Apple Reveals Homepod Device

The arrival of Amazon Prime Video later this year will introduce Apple TV users to Amazon's growing library of original programming, which includes hits like Transparent, American Gods, Catastrophe and The Grand Tour, the new motoring show launched last year by Amazon, starring former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May.

New photo editing tools, as well as filtering tools based on machine learning which can sort images by keywords and faces, will refresh the Photos app in High Sierra too. The new speaker that is dubbed HomePod, was launched on Monday in San Jose, California at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Rather than taking on Amazon's Echo and Google Home, however, analysts see HomePod less as a "smart assistant", and more as a pure music player.

The speakers, driven by artificial intelligence and voice-enabled assistants - such as Amazon's Alexa - have become a leading trend in the tech industry and Alexa now boasts support for more than 10,000 apps.

The speaker is powered by Apple's A8 processor, powerful enough to control a device like the HomePod. To the contrary, Pacific Crest believes the fidelifocused HomePod highlighted Apple's lack of key proprietary services, which it views as a challenge to maintaining hardware gross margin over time.

Users will be able to ask Siri to play songs and answer questions via the speaker.

That's because Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that the service will not drop until "later this year". Apple said its HomePod won't go on sale until December, initially in Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.

HomePod will be made publicly available from December 2017 in the US, UK and Australia for $349. "In the future Google products must be compatible with Apple products and Amazon products must be compatible with the latest startup's homemade device".

Apple has given Siri new male and female voices, described as more natural and expressive, and added abilities such as translating English phrases into Chinese, French, German, Italian or Spanish.

But perhaps Apple wants to introduce this new device category slowly so that any initial missteps in the product won't get the outsized bad publicity such flubs might get if they start malfunctioning at the outset of that season. Throughout this feature I've compared Apple's speaker to the Play:3, my favourite Sonos speaker priced at £299/$299. But Apple will need to have something else up its sleeve to convince casual fans to buy a $350 smart speaker that isn't as smart as the competition. The HomePod weighs over 5lbs (Google Home weighs just over 1lb), features a large woofer, 7 tweets, 7 microphones, and ac WiFi.

Hey Siri, what did Apple announce today?

But the best new addition for people using the iPad in a professional setting may be the operating system's new feature that allows users to mark up virtually documents that they can access on their iPads using the Apple Pencil. It will not block the ads themselves, though. However, Apple believes that difference serves an important goal.

Apple's success in the past hasn't come from inventing new products. Many of those apps are sold via the App Store, which was revamped, and Apple gets a cut of all those sales.

Apple is also bringing the ability to pay someone back through its payment service, Apple Pay, much as PayPal and other services already do.