5 ms·

The sense I get re: HomePod criticism is that people believe that Apple has built a better/the best home audio speaker at the price point, but that Apple is mis

The sense I get re: HomePod criticism is that people believe that Apple has built a better/the best home audio speaker at the price point, but that Apple is missing the boat on a larger connected home strategy. It's a matter of whether you favor a macro or micro POV. Basically, Apple is making Sonos more affordable, while Amazon is making a bet that there is a new platform to be built/won in the form of voice and they're going to push hard into it with a bunch of low-cost appliances. Apple's approach is fool-proof, but fairly limited. It could be worth a couple billion a year, but at their scale that hardly matters. Amazon's approach is contingent on changing customer behavior and the development of an app ecosystem, but if it works it could be massive. I wouldn't be surprised if all this focus on voice doesn't eventually lead them back into making smartphones that tie into the hardware/services ecosystem they're developing. Apple could, of course, start making HomePod minis once the use cases are hashed out by Amazon. At the end of the day, it's important to judge the product on its merits. It may not jibe with your macro view of the tech industry, but that's not the most relevant axis upon which to review a single product offering.

nostromo 9y ago
I think Apple understands the market better than Amazon. Amazon believes that non-phone voice assistants are a big and growing market. However, everyone I know with an Alexa uses it primarily as a speaker, not an assistant. I’m reminded of Microsoft and Xbox. Microsoft saw the Xbox as a strategic way to get a computer into the living room. But all of these years later, Xbox is still primarily used for gaming by gamers. I think Amazon will find that Alexa will primarily be used as a speaker and not an assistant for quite some time, corporate strategy be damned.
- Clubber 9y ago
  Yes, Xbox is fairly sophisticated (at least last time I used it for such) as a TV computer, but using the controller is a horrible experience to me. AppleTV, with all it's flaws, is a far superior experience for me as far as a TV add-on.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    I think nostromo's point is that Apple knows when a hobby is a hobby. Homepod will distort/control the "voice controlled assistant" market by Apple's sheer size. Also I agree with Apple's approach to privacy. I'm still not convinced I need a Homepod, but if i were to get a voice enabled speaker I'd get that. Alexa skills sound nice, but I've yet to hear of a meaningful usage of them that isn't just "a slightly nicer way to do X". For the price of my privacy, I'm not ready to buy that.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      Yes, the digital assistant doesn't do anything for me either. I'd probably turn that off if I could. Also, I have one I carry around in my pocket that I rarely use. I bought it for the sound and the algorithm they are using inside it to distribute sound with the x tweeters and y mics and all that. I think it's something that hasn't been done before, or I've never owned something that's done that. It might be over hyped, but I hope not.
- criddell 9y ago
  I like how the incentives align for Apple. It feels like HomePod is there to server users and the Echo is there to sell to users. Google's device is there doing what Google does - ingest all the data.
  - jxdxbx 9y ago
    I’m happy to let Amazon labor under the illusion that I want to use their crummy Alexa platform for anything other than music and timers, if it means they’ll sell me a voice-controlled speaker for $40 that I can connect to an existing pair of high-quality speakers. (On the Google side you’d need a Chromecast audio—-not happening.) Since I can check my history of Alexa commands, I can see that I haven’t said anything that Homepod couldn’t do in like, months. But, $40.
    - criddell 9y ago
      Do you think the DAC in the Echo is good enough for high-quality speakers? I have to admit, I'm a sucker for things like Apple's claim that their device measures the room acoustics and adjusts itself for better sound. I don't know if it's true, but I kind of want one in my office now.
  - dingaling 9y ago
    But HomePod doesn't make sense as a standalone item, only in conjunction with other Apple devices and services. HomePod might have incredible sound but unless you have an Apple computing device in your house it is useless. And the majority of the World doesn't. So overall it looks like part of an cross-sell strategy; want this nice speaker, add an iOS device to your order. Different to Amazon's 'sell all the things' strategy but still a means of expanding sales.
jrs95 9y ago
I don't think the HomePod will be very successful in our little tech bubble (although the large amount of disposable income helps) but I do think it will find a decent level of consumer success. Apple Music is now more popular in the U.S. than Spotify, so that ought to draw some people to it at least. Personally, I've got AirPods because they're very convenient (I'd almost buy them for the automatic pause/play alone), but I still use Spotify and more conventional speakers with a Chromecast Audio. In terms of audio quality, that's a vastly superior option at roughly the same price.
- earenndil 9y ago
  I thought it was growing faster than spotify (which makes sense because it has less market share and thus its prospective market share is bigger) but is still smaller?
samwillis 9y ago
Apple isn't making a more affordable Sonos, the HomePod is £319/$349, the Sonos Play One (with Alexa) is £199/$199 and you can get two for £349/$349. So it's more expensive than a Sonos One however it's probably got better sound quality. The more comparable sound quality Sonos Play:3 (no Alexa) is £249/$249, still cheaper. Only the Play:5 is more expensive at $499/$499. I would bet that Sonos has a "smart" Alexa enabled version of both the Play:3 and Play:5 in the works. When they launched the "One" they launched it at the same price point as the old Play:1 and dropped its price point by £50, again I would bet the same will happen. Apple needs to make the "smartness" of Siri the selling point to win over Sonos customers...
- TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
  > I would bet that Sonos has a "smart" Alexa enabled version of both the Play:3 and Play:5 in the works. I know it's not the same, but there's a Sonos skill now, so I can control, and play music on, my Play:5 using my Echo Dot. However, I cannot stream all music on the Sonos. There are either license restrictions or arbitrary Amazon limitations on what songs I can stream from the Amazon Prime catalog.
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  I think the GP was referring to competition and resulting price pressure. The Apple device sounds better; Sonos has dropped prices, with journalists interpreting this as a bid to shore up their sales -- sounds "almost" (?) as good while costing somewhat less.
criley2 9y ago
Frankly, Amazon has a headstart giving it a little bit of a skill moat against Google, but for you not to mention Google Assistant at all is ludicris to me. Voice controlled smart assistants is Google's bread and butter, and Amazon is only tangentially connected to that world while Apple is a hardware company looking in. Both of these companies will have to "re-invent" themselves to compete with Google, and again, Amazon's speed into the market has given them an artificial moat with certain skills, but I think it's inevitable that Google's voice recognition and assistant will be far superior to what Amazon and Apple can ultimately produce. I already get a lot of eyeballs from Alexa users when they see what Google Assistant does, that's only going to escalate as Google gets more and more serious about leveraging their very unique skills and data into a moat that Amazon and Apple will struggle to compete with.
saturdaysaint 9y ago
I have two 1st gen Echos, and I think Amazon's moat is laughably overrated (and is being drastically overhyped in the early Homepod reviews). Surveys show that people are using these things for nothing more sophisticated than Siri 1.0 - timers, songs, weather, "what time is it" - which squares with our experience. We have some connected devices, but Gruber is right - at the moment, they require such stilted grammar that our phones will be the center of our connected home for the forseeable future.
- criddell 9y ago
  The smart home stuff is very frustrating for me. I'll say "Alexa turn on the bathroom light" and it will respond that there's no device with that name. A natural follow up question is "Alex what devices do you know about". I'm happy to have our Echos, but we mostly use it exactly as you describe - for timers, music, and weather. We also use a grocery list app that lets us say "Alexa add peanut butter to the shopping list". That's kind of nice to have in the kitchen.
mpweiher 9y ago
> couple billion a year, but at their scale that hardly matters. With all due respect to Everett Dirksen: "A couple billion here, a couple billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." To me it seems like it is an important part of broadening the income base, so Apple is no longer as dependent on a single product category, and often enough a single product. Each "well this isn't so important"-product that rakes in a few billion a year in revenue is fantastic.

nostromo 9y ago

I think Apple understands the market better than Amazon. Amazon believes that non-phone voice assistants are a big and growing market. However, everyone I know with an Alexa uses it primarily as a speaker, not an assistant. I’m reminded of Microsoft and Xbox. Microsoft saw the Xbox as a strategic way to get a computer into the living room. But all of these years later, Xbox is still primarily used for gaming by gamers. I think Amazon will find that Alexa will primarily be used as a speaker and not an assistant for quite some time, corporate strategy be damned.

Clubber 9y ago
Yes, Xbox is fairly sophisticated (at least last time I used it for such) as a TV computer, but using the controller is a horrible experience to me. AppleTV, with all it's flaws, is a far superior experience for me as far as a TV add-on.
- r00fus 9y ago
  I think nostromo's point is that Apple knows when a hobby is a hobby. Homepod will distort/control the "voice controlled assistant" market by Apple's sheer size. Also I agree with Apple's approach to privacy. I'm still not convinced I need a Homepod, but if i were to get a voice enabled speaker I'd get that. Alexa skills sound nice, but I've yet to hear of a meaningful usage of them that isn't just "a slightly nicer way to do X". For the price of my privacy, I'm not ready to buy that.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    Yes, the digital assistant doesn't do anything for me either. I'd probably turn that off if I could. Also, I have one I carry around in my pocket that I rarely use. I bought it for the sound and the algorithm they are using inside it to distribute sound with the x tweeters and y mics and all that. I think it's something that hasn't been done before, or I've never owned something that's done that. It might be over hyped, but I hope not.
criddell 9y ago
I like how the incentives align for Apple. It feels like HomePod is there to server users and the Echo is there to sell to users. Google's device is there doing what Google does - ingest all the data.
- jxdxbx 9y ago
  I’m happy to let Amazon labor under the illusion that I want to use their crummy Alexa platform for anything other than music and timers, if it means they’ll sell me a voice-controlled speaker for $40 that I can connect to an existing pair of high-quality speakers. (On the Google side you’d need a Chromecast audio—-not happening.) Since I can check my history of Alexa commands, I can see that I haven’t said anything that Homepod couldn’t do in like, months. But, $40.
  - criddell 9y ago
    Do you think the DAC in the Echo is good enough for high-quality speakers? I have to admit, I'm a sucker for things like Apple's claim that their device measures the room acoustics and adjusts itself for better sound. I don't know if it's true, but I kind of want one in my office now.
- dingaling 9y ago
  But HomePod doesn't make sense as a standalone item, only in conjunction with other Apple devices and services. HomePod might have incredible sound but unless you have an Apple computing device in your house it is useless. And the majority of the World doesn't. So overall it looks like part of an cross-sell strategy; want this nice speaker, add an iOS device to your order. Different to Amazon's 'sell all the things' strategy but still a means of expanding sales.

jrs95 9y ago

I don't think the HomePod will be very successful in our little tech bubble (although the large amount of disposable income helps) but I do think it will find a decent level of consumer success. Apple Music is now more popular in the U.S. than Spotify, so that ought to draw some people to it at least. Personally, I've got AirPods because they're very convenient (I'd almost buy them for the automatic pause/play alone), but I still use Spotify and more conventional speakers with a Chromecast Audio. In terms of audio quality, that's a vastly superior option at roughly the same price.

earenndil 9y ago
I thought it was growing faster than spotify (which makes sense because it has less market share and thus its prospective market share is bigger) but is still smaller?

samwillis 9y ago

Apple isn't making a more affordable Sonos, the HomePod is £319/$349, the Sonos Play One (with Alexa) is £199/$199 and you can get two for £349/$349. So it's more expensive than a Sonos One however it's probably got better sound quality. The more comparable sound quality Sonos Play:3 (no Alexa) is £249/$249, still cheaper. Only the Play:5 is more expensive at $499/$499. I would bet that Sonos has a "smart" Alexa enabled version of both the Play:3 and Play:5 in the works. When they launched the "One" they launched it at the same price point as the old Play:1 and dropped its price point by £50, again I would bet the same will happen. Apple needs to make the "smartness" of Siri the selling point to win over Sonos customers...

TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
> I would bet that Sonos has a "smart" Alexa enabled version of both the Play:3 and Play:5 in the works. I know it's not the same, but there's a Sonos skill now, so I can control, and play music on, my Play:5 using my Echo Dot. However, I cannot stream all music on the Sonos. There are either license restrictions or arbitrary Amazon limitations on what songs I can stream from the Amazon Prime catalog.
pasbesoin 9y ago
I think the GP was referring to competition and resulting price pressure. The Apple device sounds better; Sonos has dropped prices, with journalists interpreting this as a bid to shore up their sales -- sounds "almost" (?) as good while costing somewhat less.

criley2 9y ago

Frankly, Amazon has a headstart giving it a little bit of a skill moat against Google, but for you not to mention Google Assistant at all is ludicris to me. Voice controlled smart assistants is Google's bread and butter, and Amazon is only tangentially connected to that world while Apple is a hardware company looking in. Both of these companies will have to "re-invent" themselves to compete with Google, and again, Amazon's speed into the market has given them an artificial moat with certain skills, but I think it's inevitable that Google's voice recognition and assistant will be far superior to what Amazon and Apple can ultimately produce. I already get a lot of eyeballs from Alexa users when they see what Google Assistant does, that's only going to escalate as Google gets more and more serious about leveraging their very unique skills and data into a moat that Amazon and Apple will struggle to compete with.

saturdaysaint 9y ago

I have two 1st gen Echos, and I think Amazon's moat is laughably overrated (and is being drastically overhyped in the early Homepod reviews). Surveys show that people are using these things for nothing more sophisticated than Siri 1.0 - timers, songs, weather, "what time is it" - which squares with our experience. We have some connected devices, but Gruber is right - at the moment, they require such stilted grammar that our phones will be the center of our connected home for the forseeable future.

criddell 9y ago
The smart home stuff is very frustrating for me. I'll say "Alexa turn on the bathroom light" and it will respond that there's no device with that name. A natural follow up question is "Alex what devices do you know about". I'm happy to have our Echos, but we mostly use it exactly as you describe - for timers, music, and weather. We also use a grocery list app that lets us say "Alexa add peanut butter to the shopping list". That's kind of nice to have in the kitchen.

mpweiher 9y ago

> couple billion a year, but at their scale that hardly matters. With all due respect to Everett Dirksen: "A couple billion here, a couple billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." To me it seems like it is an important part of broadening the income base, so Apple is no longer as dependent on a single product category, and often enough a single product. Each "well this isn't so important"-product that rakes in a few billion a year in revenue is fantastic.