Homepod, Apple’s Google Home competitor, costs $350 and looks like a knee pad
Say hello to the Homepod, Apple’s take on the budding new smart home hub market currently being contested by industry giants Amazon and Google.
In typical Apple fashion, what we have here is a $350 speaker that seems to be aimed at those who still believe in overpaying for Cupertino tech. For its price, it does seem to have a lot going for it in terms of audio, with Apple ticking off the boxes with super clear microphones, nice, loud sound, and all sorts of fancy audio stuff inside like beam-forming tweeter arrays with directional control. Apple swears it’ll be like making love to your ears. (I happen to think it looks rather ugly, by the way, with a mesh cover that wraps around the device like a kneepad on your leg, but that’s just my opinion.)
Image courtesy of The Verge.
Of course, there’s also the integration of Siri to help you keep up on things like messages, reminders, news, weather, and more. Its backbone platform Siri should make for something competent, but we find it hard to think anyone can best Amazon Alexa’s ever-changing capabilities (especially since Google Home hasn’t even been able to do that quite yet).
Siri also becomes an expert in “musicology,” which is a fancy word for “AI personality with really good taste in music.” It’s probably just tapping into Apple Music’s recommendations and curation engine, but we’ll suspend disbelief and act like Siri just knows the beats.
So there it is: Homepod. At $350, Apple will have to appeal to their all-in crowd of fanatics who need as much Apple in their home as possible. For the rest of you? Get yourself one of these and go on about your day.