The HomePod is Apple's first new gadget in almost three years, following its announcement of the Apple Watch in September 2014. Apple said both are appearing at WWDC as "sneak peaks", and they weren't lying.
Like the Sonos Play:3 and many other speakers, you can pair two HomePods to create a stereo pair although Apple confirmed on stage that there is much more to it than just simply acting as a left and right channel and we're sure this will be a popular option for those wanting to fill a larger space with sound. The Apple Speaker is focused on music first, not Siri. Whether you care about a lot of them is not what I'm here to talk about, but I did want to at least highlight the HomePod, which is Apple's Google Home and Amazon Echo competitor.
While it's possible that Apple has begun a long decline, one that will yield only incrementally better iPhones, return cash to investors, and produce few meaningful innovations, I think it'd be a mistake to write off an Echo clone.
Many non-hardware companies have also announced plans to launch their own exclusive smart speakers targeting both local and global markets this year, alongside smaller startups active in the business segment.
Apple suggested that the HomePod had been 4 years in the making. Based on their report, my guess is that Cook will adapt Jobs' pitch to promote the me-too speaker not as an assistant but as another three-in-one device. It also has custom array of seven beam-forming tweeters, each with its own amplifier, for balanced timbre as well as precise directional control of a multitude of beam shapes and sizes.
iMac and MacBook Pro models received welcome updates, but most improvements are under the hood. It's hard to know for sure when you're listening to a song coming out of giant speakers in a conference hall. By saying, "Hey Siri, I like this song", the HomePod and Apple Music become the ideal musicologist, learning preferences from hundreds of genres and moods, across tens of thousands of playlists, and these music tastes are shared across devices. For Apple, HomePod is seen as gateway to keep users on the Apple ecosystem. Apple has reduced the bezel around the display to fit more screen in a device that feels just like a regular iPad.
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Or make that new voices, with a male version of Siri is getting a refresh, too. And he'll present it as the best way to get stuff done around the house, including things as basic as turning off lights using Apple's HomeKit. Apple says that the speaker can adapt to the environment in which it is placed, playing music in all directions when placed in the center of a room while directing sound to the away from walls if placed in a corner.
It's going to cost $349. United Kingdom and Australian prices are yet to be confirmed.
Adding to the mix, internet service companies including Naver, operator of the country's biggest portal website, and Kakao, which runs Korea's top-used mobile messenger KakaoTalk, are preparing similar devices that make use of their vast local user data pools, within the year.
And that's about it for now.
Apple had plenty of other announcements. As market analyst Paul Verna, from eMarketer, said: "Whenever these companies try to freeze each other out, everybody suffers".
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