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I have an Apple TV 4K, series 6 Watch, iPhone 11, a few Homepod Minis, and smart lights. I also have a MacBook Pro. It is astounding to me how much money I've p
by CSSer 4y ago
I have an Apple TV 4K, series 6 Watch, iPhone 11, a few Homepod Minis, and smart lights. I also have a MacBook Pro. It is astounding to me how much money I've put into the Apple "ecosystem" only to have anything but a seamless experience with Music and Homekit. It is downright pathetic.
Music just doesn't sync well across my devices. Full stop. I can start playing something on my phone, select my Homepods as my speakers via Airplay, and it will play. But if I lock my phone and come back a few minutes later, it'll forget what is currently playing on my HomePods and make me "replace" the music. If I try to control it from my other devices it's the same story. More than once I've had it yell at me for trying to play music in more than one place at a time and try to get me to upgrade to a family plan. I'm single and live alone.
Siri also often misunderstands scene names. I just turned to one of the HomePods and said, "Hey Siri, activate 'Nightlights Only'" (a scene name). She said, "Good night." and did nothing. This happens no matter how well I enunciate (general American accent) or how many times I try.
In the process of messing with it just now to prove my point before sharing, Siri hit a snag and told me to go update my iCloud account in the home app, so I did and ran into the same problem as this user[0] did two years ago (disappearing password prompt). It's wild.
This is not the Apple that made iMessage and Messages in OS X the most seamless text messaging experience I've ever experienced before.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_updated_icloud_password_problems/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/jsw122/homepod_upd...
Edit: I had my iPhone’s wifi off. Apparently I had to be on the same network to resolve the iCloud issue. Why not mention that?
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI am also heavily invested in Apple gear, but any feature dealing with Siri/HomeKit gets a big doubt from me. I have two HomePods setup in stereo mode configured to an Apple TV 4K, and I cannot reliably get it to tell me today’s date, start a timer, play a movie, and not even pause or resume the Apple TV 4K. It is so bad, that recently, if you say “Hey Siri, resume”, the audio resumes playing from the Homepods, but the Apple TV 4K still displays the screensaver until you press play on the remote. I do not even understand how that bug works (and it is a new one, the software continuously gets worse).
- CSSer 4y agoThat’s odd. I swear I’ve had the date problem too, but I just tried it and had no issues with that or any of the other problems you mentioned. Overall I agree though. The core products are still good, but I’m hard pressed to spend any more money on this until they improve Siri and Homekit. I know there’s a big UI refresh coming that is welcome, but it feels bigger than that.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIt is sporadic. I would say the date problem never occurred last year, but in recent months it has been more and more frequent. I wonder if it has to do with my five HomeKit secure video cameras and the HomePods or Apple TV 4K acting as a hub. And the fact that my Apple TV 4K is not wired to network.
- tomcam 4y agoI am super impressed you were able to get the HomePods to work reliably as stereo speakers. We were never able to get it work consistently. One of the four HomePods I purchased is already bricked.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThat has worked flawlessly since day 1 in Jun 2020 for me.
- abc_lisper 4y agoYou may have to look at replacing your router. Because AirPlay works over WiFi, if the router is unable to keep up you will end up having a bad experience