It is the first new device Apple has announced in nearly three years.
Similar to Google and Amazon smart speakers, the HomePod has an intelligent voice assistant baked in.
The specs of the HomePod certainly reinforce this idea - the Apple-designed sub woofer inside the speaker is paired with an A8 chip (from the iPhone 6). The gadget itself isn't particularly remarkable, but it is an Apple gadget. Other services like Pandora and Spotify can be played through Apple's AirPlay system, however this still a detriment compared to the direct streaming from virtually every music service offered by the HomePod's competitors.
HomePod will go on sale in the USA in December for $349.
Analysts said the smart home speaker market is ripe for Apple. While Amazon Echo and Google Home began stealing some market share from the Santa Barbara-based speaker company, Sonos prided itself on the excellent audio engineering that went into its speakers as well as the fact it played nicely with nearly every streaming music service out there.
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It can also be used to control other devices in the home, and reportedly will be in competition against Amazon's Echo and Google Home. It is high time that Apple wakes up to a new era of technology disruption and make real use of its voice assistance technology Siri, considering it was amongst the first voice assistants to hit the market, but never made it big.
Apple had plenty of other announcements.
Safari, Apple's web browser, is getting new features aimed at online annoyances.
New features coming to iPhones and iPads, meanwhile, include marginal improvements such as syncing messages to Apple servers in the cloud, saving storage space on phones and tablets. It will block videos that start playing automatically, for instance, and can also prevent ads from following and profiling users. Apple also laid some groundwork for augmented reality, the projection of digital features onto real-world surroundings, by giving app developers tools for incorporating AR into their products.
The company was expected to introduce iOS 11, the next version of the software that powers the iPhone and iPad.
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