5 ms·

Looks like they might be able to make the HomePod useful before it's available in Europe.

by Hamuko 6y ago

fredsted 6y ago
Does anyone know why it's not available yet? I'm in Denmark, and while Siri on Watch and iPhone speak Danish, apparently if I buy a HomePod, it'll only work in English.
- kissiel 6y ago
  It looks like it's available in countries that have support for apple's speech to text: https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#siri-neural-text-to-speech https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#siri-neural-... Kinda sucks. Here in Poland there's no siri in polish. I'd wish apple would give users an option to mark "yeah, I can handle english, sell me the damn device". Same with upcoming fitness service.
  - messe 6y ago
    Not available here in Ireland though. A predominantly english speaking nation.
    - mikestew 6y ago
      Oh, but that would EN-GB, which has nearly no similarities to EN-US. No way Apple can sell you a HomePod that would tell you to bring an "umbrella" because it is going to rain today. Though I imagine Apple is more worried about localizing the electrical plug than they are about what to call the large, wheeled vehicles used to haul cargo.
      - 1-more 6y ago
        I think you want en-IE; boy howdy is localization a fraught subject!
        mikestew 6y ago
        It's been years since localization has been any defined part of my role, so I thought I'd go Wikipedia[0] just to make sure I didn't screw it up. Should have gone with my gut because Ireland wasn't listed in the page I went to. :-( "I'd swear Ireland has its own code. But Ireland is in GB, right? Or is it just UK, and GB is something else? Aww, screw it, I'm not putting this much effort into a smart arse comment, EN-GB it is." [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localisation#Language_tags_and_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localisation#Language...
        Hamuko 6y ago
        >But Ireland is in GB, right? No, Ireland is in Ireland, which is the island next to Great Britain. Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. Those and Northern Ireland are in the United Kingdom, and Great Britain, Ireland and a bunch of irrelevant islands make up the British Isles. The British Isles are in Europe, but the United Kingdom isn't in the European Union, except they kinda still are for the next month and some. But one of the Irelands definitely still is, but the entire island of Ireland isn't fully in the European Union, except that they don't want a hard border despite the fact that it's now one of the outer borders of the EU.
        reaperducer 6y ago
        But Ireland is in GB, right? No. But that's a subject we really shouldn't get into here.
        messe 6y ago
        I mean, I think it's safe to get into matters of geography. Ireland is very much not in Great Britain, and is a separate island. Let's not mention the UK though...
        1-more 6y ago
        You've gotten some great answers so far so I'll just underscore that it's fraught. Maybe less so than "what do we call that language that they speak in what was Yugoslavia" and "are Hindi and Urdu dialects or registers of the same language or different languages." My favorite bit of trivia on this particular bit of political history is that James II of England was James VII of Scotland. You can start at Wales on here and follow the non-hyperlinks to the other parts of the page[0]. Compared to the weirdness in the past it's probably easier these days to make a non-offensive "list of countries and languages" and it's still hard!! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union#Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union#Wales
      - messe 6y ago
        Ideally EN-IE, but I'd settle for EN-GB or EN-US. Although to be honest, there's no real differences between those three locales for most people other than keyboard layouts and the arse-backwards way the US uses to write dates, neither of which apply to a HomePod.
        1-more 6y ago
        I'd like to think that speech parsing "give me the cra(ck/ic)" would have different results depending, but I'm not sure HomePod is really ready to oblige that in either case.
      - jen20 6y ago
        HomePod is available with EN-GB. Both of mine are configured that way (though in the US), and I just ordered one in the UK store to ship to the UK.
    - jmkerr 6y ago
      It's available in Ireland, but maybe not to the Irish. As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork, and some of them sell Homepods.
      - dewey 6y ago
        > As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork Not all of them. There's a big warehouse in Czech Republic where all my orders usually come from (To Germany).
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Not available in New Zealand.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kissiel 6y ago
They would need a time machine too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePod I wonder if jailbroken homepod would still do the audio enhancements on the fly with, let's say, spotify. Or the detection of commands in google assistant even while playing music very loud.
- pbronez 6y ago
  Spotify doesn't currently support HomePod, which is really annoying since the HomePod Mini looks awesome. You can vote for HomePod support on Spotify's community site: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Native-HomePod-Support/idc-p/5058664 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Na...
  - wool_gather 6y ago
    FWIW, if you're playing from a computer, there are applications (Rogue Amoeba makes one) that can route the audio from Spotify (or anything) and send it over Airplay. Works great with a HomePod.
  - ben174 6y ago
    It does. I just tested proximity handoff from iPhone to HomePod.
    - pbronez 6y ago
      Doesn't that essentially just route the audio stream from your phone to the HomePod? You can do the same thing from an AppleTV. That's nice, but not the integration I'm looking for. Spotify support would mean you can ask Siri to play a song from Spotify and it works directly, without using a Spotify app on a second device.
dewey 6y ago
It's available in Europe, just not in all EU countries.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Being available in three European countries (out of 50) is not really "available in Europe".
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
    I'm being pedantic, but technically, it literally is "available in Europe." It is not available throughout Europe, however.

Looks like they might be able to make the HomePod useful before it's available in Europe.

by Hamuko 6y ago

Looks like they might be able to make the HomePod useful before it's available in Europe.

Does anyone know why it's not available yet? I'm in Denmark, and while Siri on Watch and iPhone speak Danish, apparently if I buy a HomePod, it'll only work in English.

kissiel 6y ago
It looks like it's available in countries that have support for apple's speech to text: https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#siri-neural-text-to-speech https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#siri-neural-... Kinda sucks. Here in Poland there's no siri in polish. I'd wish apple would give users an option to mark "yeah, I can handle english, sell me the damn device". Same with upcoming fitness service.
- messe 6y ago
  Not available here in Ireland though. A predominantly english speaking nation.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    Oh, but that would EN-GB, which has nearly no similarities to EN-US. No way Apple can sell you a HomePod that would tell you to bring an "umbrella" because it is going to rain today. Though I imagine Apple is more worried about localizing the electrical plug than they are about what to call the large, wheeled vehicles used to haul cargo.
    - 1-more 6y ago
      I think you want en-IE; boy howdy is localization a fraught subject!
      - mikestew 6y ago
        It's been years since localization has been any defined part of my role, so I thought I'd go Wikipedia[0] just to make sure I didn't screw it up. Should have gone with my gut because Ireland wasn't listed in the page I went to. :-( "I'd swear Ireland has its own code. But Ireland is in GB, right? Or is it just UK, and GB is something else? Aww, screw it, I'm not putting this much effort into a smart arse comment, EN-GB it is." [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localisation#Language_tags_and_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localisation#Language...
        Hamuko 6y ago
        >But Ireland is in GB, right? No, Ireland is in Ireland, which is the island next to Great Britain. Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. Those and Northern Ireland are in the United Kingdom, and Great Britain, Ireland and a bunch of irrelevant islands make up the British Isles. The British Isles are in Europe, but the United Kingdom isn't in the European Union, except they kinda still are for the next month and some. But one of the Irelands definitely still is, but the entire island of Ireland isn't fully in the European Union, except that they don't want a hard border despite the fact that it's now one of the outer borders of the EU.
        reaperducer 6y ago
        But Ireland is in GB, right? No. But that's a subject we really shouldn't get into here.
        messe 6y ago
        I mean, I think it's safe to get into matters of geography. Ireland is very much not in Great Britain, and is a separate island. Let's not mention the UK though...
        1-more 6y ago
        You've gotten some great answers so far so I'll just underscore that it's fraught. Maybe less so than "what do we call that language that they speak in what was Yugoslavia" and "are Hindi and Urdu dialects or registers of the same language or different languages." My favorite bit of trivia on this particular bit of political history is that James II of England was James VII of Scotland. You can start at Wales on here and follow the non-hyperlinks to the other parts of the page[0]. Compared to the weirdness in the past it's probably easier these days to make a non-offensive "list of countries and languages" and it's still hard!! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union#Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union#Wales
    - messe 6y ago
      Ideally EN-IE, but I'd settle for EN-GB or EN-US. Although to be honest, there's no real differences between those three locales for most people other than keyboard layouts and the arse-backwards way the US uses to write dates, neither of which apply to a HomePod.
      - 1-more 6y ago
        I'd like to think that speech parsing "give me the cra(ck/ic)" would have different results depending, but I'm not sure HomePod is really ready to oblige that in either case.
    - jen20 6y ago
      HomePod is available with EN-GB. Both of mine are configured that way (though in the US), and I just ordered one in the UK store to ship to the UK.
  - jmkerr 6y ago
    It's available in Ireland, but maybe not to the Irish. As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork, and some of them sell Homepods.
    - dewey 6y ago
      > As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork Not all of them. There's a big warehouse in Czech Republic where all my orders usually come from (To Germany).
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Not available in New Zealand.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kissiel 6y ago

They would need a time machine too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePod I wonder if jailbroken homepod would still do the audio enhancements on the fly with, let's say, spotify. Or the detection of commands in google assistant even while playing music very loud.

pbronez 6y ago
Spotify doesn't currently support HomePod, which is really annoying since the HomePod Mini looks awesome. You can vote for HomePod support on Spotify's community site: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Native-HomePod-Support/idc-p/5058664 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Na...
- wool_gather 6y ago
  FWIW, if you're playing from a computer, there are applications (Rogue Amoeba makes one) that can route the audio from Spotify (or anything) and send it over Airplay. Works great with a HomePod.
- ben174 6y ago
  It does. I just tested proximity handoff from iPhone to HomePod.
  - pbronez 6y ago
    Doesn't that essentially just route the audio stream from your phone to the HomePod? You can do the same thing from an AppleTV. That's nice, but not the integration I'm looking for. Spotify support would mean you can ask Siri to play a song from Spotify and it works directly, without using a Spotify app on a second device.

dewey 6y ago

It's available in Europe, just not in all EU countries.

Hamuko 6y ago
Being available in three European countries (out of 50) is not really "available in Europe".
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
  I'm being pedantic, but technically, it literally is "available in Europe." It is not available throughout Europe, however.