quirky
0:34:11is I flipped to that one and changed the volume
0:34:14on the HomePod.
0:34:15And then I went about my business on my iPhone
0:34:17and played a video on Twitter and the HomePod stopped playing.
0:34:22- Yeah.
0:34:24- And I think it's because it's set as my airplay output,
0:34:29even though I'm not air playing to it. Something weird is going on there where it's trying
0:34:32to remote control that device. It's weird.
0:34:34You kind of have to switch between the panes again, like back into Control Center.
0:34:39Yeah. Because that's something that I actually
0:34:41kind of like where if you switched in Control Center, so you kind of like whatever's in
0:34:46the middle, whatever's the expanded box is where the audio, what you're currently controlling,
0:34:50if you switch to the HomePod, you can then go to the Apple Music app and control what's
0:34:54being played, but it's not, I don't think it's even air playing.
0:34:58No, it's just happening on the interface. And I think I actually kind of like that,
0:35:04honestly. I don't like it because I don't like the
0:35:07idea that if I play, if I'm in that mode and I play a video on my phone that the music
0:35:13stops. Like that shouldn't happen. My iPhone audio should be separate. And maybe this is
0:35:19a software update involving AirPlay 2 kind of thing that happens later, but UI wise,
0:35:24It seems like it's a lot of steps to be able to tell my HomePod to stop playing from my
0:35:28phone and I get that I can talk to it and that's the primary interface but you know
0:35:33every now and then I'm tired of talking to it and I just want to look on my phone.
0:35:38Yeah see what I think is a bunch of steps.
0:35:40What the iPhone wants you to do like again it's not ideal what it wants you to do is
0:35:44to go switch back right so you pull down and now you're back on to controlling the iPhone's
0:35:50audio and then you can go about and do whatever you want and no matter whatever you do including
0:35:53setting up like playing a brand new song from Apple music the home pod will just
0:35:58complete play can like continue playing by the way I really love that they did
0:36:03that that if you play Apple music on another device it doesn't pause the home
0:36:08pod I didn't think of that but when I heard somebody say that was the case I
0:36:12was like oh boy I could have seen that going the other way so easily right that
0:36:17it's like you get one instance because that's how it is everywhere else right
0:36:19if you're on your iPhone and you want to play Apple music on your iPad you can't
0:36:22play them both at the same time, but you can with the HomePod. It plays on its own, and
0:36:27I think that's kind of great. I'm very happy about that.
0:36:31So what songs did you play first? What was your first choice?
0:36:34Uh, well, so, one of the things that happens, and I don't know if you did this, but it's
0:36:38got a whole setup script. And so, one of the things it does, and it actually, and it's,
0:36:44I don't know if you noticed this, but it's timed. So like, once you set it up, if you
0:36:48do the standard setup, it actually says,
0:36:50here are some things you can do and it lists them
0:36:52and they appear on your phone as it mentions them.
0:36:57It doesn't just bring them all up.
0:36:58It says, you could do this and it pops up
0:37:00or this and it pops up.
0:37:01Like they did some real work to sort of synchronize
0:37:05this setup experience.
0:37:06And then it says, why don't you try something like say,
0:37:09hey, HomePod, play some music.
0:37:13So that's the first thing I did.
0:37:17And at that point, what it's doing is it's picking a personalized item.
0:37:21It's basically, because you can do that anytime from your, it basically
0:37:26based on your, its knowledge of you from Apple Music, it picks a song for, and
0:37:29is I think basically starting a playlist of songs, it's personal radio, basically.
0:37:35So that's what I did first.
0:37:38And it played a Husker Du song called Could You Be The One from the
0:37:42album, Warehouse Songs and Stories.
0:37:44And "husker du" you may not know is a Norwegian phrase that was turned into a board game in
0:37:52Minnesota where the band is from, and it has umlauts.
0:37:56It has an umlaut over both of the U's.
0:37:59But of course, the lady in the HomePod decided to tell me what she was going to play, and
0:38:06she said, "Now playing Could You Be The One by Husker Dudairisis?"
0:38:13apparently it got really confused about what home louts are. Okay. It was very... so welcome
0:38:22to the... there was like the good and bad, it was like this is a song from a band I like
0:38:25that I like. Good job, boy what you said there was really weird. I immediately quit that
0:38:33thing, because I picked out my song, I knew what song I wanted to listen to, so as soon
0:38:38as it said "Oh playing" it was like "Oh hey home pod stop" because I wanted to pick my
0:38:42my song. I have a specific song that I wanted to listen to first that I've been thinking
0:38:47about and I didn't want it to start playing me something else. I wanted to pick a song
0:38:52of my own.
0:38:53Ah. Well, my next one, again, I decided not to do the "What Will Be the Momentous"
0:38:57first song, but all the discussion about, like, mono and stereo information and what
0:39:01it uses and if it tries to create something with a stereo sound field where there's
0:39:05sort of like a left and a right and it sounds like, you know, basically no is the answer.
0:39:11But my go-to song for that is "Norwegian Wood" by the Beatles, which pans the guitar
0:39:16to the right and the sitar to the left.
0:39:18And so I played that next and said to myself, "Yep, that's a mono speaker."
0:39:23Like, it's all mixed together, there's no...
0:39:25Oh, there was no, like, spacing of the instruments?
0:39:28It's not trying to separate it, because it's doing its own separation, but it's separating
0:39:32not by sort of left and right, but trying to pull out the vocals to the front and have
0:39:38accompaniment kind of to the back. And so that was interesting. And then I played "Super
0:39:43Bon Bon" by Soul Coughing, which has a nice rhythm section, nice bass, to see how rattly
0:39:53the bass is on that. And then my fourth and my first sort of non-testing that I just wanted
0:39:59to hear a song was that new song "Get Out" by Church's, because I like Church's, and
0:40:05They have a new song and it's a good song.
0:40:08We share a lot of churches.
0:40:10Yes we do.
0:40:11What did you play first?
0:40:12The Chain by Fleetwood Mac.
0:40:14Oh classic.
0:40:15It's a song I love.
0:40:17I love Rumors.
0:40:18It's like one of my favorite albums of all time because it's one of the very best.
0:40:22But I wanted to pick The Chain because it's a song that I like a lot and the bass is very
0:40:26heavy right like and it is you know there is like the drums is I knew was going to kick
0:40:32the bass off right.
0:40:34So I wanted to hear how that was going to come through.
0:40:40And it has obviously the great guitar solo.
0:40:43I figured it was going to do an interesting job of putting the HomePod through its paces,
0:40:47because there's a lot going on in that song.
0:40:50And it was excellent.
0:40:52I was pleased of my choice because it confirmed to me how good the thing sounds.
0:40:58And then after that I was just picking up random stuff, like songs that I know well.
0:41:02I went for some Beatles songs, some Beach Boys songs, I played some churches, I played
0:41:06some Alt-J, like I was just picking out random stuff from Foo Fighters, just trying to run
0:41:11the gamut of my musical tastes to see how it handled kind of everything independently.
0:41:18What do you think on an overall basis of how the HomePod sounds, especially compared to
0:41:23some of the, because I know you own more kind of professionally tuned audio devices than
0:41:28I do, right? Like you have a home pod hi- uh, home pod. A iPod Hi-Fi, which again, that
0:41:33was a- I do.
0:41:34Considered to be a serious piece of audio equipment, right? I know that you have-
0:41:37Ten years ago, yeah.
0:41:38A Sonos or some Sonoses and-
0:41:40I do. I have a Sonos Play One and a Sonos Play Five.
0:41:43There you go. Like the most I have is some Numark speakers that are attached to my record
0:41:48player and some Amazon Echos, right? Like I don't have an incredible amount of audio
0:41:54speaker technology at home-
0:41:56Right.
0:41:57So, what did you think about the HomePod? How did it handle, and how does it handle
0:42:01stacktop against some of the other stuff that you own?
0:42:04Well, I'm gonna say upfront that while I am a music listener, and I listen to music
0:42:08a lot, and I like music that sounds good, I am not an audiophile. You can take that
0:42:14as a positive or a negative.
0:42:15I think that is better for this discussion, that neither of us concern ourselves to be
0:42:20this way.
0:42:21If you're an audiophile, don't listen to us, right? Like, don't listen to, don't
0:42:23what we have to say because we're not coming from it from your perspective and also I'm
0:42:27not sure I entirely believe you. So let's just go our separate ways on that. There are
0:42:33some amazing posts. There's a couple of guys who are in the audio file Reddit which I followed
0:42:37a link to and was horrified when I got in there because I have just my beliefs and you
0:42:43can take them for what they're worth that a lot of audio file stuff is all about justifying
0:42:47purchases and about, you know, just people believing what they want to believe in a placebo
0:42:55effect and I totally believe that there are actual things going on. I think there's also
0:43:00a lot that's not going on in the head of the listener. But anyway, there are people who
0:43:04consider themselves audiophiles who are going to town on testing in detail everything that
0:43:10happens with the HomePod and if you're somebody who cares about that stuff, you should go
0:43:14go listen to those people because I'm not one of those people. I'm just a music listener.
0:43:18No. I mean, I was even coming into this a little bit concerned about if I would be able
0:43:23to tell anything. Because like, when I hear people talking about like, mids and like,
0:43:30you know, what's the treble? Right. It's like, I couldn't even tell. I don't know what that
0:43:33is. Separation of the cymbals. Yeah, like, I can't hear it. Now, like, I can, I feel
0:43:37like I can appreciate when something sounds really good. And I could be like, Oh, I like
0:43:42the sound of that, but I struggle to be able to tell you why except for the fact that this
0:43:47sounds different in a way that is appealing. That's the most I can ever really tell you.
0:43:54I don't really have a lot more vernacular than that. But I think that for the idea of
0:43:59this discussion, I think it's better that we feel that way because honestly that's how
0:44:03the majority of people that will buy this thing or even consume music will feel. It's
0:44:09like you know something you like sounds good or sounds bad, the ability to describe it accurately,
0:44:14I think, fails most of us. And I think that disclaimer out of the way, nobody will now
0:44:21probably hopefully write in and say, "How dare you talk about things you're not qualified," because
0:44:25first off, everybody's qualified to talk about things that they experience and you don't need
0:44:29a certificate. But I'm not coming from the perspective of an audio file. So yes, the iPod
0:44:35Hi-Fi, let's get that out of the way. Stephen Hackett did a video that was
0:44:39funny where he had the iPod Hi-Fi and also the HomePod. The iPod Hi-Fi is not
0:44:46even like... I listen to it every day, Myke. I listen to music on my iPod Hi-Fi
0:44:51attached to my Mac via iTunes every day. Every day. It sounds terrible. It sounds
0:45:00- It's terrible.
0:45:00- Did it sound terrible at the time?
0:45:03Like...
0:45:04- No, no.
0:45:05In the category of these iPod speaker dock speakers
0:45:10at the time, it was overpriced and over-engineered
0:45:14and sounded probably better than what the market wanted.
0:45:18But compared to any of these other like...
0:45:22- Like the JBL on stage and the Bose sound dock.
0:45:26- Bose sound dock, right.
0:45:27So the truth is, and actually I was looking
0:45:29one of the founders of Sonos was tweeting on Friday.
0:45:32And he was talking about how he has opinions about,
0:45:36and he's retired, he's no longer at Sonos.
0:45:39And he said very positive things about the HomePod
0:45:41and said there are places where it falls down
0:45:43and places where it does well.
0:45:45And as a first effort from Apple,
0:45:46he was very impressed with it.
0:45:48But he also said, as somebody who was deeply involved
0:45:51in his entire career in trying to improve the quality
0:45:54home audio, he said, "These products are so much better than what used to be around."
0:46:02And I think that's true, that the HomePod and the Sonos Play 5 that I have, and the
0:46:07Sonos Play 1 that I have, and I have the Play 1, the one without the Amazon Echo integration,
0:46:14but I do have one of those, they all sound really good. And I think they all sound better
0:46:19than the iPod Hi-Fi. Even though the iPod Hi-Fi is huge and has two speakers and will
0:46:27do true stereo, they all sound better than it. So first off, and the Amazon Echo's don't
0:46:33sound any good. I've got a couple Amazon Echo's. They sound in complete isolation where you're
0:46:38in your kitchen and it's the only thing around and you tell it to play music. It plays the
0:46:41music and you're like, "Alright, there's music." But when you put it up against these other
0:46:46it's not even like it's not even close. It shouldn't even be it's part of the
0:46:51conversation because they're a popular voice-driven device but in terms of
0:46:58audio quality it's just not close. Now do people care? I mean people enjoy
0:47:03listening to music on their Amazon echoes. I enjoy listening to music on my
0:47:07Amazon echo but so there are contexts where maybe you don't care so much but
0:47:11isn't it nice that there are also these devices that have much better audio and
0:47:15and in the case of the HomePod it's so small that it can go almost anywhere. That was my issue with
0:47:21the Sonos Play 5 is I wanted to put it in my living room and it's huge. It's huge. It's bigger
0:47:26than the iPod Hi-Fi. It's this huge block, rectangular block. It's wide and it's tall and I
0:47:32couldn't find any place to put it. Plus it's pretty directional which the HomePod is.
0:47:36- Wow, this is big. I've never, I never already paid too much attention to, you know, I've never
0:47:40looked into Sonos myself, but this is like a boom box. This is not a small piece of equipment.
0:47:45Yeah, I don't know if it's actually volume-wise bigger than the iPod HiFi. It's taller and it's
0:47:50almost as wide as the iPod HiFi. It is a big block and I couldn't fit it and because it's also
0:47:55very directional, you know, I couldn't—there was no place to put it in my living room. None.
0:48:00Whereas the HomePod will go—there are all sorts of places that I can put the HomePod in my living
0:48:06living room because it's this little thing that looks like a facial tissue dispenser
0:48:11or a ball of yarn. In fact, my wife being a knitter, she had a spool of yarn out on
0:48:18the counter and I said to her, "Once you see a HomePod, everything looks like a HomePod."
0:48:23Trash cans, balls of string, they all look like just a little HomePod. Is that a big
0:48:28HomePod? Anyway, so compared to the Sonos One, I think it sounds better than the Sonos
0:48:34it's also more expensive than the Sonos one. But it sounds, I think it sounds
0:48:38better, although the Sonos one sounds pretty good. For a little speaker it
0:48:41sounds pretty good, but I think the HomePod's better. Is the HomePod better than the
0:48:44Sonos Play 5? I thought I would say no. And my answer is, it depends. It actually,
0:48:51in some circumstances, I prefer how it sounds. It doesn't have stereo
0:48:54separation and all that because it's a mono speaker and it's just building its
0:48:59own sound field instead. But it sounds really good, and yes, in some ways
0:49:03versus even a calibrated for the room Sonos Play 5, there are some cases where
0:49:08I preferred the HomePod and other cases where I preferred the Play 5, but that's
0:49:12an expensive big speaker that should sound better, I think, than the HomePod
0:49:16and it was close enough that I thought the HomePod acquitted itself pretty well.
0:49:23And again, the size is a huge thing with the HomePod. So that's my
0:49:27story is that it is definitely playing with the Sonos of the world in terms of
0:49:31the good audio quality, the bass response, there's a lot of things
0:49:38about it that I really liked how it sounded. It is, and you know, you've
0:49:43seen this and I was talking to Stephen Hackett about this, like it's processing
0:49:47the audio to build this sound field and my experience back in San Jose was like
0:49:52this and I've had a little bit of that this time which is some, you know,
0:49:57every track you throw at it it's going to do its magic and sometimes it is
0:50:03great and sometimes you you go "well, is this... does this sound right?" and you know its
0:50:11algorithm is making judgments about what that audio is and how it should sound
0:50:15and they've tuned it for a lot of different music but I think because it's
0:50:19a single speaker trying to do a lot of clever things you will run into tracks
0:50:24where it really sounds spectacular,
0:50:26and other ones where it's kind of muddy.
0:50:28And I think that's just the name of the game
0:50:30when you're trying to process audio like this,
0:50:31that you don't have an engineer living inside it
0:50:34that's tweaking it.
0:50:35They've had to program the software to do it,
0:50:38take its best shot.
0:50:39And for the most part, it's pretty impressive.
0:50:41Every now and then you have something where you're like,
0:50:44essentially it's a remixing it on the fly
0:50:47and you can agree or disagree with some of the decisions
0:50:50it makes when it's remixing them.
0:50:51But generally, I think it sounds really good.
0:50:53Yeah, I've mostly been really impressed by, I don't know if there's a term for it, but like the way I've been thinking it was like audio shaping, like the way it takes the song and what speakers it's sending it to and stuff like that.
0:51:03You know, I've had instances where it sounded like the bass or the drums are further away from me and the vocals are closer to me. And when that works well, that is very impressive.
0:51:15Like if you're just sitting and listening, you're like, there's some like, it feels like there's
0:51:20some movement to this. I mean, I've experienced this in a very serious scenario in your home,
0:51:25because you have 5.1 surround and some 5.1 surround songs, right? Like some albums,
0:51:33where you can literally walk around the room and pick up different parts of the music louder or
0:51:38quieter. And whilst obviously the HomePod does not have the ability to be that good, I did feel that
0:51:44Like if I was getting closer to the HomePod, it felt like everything was more compressed,
0:51:49but the more, like, you know, like it was all, as you would expect, like it just sounds
0:51:52normal, but as I moved away, I was able to pick up some things differently, so the way
0:51:56that the bass or the drums sounded, and I was pretty impressed with that.
0:52:00And it's not directional in that way.
0:52:03If you're off to the side on a traditional forward-firing speaker, it's just sort of,
0:52:08you're off to the side, and you lose a lot of it.
0:52:11And the HomePod tries very hard not to do that, where you're supposed to be able to
0:52:16go.
0:52:17And I've got a long, you know, you've been in a long front room that is kitchen and dining
0:52:21room and living room all in one.
0:52:24And so it's very hard to do, if it's facing right at you, it's all the way across the
0:52:29room and that's not ideal.
0:52:31And so this I put in the middle of the room against a wall and it did a pretty good job
0:52:36from any location including the kitchen in filling the room with music, which was great.
0:52:40I was very surprised at that too in mine and again you've been in my front room
0:52:44I don't have as long a room as you but it's like it's a kitchen
0:52:47It's a combined kitchen and front room area and no matter where I was
0:52:51You know
0:52:52I could have it the other side of the room and it felt honestly like as loud as if I was next to it and I
0:52:57Found that to be quite impressive because I've never owned any
0:53:00Audio equipment that would come close to being able to do something like that
0:53:05You know if I was if I'm connecting to my echo
0:53:08on the other side of the room, I should just crank the thing up, right? Like there isn't
0:53:13really an option. It's not doing a good job of filling the room with sound. You just make
0:53:17it louder. But I didn't really feel like I had to make it louder just because I was further
0:53:21away from it. I found that to be quite impressive.
0:53:24Yeah, it's, uh, yeah. I mean, again, I think in listening to this thing, it is clear that
0:53:32this is a product that has been designed over many years of research, apparently, to be
0:53:39as good a sounding—this is Apple the music company. This is Apple the company that, you
0:53:44know, Steve Jobs would stand on stage and say, "Music's in our DNA. We love music,"
0:53:48right? And this is Apple—don't think of Apple as a—they used to be a computer company,
0:53:54and now they're like a platforms company with mobile devices of various kinds. Think
0:53:59about that this is a product that's from that segment of Apple that you thought
0:54:03of more when they were the iPod company, which is they care about music and audio.
0:54:09Ironically, the iPod HiFi came out of that, but it's that strain of the
0:54:14company that's in this product, because this is a product that is engineered so
0:54:18heavily to make music that Apple thinks sounds the best. And again, everybody's
0:54:24going to have an opinion about that, but I think it sounds pretty good. I think
0:54:28you're right that one of the things that it's doing is increasing the loudness
0:54:33and showing off that it can get pretty good bass out of that little tiny
0:54:38woofer that it's got pointing upward on the device on the inside to the point where I wonder about
0:54:47people like you who are in places where a rattling bass is just going to get somebody pounding on the
0:54:54wall telling you to turn it down.
0:54:56We haven't had any, I mean I've been playing music significantly more than I normally would
0:55:00basically all weekend and nobody's complained but I will tell you we probably have the audio
0:55:07at about 10%. Like I actually think that the HomePod is too loud in general. I think that
0:55:16what I honestly what I want is to cut the audio in half and be able to control it that
0:55:20way because the increments that I'm moving it up and down in the kind of the control
0:55:25center UI, it's all down in the last kind of 10 to 15 percent. And so like when I'm
0:55:31moving it, I'm even making it, I want to make a small adjustment, but it's making
0:55:34a large adjustment. You know, like I cranked it for a quarter of a second and it nearly
0:55:39blew my brain off, right? Like…
0:55:41I had it at 90 percent, which is very funny because it says, "That will be very loud.
0:55:45Are you sure?" And I said, "Yep." And it cranked it up and it was really loud. It
0:55:49was really loud.
0:55:50I really don't think people need it to go that loud.
0:55:55I would honestly just like to be able to have some kind of setting where I can have more
0:56:00fine control over lower parts of the audio.
0:56:05At such small...
0:56:08I have it at 10% and it is listenable anywhere in my apartment.
0:56:13And I just figure that's probably too loud.
0:56:17And I'm assuming that like, I'm not the only person who's gonna have one of these in an
0:56:21apartment.
0:56:22And I think that it might, it might just be a bit too much.
0:56:26And I feel like honestly, the volume of this thing, it almost feels like a hubris thing,
0:56:31or it's just like, look how loud we can make this tiny speaker.
0:56:35Like nobody who needs, who needs that 100%?
0:56:39Like who's ever going to use that?
0:56:40I don't get it.
0:56:41I don't really understand the choices made for the volume of this thing.
0:56:47Are they showing off? I think they are in part. I think very clearly, very clearly many
0:56:54of the people who worked on this product live in single-family homes.
0:56:59But even then, a single-family home, a detached home, the home product 100%, you will be bothering
0:57:06your neighbours.
0:57:07It's not, I have to say that I do occasionally take the Sonos 5 and I turn it up almost all the way while I'm sitting here working,
0:57:13and I imagine that people walking by on the street outside are like, "What is happening in that garage?"
0:57:19Um, but generally, yeah, yeah, no, you're right. I think I have a hard time imagining what scenarios would use the HomePod at 100%,
0:57:30because if you were in even a large room, um, it would be like, "Don't go near the center of the room."
0:57:37Yeah, you have to like carve out an area, right, where no one can go because the thing
0:57:45will blow your eardrums.
0:57:47Next Christmas I'll just put a home pod on the roof and put Christmas carols on it and
0:57:52crank it all the way and the whole neighborhood will hear the Christmas carols. That's what
0:57:56I'll do.
0:57:57So, Kate made a point, right? Apple stores? Like, is Apple stores the place? Also, no,
0:58:02There's stuff going on.
0:58:05People are trying to work there.
0:58:07I know this is going to be a problem for them, that people are going to be cranking that
0:58:11thing up.
0:58:12So I was in an Apple store buying mine.
0:58:14I went to pick it up and someone was playing it pretty loud and it was too loud.
0:58:18I don't think it was at the top but it was like you were disrupting everything in this
0:58:21store with this one little speaker.
0:58:24It's interesting.
0:58:25Yeah, I don't know.
0:58:28I don't know what they're going to…
0:58:29I don't really know what the use case is.
0:58:32If you're ever going to play this at maximum volume in an environment, then the place that
0:58:37you're playing it in probably doesn't...
0:58:39You want more?
0:58:40You're going to fill out a nightclub with this thing, you have a PA system.
0:58:46It's just interesting to me.
0:58:48I'm not really complaining as such because the fact that it gets very loud is not going
0:58:54to be a problem for me because I'm never going to turn it up.
0:58:56I'm just kind of questioning what the thinking was.
0:59:00Maybe they need like a mega mode where it's like you disable mega mode and the range becomes
0:59:06less and you can do a little more fine control.
0:59:08Although you can also just tell it what volume percent.
0:59:10Like when you're turning up Apple headphones, right, like either the AirPods or the EarPods,
0:59:14I don't know if this is in America or if this is just a European Union thing.
0:59:19That's right.
0:59:20There's that, you can set, you can cap the top of it so you don't damage your ears.
0:59:24Yeah, and you have to like, it gets into these colors, right, so it starts off white, then
0:59:28goes yellow, then goes red as you get up to the top. And you have to do this thing where
0:59:32to get past, I think, the yellow on the, kind of the volume indicator, you have to press
0:59:37the volume twice because you're like engaging, like, you know, everyone's turning their keys
0:59:42at the same time kind of situation, so you can pump the volume up. And I would, basically
0:59:48I would like to see some options.
0:59:50Limit is the name of the feature and it's an iOS too, I believe, and it was on the iPod.
0:59:56The idea there is, yes, people... To get back to the battery thing, there are a bunch of
1:00:02stories about people ruining their hearing by turning their iPod up all the way, which
1:00:06led to the typical response of like, "Well, whose fault is that? Why did they turn it
1:00:10up all the way?" And then other people saying, "Well, Apple should protect users from themselves."
1:00:16and Apple was like, "All right, here you go.
1:00:18Volume limit, here it is.
1:00:20You can set what the top volume is
1:00:23and it won't go above that."
1:00:24But I agree for somewhat different reasons
1:00:26that actually would be a great feature on the HomePod.
1:00:29Like, so your friend doesn't come over
1:00:31and crank it up all the way and get you evicted.
1:00:35- Yep, I would really like that.
1:00:37So that would be a lovely feature.
1:00:39And again, I would just assume this is one
1:00:42of those situations where the majority
1:00:44people testing this product do not live in apartments. It can be my only assumption because
1:00:49they're testing it in these chambers inside of Apple, right, where it doesn't matter about
1:00:55how loud the thing goes. One of my favourite things though is what this product does when
1:01:05it's playing music and you ask it a question. I think this is just a wonderful Apple-like
1:01:12feature that it doesn't just lower the volume, it's doing something, I don't know what the
1:01:20exact terms are, but some kind of audio distortion. So it sounds like if you're at a bar or a
1:01:27club and there's music playing and you go into the bathroom or you go outside of the
1:01:31main room and you can kind of hear a muffled version of the audio, that is what Apple is
1:01:36doing. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes, I posted a video on Twitter that tries
1:01:41to highlight this and I think it does a good job of showing it. I just, I heard it and
1:01:45it really made me smile and I think that it's just a nice little touch.
1:01:50Yeah, it'd be, I agree. I had that same note where I said something and then I just heard
1:01:57the sort of like muffle echo effect and again, you're right, it's an apple touch which is
1:02:02all they had to do was dip the volume. Yep. But they didn't. And I think it's wonderful.
1:02:08I like that kind of stuff.
1:02:09That's why we buy these products, right?
1:02:11Let me ask you a question.
1:02:13Music isn't on the kind of audio.
1:02:15What do you think about trying to play other kinds of audio
1:02:19on the home pod?
1:02:20- I haven't done a lot of that.
1:02:23I did a little bit of it.
1:02:25You know, it's AirPlay, you get the two,
1:02:29what, two second, three second delay.
1:02:31- I tell you, man, I must not have ever used AirPlay
1:02:34for audio.
1:02:37because I am like enraged that I will press play
1:02:40and overcast and I am waiting literally three seconds
1:02:43for the audio to start.
1:02:44Bluetooth doesn't do this, right?
1:02:47And yeah, I cannot believe it.
1:02:50I've been playing overcast, right?
1:02:52- Myke discovered AirPlay, everybody watch out.
1:02:55He's got takes from 10 years ago or whatever,
1:02:57five years ago.
1:02:58- But now I can see why AirPlay 2 needs to exist
1:03:02because AirPlay kind of sucks for audio.
1:03:04- It's like you're in the mud.
1:03:05you're just like wallowing and moving very slowly because everything is... and the best
1:03:09part is when you're like, "Alright, I'm done, I need to pause this now." And you press pause,
1:03:13and then you wait for three seconds for the audio to pause.
1:03:17It's like I understand when I'm sending it, right, because it's buffering, but why am
1:03:22I waiting on the other side? Like if I'm listening to the audio on the home pod and I press pause,
1:03:27why do I now need to wait again? Yeah, it's very... it kind of sucks, and I'm assuming
1:03:32that Airplay 2 fixes some of this and I'm looking forward to it. You know what I would
1:03:36say for listening to podcasts? The HomePod is not very kind to John Siracusa.
1:03:41Interesting. What does it do? What's it saying about him?
1:03:45It's very mean. Very mean. I was listening to ATP and whatever the bass is in the HomePod
1:03:52just doesn't really do a good job for John. Like I was cooking and I could hear Marco
1:03:57and Casey fine, but with John it kind of sounded a bit muffled when I was trying to listen
1:04:03to him. So it was a bit difficult for me to hear him. So John Sirkius has a bassy voice
1:04:08and the HomePod doesn't like that. What do you think about the fact that you know, you
1:04:15can't use other services here? Like all you get is Apple Music, right? Like that, I mean
1:04:22you can AirPlay anything to it, but you know, the Echo, you can use Spotify and Amazon have
1:04:29a subscription service, on the Google Home you can use Spotify and Google has subscription
1:04:34services. Do you think that Apple should allow for companies like Spotify to be able to hook
1:04:39into this product?
1:04:41I think I could take it further and say I think that Apple needs to extend Siri and
1:04:50Apple needs to extend that both in terms of talking to apps on devices and also
1:04:56talking to web services. I don't think Apple needs to necessarily build, you
1:05:02know, build its own Spotify integration with the HomePod, but it probably needs
1:05:09to, I mean, it doesn't need to do anything, it can do whatever it wants. I think it
1:05:12would be good for Siri if it had more links to apps that are on your phone
1:05:18that you could control remotely by voice, and that includes media, and that includes podcast apps and
1:05:24other music providers, and also web services like the skills on the Alexa side. I think there needs
1:05:33to be a story about it on Macworld. I think there needs to be an app store for Siri, basically,
1:05:40that lets people get qualified to connect to their web services and have them available as things
1:05:47that Siri knows about or that can be triggered. I think that's just the long-term health of Siri
1:05:52as an ecosystem unto itself. It needs more capabilities than it's got now, and we're in
1:05:57the stage now where if Apple doesn't add it, it isn't in there, and Apple has to move past that,
1:06:02because there are lots of things that are going to be interesting that Apple is never going to
1:06:05prioritize as one of the things that it's going to do. That said, you know, I don't get too rageful
1:06:13about their not being spot--first of all, I don't use Spotify, I use Apple Music, so I don't care.
1:06:17But I do use Overcast, and Overcast knows where all my podcasts are, and while you can play
1:06:22podcasts now using Siri on iOS devices and on the HomePod, it doesn't know, you know, it doesn't know
1:06:29where my Overcast stuff is. I'm not sure if it knows where my Apple Podcast stuff is, and if I'm
1:06:37halfway through an episode of a podcast on the podcast app, if it knows where to play it, it
1:06:43seems like it's way simpler than that and it's just using the directory to
1:06:46play a podcast but I would benefit from that from from being able to let demand
1:06:54my latest podcasts or from a playlist for overcast and yeah I mean I would
1:06:59like it it's I again I don't think it's going to be that you're going to be able
1:07:03to just talk to Siri on the home pod and say play something on Spotify you'll
1:07:07probably have to have and even if they do this an iPhone that's on Spotify
1:07:12where there's been an update to SyriaKit to allow it and then you'll be playing
1:07:16it'll essentially be playing it via AirPlay over the network to your HomePod
1:07:23but adding the voice control would be a good thing but you know I
1:07:28don't know I just I think it is a thing that if you're if you're not on their
1:07:34music platform this product is not really relevant to you but I have a hard
1:07:38time getting up in arms about it because I already feel that way like Sonos is
1:07:42the only one that plays everything. Like, you know, Sonos plays Apple Music. Amazon
1:07:47tries very hard to have you either use Amazon's music service or then they'll kick it back
1:07:52to Spotify, I think partially because they didn't have a good enough music service when
1:07:56they launched the product. Yeah, but in the end, sure, yes, I would like Siri to be more
1:08:01useful and that includes supporting other music services.
1:08:06There's a lot more to talk about with Siri and the home part and we should dig into that,
1:08:09But first I want to thank Squarespace for their support of this show.
1:08:12Use the offer code UPGRADE at checkout and you will get 10% off your first purchase.
1:08:17Make your next move with Squarespace, there you easily create the website that you want
1:08:21for your next idea or project.
1:08:23With the ability to grab a unique domain name, take advantage of awesomely customisable, award
1:08:28winning beautiful templates, have it all backed up with 24/7 customer support, Squarespace
1:08:33are the all in one platform for you.
1:08:36There is nothing to install, there are no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed.
1:08:40They've got you covered.
1:08:41No matter what type of website you want to build, Squarespace can do it for you.
1:08:46If you want to make a blog, portfolio, an online store, a site for an event, a site
1:08:50for your business, maybe a restaurant, your band, they've got all of the tools that you
1:08:55need.
1:08:56It's all drag and drop, it's really easy to build.
1:08:57So many times in my life, like over the last 10 years, I have needed a website and I would
1:09:03not have been able to put anything online without the help of Squarespace.
1:09:19Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month.
1:09:21You can sign up for a trial with no credit card required just by going to squarespace.com
1:09:25then use the offer code UPGRADE when you check out to get 10% off your first purchase when
1:09:30you sign up for a plan.
1:09:31This will also show your support for this show.
1:09:33Thanks to Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.
1:09:38So I did some tests with the Siri trigger word, which we will call as we always do a
1:09:46high telephone, because I wondered what was going to happen if I had this turned on all
1:09:52my devices, right?
1:09:54Like how good is the HomePod going to be at picking up the trigger word instead of my
1:10:00iPhone or my iPad or my Apple watch?
1:10:02I usually have this turned off because I just don't use it.
1:10:06I mean, I never talk to my iPhone.
1:10:09I talk to the Amazon Echo or whatever if I'm just around the house.
1:10:12So I turned it on my iPad.
1:10:14I turned it on on my iPhone and my Apple Watch, and I would just ask questions.
1:10:19I'd be sitting in the house and I'd say like, "Oh, hi telephone, what's the weather?"
1:10:22And what would happen is typically my iPhone and my iPad would both light up
1:10:28and would immediately kick off and then the HomePod would answer.
1:10:32So there's two things going on here.
1:10:34One, it's good that the HomePod does pick up the question,
1:10:38because if I'm asking something out into the world in my home,
1:10:41I want the best speaker to give it back to me.
1:10:44But the other thing is all my devices are lighting up.
1:10:47And if I'm as I was, I was listening to music and I'm on my iPad
1:10:52and I'm doing work and I'm asking the HomePod to change the song or whatever.
1:10:56And then the iPad just gets this full screen
1:11:00UI pop up for half a second, it's kind of frustrating.
1:11:04Right? Like I don't need that to be happening, right?
1:11:07Like something I want. I know it's difficult, right?
1:11:09Like how else are you doing it?
1:11:11But that was something that I was noticing and was a bit frustrating to me.
1:11:15The one issue that I was having consistently was my Apple
1:11:20Watch. So if the face of the screen is lit up on my
1:11:25Apple Watch, the request always went to my Apple Watch, which is not what I
1:11:30want. So I was finding that I would ask for some music to be played and it would be like,
1:11:37"Oh, and then my iPhone would start playing the music." So then I was like, "Hmm, okay,
1:11:41let me think about how I could fix this." Like if I noticed that my Apple Watch picks this up.
1:11:45So I said, "Oh, hey, a high telephone, can you play churches on my HomePod?" And my watch said,
1:11:52"No, I can't do that." Which was really annoying to me.
1:11:57Yeah, what it's supposed to be doing is, um, if you have been actively using, or I think if you
1:12:03raise an Apple watch or raise an iPhone, it's trying to detect what you're talking to. It's
1:12:09trying to intuit what you're talking to. And I think the HomePod wins unless you're actively
1:12:15using some other device. It's trying to let the HomePod be the one to answer those requests. And
1:12:20it's, they're supposed to be talking to each other and determining like who can field this request.
1:12:24but it seems like it's a work in progress. I didn't do, I mean, I used it with other devices
1:12:31around and I didn't really notice anything about it, so it was working okay for me. But,
1:12:35you know, that's my understanding is that Apple is trying to intuit based on the status of all
1:12:39of your Apple devices that are within speaking distance of who should take it.
1:12:45And I found that by and large it was making the right decision, except the Apple Watch would be
1:12:53bumping in every now and then and trying to do what it could do.
1:12:57And the other problem I have with this is I want to jump ahead just a moment to talk
1:13:01a little bit about SiriKit and its issue there.
1:13:05Because let's say that I wanted to order a Lyft, right?
1:13:11So if I'm in the US I want to pick up a Lyft.
1:13:13We don't have Lyft here unfortunately which is a shame because I actually really like
1:13:16Lyft.
1:13:19The iPhone can take that request because that is an intent with SiriKit.
1:13:24So I would say, "Oh, hi, telephone.
1:13:25Order me a lift."
1:13:27And my phone would say, "Okay."
1:13:29But if I'm at home and I'm used to doing this and I say, "Oh, hi, telephone.
1:13:33Order me a lift," my HomePod will say, "I can't do that."
1:13:37Now that's not good, is it?
1:13:41That's not...
1:13:42- It's SiriKit, but, right?
1:13:45Like, it is, the HomePod is connected to your phone
1:13:50if you want to let it,
1:13:52but, 'cause that's a setting you can turn off,
1:13:54when it's present on the same WiFi network,
1:13:57but not all of the SiriKit stuff is connected.
1:14:01And so the, like, ride sharing is not connected.
1:14:06So, it doesn't work.
1:14:07- And so I feel that there are things
1:14:09that should have been done here.
1:14:10Either one, they should have made that work,
1:14:12or two, they should send it back
1:14:14to send the request to my iPhone.
1:14:17Why can't the HomePod do that?
1:14:19- Right, that's true.
1:14:20Like it could kick that up on the iPhone
1:14:22and the iPhone could start talking to you and say,
1:14:24"All right, well now I'm over here and I've got this thing
1:14:27"and I can do that."
1:14:29- Like my HomePod should say like,
1:14:30"Okay, check your iPhone.
1:14:32"Like I'm taking care of that for you."
1:14:34- I need to, you need to do that on your iPhone,
1:14:36you know, go check that out
1:14:37and we can do it over there or something like that.
1:14:39and start to kick it off on the iPhone.
1:14:42Yeah, and the answer is it should do it.
1:14:44Like this is one of those things that if you're gonna
1:14:46connect to the phone, connect to the phone
1:14:48for all the things that you can do on the phone.
1:14:50There are several instances with the HomePod
1:14:51where there are things you can do on an iPhone
1:14:55when you're driving using hands-free.
1:14:59And I think there should be no difference.
1:15:01Like I know the HomePod is a separate device.
1:15:03It's not just a speaker, but like if I've got it connected,
1:15:07My iPhone has set it up, my iPhone is present,
1:15:09my iPhone is on the same network as the HomePod.
1:15:13I should be able to behave in my home
1:15:16like I behave in my car, and you can't.
1:15:19Not only is the SiriKit stuff not there,
1:15:21but although Apple makes a big deal
1:15:23about how you can use it as a speakerphone,
1:15:25you have to initiate the call,
1:15:27or answer the call, I believe, on the phone,
1:15:29and then transfer it to the HomePod.
1:15:32- Why, why?
1:15:33And like, Raffola on the chat room has made, like,
1:15:35the most baffling one for me, calendar.
1:15:37You can't ask your HomePod to tell you
1:15:40what calendar events you have.
1:15:41And it's like, but why though?
1:15:43Because you can do my notes and my messages
1:15:46and my reminders, why not my calendar?
1:15:48- I think the answer is why,
1:15:50is the same as the answer to why is AirPlay 2
1:15:53and why are stereo pairs and why is Multiroom not there?
1:15:56Which is, this is not a product where the software's done.
1:15:59Like, it's not done.
1:16:00- So should they have released it now?
1:16:01- And they decided to release it.
1:16:02- Why did they do this?
1:16:03Like, I really can't understand that,
1:16:05that there are things that they should have added,
1:16:08like the calendar stuff,
1:16:09but we don't know if they're ever going to,
1:16:11but we know there are software features for this device
1:16:13that are supposed to be here but aren't.
1:16:15- They will, they will.
1:16:17I think they decided that it was good enough
1:16:18as a music player,
1:16:19that they wanted to get it out in the market
1:16:21and have people start experiencing it,
1:16:23and that they would add features as they go.
1:16:25And they just decided, look,
1:16:26great artistship, real artistship,
1:16:29let's get it out there and we'll update it.
1:16:31And the nice thing about it is,
1:16:33these are all software things,
1:16:34are all services things. I think that the HomePod can be made to do an awful lot
1:16:37more than it does now, but they're going to have to, you know, don't buy this
1:16:41product hoping that it will talk to your calendar because it doesn't now and you
1:16:45shouldn't count on that. But if I had to guess, I would guess that all of that
1:16:50stuff is happening in the background and they just wanted to ship it and they're
1:16:53going to ship all these other features and they're going to keep rolling them
1:16:55out, which is good, but again I just had that. I never really thought of it before,
1:16:59but I was standing there thinking about all the different things that I could do
1:17:02and I realized I considered because the HomePod is connected sort of to my
1:17:09iPhone, I really do put it in the in the same category as talking through a
1:17:15Bluetooth speaker in my car and that's that's my frustration is that it's not
1:17:20like there's a whole category of things that it just won't do and I'm sorry but
1:17:25like the phone thing like why have the capability to have it be a speaker phone
1:17:30but not let you actually just make the call from the device and have it pipe the audio.
1:17:36Why do I have to use the phone? If you're going to make that a feature, make it a whole
1:17:40feature, not half a feature. It just seems so strange. And it's one of those areas where
1:17:45the thing seems unfinished and where it is harmed by kind of the lack of functionality
1:17:50that Siri has right now that Apple needs to work on if they want this product to improve.
1:17:56So I want to talk about personal requests. It is the part of the HomePod that allows
1:18:04you to connect to some things that are going on on your iPhone. So messages and notes and
1:18:11reminders. And during the setup process there's a warning that pops up that says "Allow anyone
1:18:16to use this HomePod to send and read messages, add reminders, create notes or more with this
1:18:21iPhone when it is connected to the same Wi-Fi network. I honestly feel like this warning
1:18:28indicates that this isn't the way it should be. Like, the fact that this warning exists
1:18:34saying like, just making sure that you know that anyone will be able to send messages
1:18:40or read your messages in your home when you're at home is like a really weird thing. Like,
1:18:46This is very, very strange and is something that I imagine that a lot of people want to
1:18:53have turned on, not even just from like, "Oh, someone's going to super my messages," but
1:18:58just so you don't end up people sending random messages.
1:19:01It's a very strange thing.
1:19:05This is, and we should say, I mean, all of these assistants struggle with this to a certain
1:19:10degree.
1:19:11Yeah, of like picking voices out.
1:19:14Some of them say they do it, but it's never perfect.
1:19:17No, and we live in a world where our IDs are us, our stuff lives in our IDs, and you need
1:19:26a device to be able to say, ideally, "I know who you are, you're somebody you recognize,
1:19:31I know what user you are, and I'll use your calendar and I'll tell you."
1:19:35That's the ultimate goal of all these assistants, is that if I ask for a calendar and my wife
1:19:40asks for a calendar, we should get different calendars.
1:19:43That's how it should be.
1:19:45But we're right now in this really weird in-between state.
1:19:47And so with a phone and HomePod, you've got this case where Apple wants to take advantage
1:19:55of all the richness of the stuff that it knows about you based on your relationship with
1:19:59your phone and what's on your phone.
1:20:01It doesn't want to not have that, especially in a product like this that, as we pointed
1:20:05out, is missing features right now, missing announced features.
1:20:08And then there are other things that are clearly lacking.
1:20:10last thing it wants to do is say, "Nope, there's nothing on your phone that we can help you
1:20:14with. We're not connecting them at all." But at the same time, they also recognize that
1:20:20they can't actually lock that stuff out behind a security code or by voice recognition or
1:20:27anything like that, so you basically have to flip a switch in the details in the Home
1:20:34app. You have to flip a switch that says "Don't," or on Setup you say "No, I don't want to do
1:20:39do that, at which point all of that stuff is sheared away and is no longer part of the
1:20:44functionality. And it's like, this is where all of these assistants are kind of right
1:20:47now, but it's frustrating and it does lead you to believe like, wow, this is a much more
1:20:53powerful device if you live by yourself.
1:20:57Yeah. And it's a shame because I kind of want to be able to use all of these features and
1:21:05and I've left it on for me, but I can totally understand why basically everyone that has
1:21:12this product will probably turn this feature off. And I get that until it can be at a place
1:21:17where it really can understand different voices. And I've been thinking about this, right,
1:21:24because in theory this device can do this because my iPhone apparently can do this,
1:21:32you know that if I say a high telephone a Dinos phone is not gonna go off and every now and then it will but not
1:21:37Always and I think part of the problem that Apple are having here is the home pod can't work like that, right?
1:21:44It has to be able to understand anybody's voices so it can change the music in the home
1:21:50so they're struggling with
1:21:53It feels like it's a binary thing, right?
1:21:56it's either can do voice detection or can't do voice detection and that they're struggling to
1:22:01maybe implement it on a case-by-case request-by-request basis right that like you want to be
1:22:08able to have anybody to control audio but not anybody to control messages and that that is
1:22:13something that they may have they may be struggling with right now is working out kind of how to
1:22:19separate that stuff. HomeKit. HomeKit's a big part of this. Is it working for the stuff
1:22:28that you have? Are there like a lot of things that the HomePod can't control in your home
1:22:32or kind of how does that shake for you? Well, so I've really tried to put everything in
1:22:37HomeKit ever since I got my light switches, especially that did HomeKit, and I installed
1:22:43HomeBridge on my server, so I've even got like non-HomeKit things on my HomeKit network
1:22:49now through the Homebridge app, the command line servery thing that basically, yeah, my
1:22:56server, there's an article at Six Colors that you can link people to, but I've got it running,
1:23:00so it's talking to like the Nest and a couple of smart switches, like a Wemo switch that
1:23:04aren't HomeKit related, and it basically acts as the bridge there, and I'm surprised that
1:23:10people, that that hasn't been turned into a product. I've heard from people who've just
1:23:14bought it like a $40 Raspberry Pi, and the only thing they put on it is HomeKit, or Homebridge,
1:23:19And that's all it does is just act as a home kit bridge for all of the older stuff you've got that doesn't support home kit.
1:23:26So anyway, because I did that, because I wanted, I've kind of gotten used to using the home interface,
1:23:32I like the home control center interface for turning lights on and off and stuff like that.
1:23:37Because I did that, it just works, you know, it's great.
1:23:40It like, it all works because I'm already there.
1:23:43I'm already there on the home kit side.
1:23:44So now I'm just telling the lady, you know, set the living room lights to 70%
1:23:48and it totally does it just like it does with my Amazon Echo.
1:23:52It's basically like the same stuff and it works the same and it's fine.
1:23:55Yeah, and I've been pretty happy that I don't find the HomePod to be too verbose.
1:24:01You know, like what I like about the Echo when I ask for the lights is it just goes okay.
1:24:06And the Google Home will not stop talking.
1:24:09You know, like I have a Google Home Mini and I ask it to say like I'll turn off the desk lights
1:24:16because I have lights on my desk now. Stephen bought me one of those hue strips for my birthday
1:24:20and I put it around the edge of my desk on the back and it's awesome. So I can light
1:24:24my desk up. But the Google Home would be like, "Okay, turning off the desk lights." And
1:24:28I don't want that, right? Like I don't want the full sentence. And I found that HomeKit
1:24:32to be okay.
1:24:33I think Siri is still a little too talkative and it's funny, one of the things, another
1:24:36thing I mentioned in that Macworld article that I wrote, when I asked a bunch of people,
1:24:40like what are their wishlist items for Siri, one of them was basically that they want the
1:24:44carrot weather feature for those who we've talked about care whether on this
1:24:48show care whether by default is sort of like super snarky and makes jokes but
1:24:51there's a setting and you can basically dial it all the way back to just tell me
1:24:54what the weather is dummy I don't know I don't care see yeah yeah and and I think
1:24:58I think there might be a place for that for somebody to be like I stop with the
1:25:04joke stop with the references keep it as minimal as possible for Siri because I
1:25:07know it bugs some people but I agree it's not super verbose but it's more
1:25:11verbose than Alexa is.
1:25:13It kind of sits somewhere in between the two of them so I find it to be okay.
1:25:17If I'd never tried the Google Home Mini I probably would have gotten pretty annoyed
1:25:21by it but I was expecting it to be just as bad as Google Home but it's not.
1:25:26I really like that the Echo just says "okay" because that's all I need to know and it
1:25:31only tells me more if there's a problem and Amazon really nailed that.
1:25:36Let me ask you, talking about the Echo, do you think the HomePod is going to replace
1:25:40anything in your home and you have more of these types of products, but you have so many
1:25:44of the stuff we were talking about, right? Do you see, well one, I guess where are you
1:25:48leaving the HomePod in your home and two, do you think it's going to replace any devices
1:25:52that were previously in that environment?
1:25:53Well, it's too early to tell. My gut feeling is that I'm going to leave it in the living
1:25:57room or on the bridge between the living room and the dining room like there's a couple
1:26:03of pieces of furniture in there like I had on the top of the piano and I think that was
1:26:07actually a pretty good place for it. It's a little too high for anybody to see
1:26:10like that it's been activated because the one of the nice things about the
1:26:14Echo is that it's got like the tube Echo has a ring around it so from
1:26:19basically any angle you can see when it's been activated but the little
1:26:21serial light is on the very top of the HomePod so if it's a lot up too high you
1:26:24can't see it. But it's a good place for it and it sounds pretty good there and
1:26:31if that's where it ends up I think the net result is going to be that we're
1:26:33going to stop playing music on the Echo and we're going to start playing music
1:26:36music on the HomePod. But I'm not going to replace the Echo. I have an Echo Show
1:26:41in the kitchen and the fact is I kind of like this. I kind of like the screen. It
1:26:46does so little with that screen but like when you're you get used to it like
1:26:52when you're playing music you can look and see what music is playing. When
1:26:55you're doing timers you can see the timers and where they are instead of
1:26:59having to ask when where the timers are and that screen has maybe spoiled us a
1:27:05little bit. I could see with some functionality increases on the HomePod,
1:27:09I could see maybe ditching the Amazon Echo entirely, probably not, but I think
1:27:13what will happen is that I may ditch the music component of the Echo and just
1:27:19tell everybody, "Look, if you want to play music in that room, play it on the HomePod."
1:27:23That's what it's there for because it sounds that much better. And the
1:27:27reality is, even though I've got a little Sonos box attached to my big speakers
1:27:30set up for my home theater. I never use that because it's too complicated to turn
1:27:36it on and get it going when you're in that room and you can just say, "Hey, play
1:27:41this music." So I think that's most likely where it'll go. Seems like a waste in my
1:27:47bathroom even though I do have a Sonus One in there and I do listen to
1:27:52music on it sometimes. It's not really like... plus it would just... it's too much
1:27:59speaker for that location anyway.
1:28:01- Just rattle the tiles off the wall.
1:28:02- It would be, yeah, there'd be a lot.
1:28:06What about you?
1:28:07- Okay, for me to be able to explain this,
1:28:10I need to give my entire summary,
1:28:13my overall conclusion of the HomePod.
1:28:15- All right, okay.
1:28:15- So I think that the HomePod is kind of showing
1:28:20that Apple need to do a better job
1:28:23of integrating their products together
1:28:25inside of their ecosystem.
1:28:27like they have all of the ecosystem, it's all there, right?
1:28:30I can access all of my stuff and all of my devices,
1:28:33but the devices don't talk very well to each other, right?
1:28:36Like I can't tell my watch to play audio on my home pod,
1:28:39right, my home pod can't give commands to my phone
1:28:43to continue with actions that it can't complete, right?
1:28:46Like I can play music from anything on my iPhone,
1:28:50any app, and it works in my AirPods, right?
1:28:53But I can't do it in the exact same way
1:28:56with like Siri doesn't work for some like for Spotify and overcast but it works fine for my
1:29:02music and it's like things are too disjointed and I think there needs to be some serious thought put
1:29:08into how these devices talk better together and a lot of that I think can be helped with Siri and
1:29:14that requires Apple to open up Siri kit more much more broadly so that is a big frustration for me
1:29:23and I'm kind of annoyed at Apple right now because I don't like the HomePod for all of the reasons
1:29:30that I didn't think I was going to like it. That it wasn't going to be able to replace a lot of
1:29:36stuff that I do in the kitchen because the timer support is just not as good, right, and I'm not
1:29:41interested in setting alarms and stuff like that. I don't want to work around. I just want multiple
1:29:46timers that I can name. It's not rocket science. I knew that I was going to have trouble getting
1:29:52all of the audio sources that I wanted onto this thing and that it was just going to be
1:29:57weird in a bunch of places and I've got all of that. But the audio that comes out of this
1:30:01thing blows me away. Like I can't fathom the quality of audio that comes from a speaker
1:30:11of this size. Like it's sounding so good across my entire front room in the way that it does
1:30:18and I'm hearing things in music that I haven't really heard very clearly, right?
1:30:23Like is the better quality you get, the more you can get out of it.
1:30:26And I consider it to be incredibly impressive.
1:30:28And the audio has won me over.
1:30:32I'm going to keep it, and it's going to replace
1:30:34all of the audio functions that would be used with my echo.
1:30:39You know, we would listen to music on it,
1:30:41or I'd listen to a podcast on it and stuff like that when
1:30:43cooking or washing up and stuff like that.
1:30:46and now I think the HomePod's gonna have all of that, because I honestly have my fingers crossed
1:30:52that a lot of things that I don't like about this product can be fixed as software,
1:30:55but the hardware is so good. It is so good. So it won me over. I feel like we have, this has been a
1:31:05theme the last few weeks here, which is when we were talking about the Apple report card story,
1:31:13it was the same theme as here, which is Apple is really killing it with its hardware.
1:31:18And it's being let down by its software and services. And the HomePod falls right into
1:31:24that same category where this is a pretty remarkable piece of hardware. There are things
1:31:29that I'm sure you can criticize about it. We talked about like, it is very loud. So there's
1:31:34like limited, you know, you may want to warn your neighbors that you're getting one, but it's just
1:31:40it's just a really remarkable... it doesn't... like setting up the Sonos to
1:31:45compare it, the Sonos Play 5 to compare to the HomePod, to the HomePod when it
1:31:50moves because it's got an accelerometer, it knows that it's been moved. And
1:31:55in fact at one point I jostled it and the sound like really changed on the
1:31:58speaker and I realized that was because it went back to a flat setup because it
1:32:02got jostled and then it was going back to being... to doing its
1:32:07thing and it does its training by using all of those microphones to kind of
1:32:11like measure the room as it's playing music for a couple of minutes and then
1:32:16it uses that. Whereas the Sonos, I have to open an app and it emits a weird tone
1:32:22and I have to wave my phone around up and down while I walk around my room for
1:32:2645 seconds until it finally is like, "alright, now I'm set up." And that's just
1:32:29you know, there's an example of like Apple built this thing in, they don't
1:32:32want you to do any training, it'll figure it out, it uses its microphones, it does
1:32:36the training itself, just great hardware.
1:32:39And then the software, it's like, you know,
1:32:40the software is the reason it didn't ship last year,
1:32:42probably, almost certainly, I would say.
1:32:44And it's still missing features.
1:32:46And there's still stuff that needs to get better on Siri.
1:32:49And in terms of like its connection with the phone
1:32:51and Siri kit needs to be more, I mean, the list goes on.
1:32:55But the point is, if we have to draw a line somewhere,
1:32:57it's not, you know, I'm gonna say Apple is at the top
1:33:01of its game still when it comes to designing hardware.
1:33:03- Yeah. - And this product
1:33:04is another example.
1:33:06without a shadow of a doubt, I agree with you completely.
1:33:08Is that kind of your overall feeling on it?
1:33:10Is that like your conclusion of the,
1:33:11the ComPod as it stands right now?
1:33:13- Yeah, I think so.
1:33:16I think it's a great piece of hardware.
1:33:18It sounds way better than I expected compared to some of
1:33:22these other devices like the, like the Play 5.
1:33:24It's that's, the size is really remarkable.
1:33:28I think that keeping in mind the size of it
1:33:32and what it sounds like, they packed a lot in there.
1:33:34And bottom line is, I'm reminded of arguments
1:33:39about Apple trying to make the iMac thinner,
1:33:42people saying, "Who cares if it's thinner?
1:33:43It's just an iMac, it sits on your desk."
1:33:46I can see how people would say,
1:33:48"Who cares about the size of a speaker
1:33:51that you're parking somewhere?"
1:33:52But I can tell you in my home,
1:33:54I care because I can't put the Play 5 in my living room.
1:33:57I tried, it doesn't work, it's not in there, can't do it.
1:34:01And I can put the HomePod in there.
1:34:03And that's huge that I can put it in my living room
1:34:07and I can fill that living room
1:34:09with a small space that it's in.
1:34:10- I wouldn't want it to be any bigger
1:34:12because then it would be too dominant as a item in my room.
1:34:15- Right.
1:34:16- And so I actually--
1:34:17- And in fact, I could probably put a second somewhere else
1:34:21when they do the stereo pair thing and see how that sounds.
1:34:25That's kind of intriguing too.
1:34:27But yeah, so it's a work in progress.
1:34:29And I think a lot of the reviews I've read
1:34:32come to this conclusion and I think I agree with it which is this is step one
1:34:36for Apple. I think there will be more products with Siri embedded in them and
1:34:40I think this product will get a lot better.
1:34:42I think it will probably get a lot better without even needing new hardware
1:34:45because I think a lot of the the ways it can get better are software-based and
1:34:50it's a start for Apple in this and it's late and it's not all there and some of
1:34:56its competitors have you know built whole product lines while Apple is just
1:35:00rolling out its first product here, but you know, that's happened before with Apple, and
1:35:05it doesn't necessarily mean that Apple is going to be doomed to being third or fourth
1:35:11place in this category. They're in the game now, and the next step is for them to keep
1:35:16playing it and not, you know, the alternative is that they just release this product and
1:35:20it just sort of sits there and they drift away to do other things, and that would be
1:35:23bad, but they're in the game now and it's a very encouraging sign and a fun product
1:35:28with a lot of limitations.
1:35:29Yeah, like I said, it is often said about Apple to the point that it's almost a meme
1:35:33now.
1:35:34You know, they show up late, but they always like blow everything else away.
1:35:38I don't think they've done that here.
1:35:41Because there are more, you know, Apple is saying, oh, this is a speaker, it's music,
1:35:47it's music.
1:35:48But they're also trying to do the smart stuff, right?
1:35:51Because why does this thing even connect to HomeKit then, right?
1:35:54Like it's got that in it, right?
1:35:56So this has entered a market where there are good speakers like the Google Home Max, right?
1:36:03Like that's intended to be a good speaker, but it also has all the Google Home stuff
1:36:06in.
1:36:07So they've entered this market and they've definitely done an incredible job at one portion
1:36:10of it, but they haven't at the other.
1:36:12So they've not blown everybody away yet.
1:36:14They've not blown their competition out of the water.
1:36:18So this isn't that, right?
1:36:19They haven't come in and shown everyone how to do this.
1:36:22although let me tell you the Google Home Max, I got to listen to that in a demo room provided
1:36:29by mysterious people who might be Apple. It was not a secluded grotto this time but very
1:36:34similar and the Google Home Max is not good. It does not sound good. It does not sound
1:36:40good at all. I think I would rather have a Sonos One than a Google Home Max. I mean honestly,
1:36:46it's not very good in my limited experience with it.
1:36:50I would like to see, and I haven't really seen some reviews comparing them where it's
1:36:55not an environment controlled by Apple personally.
1:36:57Right.
1:36:58Like I want to see what that looks like.
1:36:59Absolutely.
1:37:00Right.
1:37:01And that's, and I don't have one, so I can't test it personally.
1:37:03The other ones I have here and I can test it personally.
1:37:05I'm not saying that they like stuck a screwdriver into the back of it, but I'm sure they picked
1:37:10music that sounded really good on the HomePod.
1:37:12Oh sure.
1:37:13Yeah, they did all of the standard calibration stuff and then they picked the stuff that
1:37:15made the HomePod sound the best.
1:37:17There's no doubt about it.
1:37:18That all said, compared to just the Sonos Play One, I thought the Google Home Max didn't sound very good at all.
1:37:26And it's big. Like, it's not necessarily as big as a Sonos Play 5, but it's big, too.
1:37:33So, yes, it'll be interesting to see. But this is why Apple's positioning where it is.
1:37:38Apple's basically saying, "Look, if you want something that sounds really good and is a Home Assistant,
1:37:45this is the product for you. If all you want is a home assistant and you don't really care about it
1:37:49sounding pretty good, then it's not the product for you. And I think that is completely accurate.
1:37:53It is, on one level we have to judge it on what it is, which is an attempt to make a high-end
1:37:59speaker with voice control like a Sonos, except from Apple. And that's what it is, and it's pretty
1:38:05pretty good at that. What it's not is a sub hundred dollar Amazon echo. It's totally not
1:38:13that. And it is, and it's a challenge because yeah, it's way more expensive and it also
1:38:19sounds way better. So what do you care about? I mean, you care about the ecosystem, but
1:38:23you also are going to care about the price tag and the sound quality and, and you're
1:38:26going to make your decisions accordingly.
1:38:28All right, let's take a break. Thank FreshBooks for supporting this week's show. And then
1:38:34we will finish up with some #AskUpgrade.
1:38:38Our friends at FreshBooks believe that it is super important for you to make smart decisions
1:38:42about your business.
1:38:43And they're right.
1:38:44You want to save time is one of the big ones.
1:38:45You want to save hassle, you want to save frustration.
1:38:47This is what FreshBooks is all about.
1:38:49Their cloud accounting software is so easy to use, it's going to save you a bunch of
1:38:53time and it's going to save you a bunch of hassle.
1:38:55They simplify tasks like invoicing, expense tracking and getting paid online.
1:39:00Freshbooks have dramatically reduced what it takes to get this done for their over 10
1:39:04million people that use their system.
1:39:07One of the things that I absolutely love about Freshbooks is all based around when you send
1:39:14off an invoice, what happens next.
1:39:17So there are a couple of things that I like here.
1:39:19One, you can see when some, well one it's really easy to build the invoice.
1:39:23Everything's super simple.
1:39:24Everything can be prefilled, right?
1:39:26you can just select from drop downs and pull in your most frequently used line items and
1:39:30stuff like that. It's very easy. You build it in a WYSIWYG interface so you're going
1:39:34to see it exactly how it shows up in somebody's invoice. Very nice to build. But once you've
1:39:39sent off the invoice, you're going to see how long it takes for somebody to open it.
1:39:44You're going to see when they've opened it, you're going to see when they received it,
1:39:47you're going to even see if they've printed it, so you're going to know where that invoice
1:39:49is over on the company that you're billing. And you can have late payment reminders set
1:39:55up automatically so that can fire off.
1:40:01One of my favourite things is that when you go to each individual client it shows you
1:40:04how long it takes them to typically pay you.
1:40:08Every company works how it works.
1:40:11You may say "pay me the next amount of days" but companies work how they work and sometimes
1:40:16it's going to be late.
1:40:17But what I like about FreshBooks is that it will tell you what the average turnaround
1:40:21is
1:40:39FreshBooks. If for any reason you haven't, now is a great time because they are offering
1:40:43a 30 day free trial for listeners of this show with no credit card required. All you
1:40:48have to do is go to freshbooks.com/upgrade and enter upgrade in the how did you hear
1:40:53about us section when you sign up. Notice freshbooks.com/upgrade to try it out for 30
1:40:59days for free. No credit card needed. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their continued support
1:41:04of this show.
1:41:06It is time for #AskUpgrade.
1:41:10And our first question comes from Neil Esh.
1:41:11Neil Esh wants to know,
1:41:12"How do you both manage your personal
1:41:14and business email accounts?
1:41:16One, do you even have separate email addresses?
1:41:19Two, are they all in one app or in separate apps?
1:41:22And do you use unified inboxes?"
1:41:24So what about you, Jason?
1:41:25How is your email set up like that?
1:41:27- I have one, well, everything is mine.
1:41:35So when I was at IDG, I had my macworld.com mail
1:41:38or my IDG division email account,
1:41:41and I separately had my personal.
1:41:44At this point, they are the same.
1:41:46I don't have a business email
1:41:48and a personal email like that.
1:41:50I am my own employer, so I just have one.
1:41:53And I don't find it, I have many email addresses.
1:41:56They all go to the same place.
1:41:57And honestly, for me, I have no desire to separate them
1:42:02and do extra work in order to check
1:42:04different mailboxes. So I will do some labeling in Gmail based on where the message was addressed,
1:42:11but they all go in one Gmail account. I don't see any need to separate them and take extra
1:42:18effort to do that. I have like four email addresses that I've accumulated over the years.
1:42:24Two personal, two business. At this point, I just don't have it in me to try and consolidate them
1:42:32because there's so many different logins and stuff like that attached to each of them.
1:42:36I set them all up in one application with a unified inbox. So they all look the same,
1:42:42but they're coming in and going out with the kind of corresponding email address to them.
1:42:47It is purely something that I have just built up over bad management over the years,
1:42:52effectively is where I've been. So that's kind of where my situation is.
1:42:55Kamal wants to know, "What should be my first gadget purchase this year?"
1:43:01The choices are an Apple Watch, a 10.5 inch iPad Pro or a Nintendo Switch.
1:43:06To give some context, Camo has an iPhone 7 Plus, an iPad Air 2 and an iMac currently.
1:43:15Now we don't really know anything about this individual, so I would say personally considering
1:43:22you already own an iPhone and an iPad and an iMac, I think you should get a Nintendo
1:43:26Switch because the Nintendo Switch is amazing and I think that is going to be pretty awesome.
1:43:31If it's even on your potential list of things to buy here, I would say sight unseen, that's
1:43:37what I would suggest a Nintendo Switch.
1:43:39Yep, same, I agree.
1:43:42Because it's like you know you've got some good Apple products going on already, like
1:43:44you're good, like you've got an iPad, you've got an iMac, you've got a great iPhone, go
1:43:48for a Nintendo Switch, branch out a little bit, it's going to be awesome.
1:43:53Kevin wants to know, Jason, what lessons, if any, do you think that Apple has learned
1:43:57from the iPod Hi-Fi for the HomePod? Do you think anything's happened here? Do you think
1:44:01they even looked at the product and thought, "Let's not do that again"?
1:44:08I think the standard for what makes an Apple entry into an accessory category is higher
1:44:20than it was. I mean, honestly, I think the lesson was when Steve gets really angry
1:44:25about something, don't let him just create a product right away. Make him
1:44:30wait. Like, I think they learned that lesson after the iPod HiFi. I think
1:44:33Steve Jobs maybe learned that lesson at that point, too. Because that was, as I've
1:44:37said many times, it's hard not to look at the iPod HiFi and see that was literally
1:44:40Apple just trying to take sales away from the Bose sound dock because it was
1:44:44wildly successful and Apple wanted that money. And they made a product that was
1:44:48was too expensive and nobody wanted to buy
1:44:50and they just kept buying the Bose Sound dock.
1:44:52And that was the end of the iPod Hi-Fi.
1:44:54So I think that's the big lesson is now
1:44:58Apple still does that, right?
1:44:59Apple still, Apple makes cases.
1:45:01Like there was a time when Apple did not make iPhone cases
1:45:04of its own and it makes its own cases now.
1:45:08And I think what it learned was to make products.
1:45:11First off, what it learned was have a thriving retail store
1:45:16but you can put your own accessories in.
1:45:16- Introduce those things at the same time,
1:45:19like an iPhone leather case and the iPod Hi-Fi.
1:45:22Didn't they come at the same time?
1:45:23- There was an iPod leather case
1:45:26that came at the same time as the Hi-Fi.
1:45:28- Yeah, 'cause it was before the iPhone, right?
1:45:30It was before the iPhone, yes, yes.
1:45:31- It was like the prototype
1:45:33and they did learn a bunch of things,
1:45:35but now like I have an Apple iPhone case.
1:45:38Like I, and yes, it is more expensive
1:45:40than other cases that I can get, but it's nice.
1:45:43And I like it.
1:45:44And of course also an Apple case.
1:45:46is the only case you can buy that has the Apple logo on it.
1:45:51You see all these cases with like a hole cut out so you can see the Apple logo.
1:45:55Apple doesn't have to do that.
1:45:56I hate the hole. It kills me.
1:45:59But I know why they do it because they're like, "Oh, people want to see the Apple logo."
1:46:02You can just buy an Apple case and the Apple logo is on it and Apple knows it.
1:46:07And that's an advantage.
1:46:08But I think they have made it work where they are making accessories for their products
1:46:14that are, that sell well but that people also don't have to buy and they can buy
1:46:18something else. I think they, I think they fine-tuned it a lot in the
1:46:22intervening years since the iPod HiFi. So I think, I think they got the message
1:46:27that just, just sticking something out there for that, that was, you know, just a
1:46:32me too product. I mean the iPad HiFi was kind of a me too product, unfortunately.
1:46:36So I think they've learned some lessons and they, and they've made it work
1:46:40because now they do Apple branded accessories and they're successful and
1:46:43and bring in a lot of money for Apple.
1:46:45- As discovered by the chat room,
1:46:47you can still buy that $99 leather iPod case.
1:46:50Like Apple will still sell that to you.
1:46:53Like that is a product. - Nice $99 Apple leather case
1:46:56for iPod classic and iPod.
1:46:58- I can't believe they still sell that, it's incredible.
1:46:59- Fine Italian leather.
1:47:02- Mark's written in.
1:47:03Say my international hotspot uses a metered LTE connection
1:47:07that iOS and Mac OS see as wifi.
1:47:09So background uploads and downloads occur
1:47:12and quickly eat up my daily data allotment.
1:47:16Is there a way to stop background data usage
1:47:19when on a metered Wi-Fi connection?
1:47:21- Yes, use Trip Mode, tripmode.ch.
1:47:24- That will help you out on the Mac.
1:47:26Now, for the iPhone, for iOS devices,
1:47:30there is a setting that you can flip.
1:47:32I don't know just how much stuff gets through
1:47:35if you flip it, but if you go to iOS settings,
1:47:40go to general, there is a setting called background app refresh, which you can turn off. And I
1:47:47believe that will stop applications from being able to wake up in the background. So that
1:47:52might help you. But stuff like photos uploading and downloading, I don't know. I don't know
1:47:57if you can stop that on iOS.
1:47:58It's hard. You may have to just, you may have to, yeah.
1:48:01Just turn it off.
1:48:02That's hard. I think ideally, I think there's a way for a Wi-Fi hotspot to communicate that
1:48:08it's a cellular hotspot using Wi-Fi and that the device can see that and then it prioritizes
1:48:15it as cellular traffic instead of Wi-Fi traffic, but it may not for, I think, I may be making
1:48:20that up, but I think that is possible and it may be that this one doesn't do that. But
1:48:24yeah, I mean the other thing to do is to start turning things off, you know, other things
1:48:29like photo syncing and then you're losing those features, but if you've got a metered
1:48:34connection then you may have to do that.
1:48:35Finally today Elle wants to know what is the ugliest most offensive app that you have to
1:48:40use regularly?
1:48:41Elle says that Student View, which is a kid's school parent app, is an indecipherable disaster.
1:48:49For me it is my banking app.
1:48:53It exhibits the worst parts of cross platform design.
1:48:57So no polish of any kind, like it doesn't look good on any platform, right, because
1:49:01it's just trying to be the best for everything.
1:49:06Everything feels like a webview, like it even throws up its own number picker, right?
1:49:12Like if you're entering in an amount, it gives its own keypad, it doesn't even use the iOS
1:49:16keypad.
1:49:17And one of my, one I was going to find the most egregious, you update the application
1:49:21in the App Store, you open it, and then it downloads updates from something, somehow.
1:49:25Right?
1:49:26So yeah, it is a, just a disaster of design.
1:49:30What about you?
1:49:31Yeah, the Logitech Harmony app, I'm gonna say, which is the Harmony remote.
1:49:37And not only is it not great as a remote, because if you touch the wrong thing at the
1:49:41wrong time, everything turns off or turns on, it's like, you know, not great.
1:49:46But to get to the right place to change a setting, super complicated and weird.
1:49:52You have to go through the right sequence of things in order to do it.
1:49:55I think it also forces into portrait orientation.
1:50:02So if you're on an iPad, you have to rotate your iPad.
1:50:06Or you use it.
1:50:07Oh, my banking app does that too.
1:50:08Yeah, that's a classic.
1:50:09So I can't use my banking app in landscape, which is horrific on a 12.9-inch iPad.
1:50:14Yeah, it's not...
1:50:15There's some bad apps.
1:50:17Yeah, it happens.
1:50:18And sometimes, I think that's the way to do it, is that those are apps meant for consumer
1:50:22consumption.
1:50:23that should be singled out. So I think that's the way to go.
1:50:29If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/180.
1:50:32If you want to find Jason online, he's over at sixcolors.com. The incomparable .com is
1:50:38@jsnell on Twitter. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and you can also find both me and Jason on
1:50:47a plethora of Relay FM podcasts. You can go to relay.fm/shows to find this show and many
1:50:52We have a great selection at Real AFM that you should consider checking out.
1:50:57I want to extend our thanks one more time to Squarespace, Casper and Freshbooks for
1:51:01their support of this show.
1:51:03But most of all, I want to thank you for listening.
1:51:07If you want to send in your questions to open the show, #SnellTalk can be about whatever
1:51:11you want.
1:51:12And then if you want to send in your technology-focused questions which you need our help or advice
1:51:16on to close out the show, #AskUpgrade as always.
1:51:21Thank you to everyone who continues to do that.
1:51:23Every single week I have more than I can use and I really really really appreciate that
1:51:27because we love doing those parts of the show and they couldn't work without your support
1:51:31and without your involvement so thank you for doing that.
1:51:34Jason Snell, until next time, say goodbye Jason Snell.
1:51:38Goodbye everybody.
1:51:39[MUSIC PLAYING]
1:51:42[MUSIC PLAYING]