Smart speakers are hot nowadays. Which makes you wonder if your conversations are staying at home. The product is an initiative by Apple to expand into the $50 billion wireless smart speaker industry.
Apple has struggled to make Siri as smart as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa because of disagreements among its staff and its decisions to limit how long it stores user data, former Apple employees told The Wall Street Journal.
These voice assistants for the home all generally work the same: they're only listening after you activate with a wake word, the audio is recorded, sent to the company's servers, and sent back.
Recorded audio is already a topic of debate.
The problem for Apple is that artificial intelligence is the foundation stone of competition between the modern titans of tech, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft.
You may already be familiar with one or more of Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa, the smart assistants that power these speakers. At the same time the data will be secured and can only be called up by the devices used by a particular user, Apple executive Craig Federighi said.
While the HomePod will compete against the Amazon Echo and Google Home in the smart home, Apple claims its major attraction will be sound.
"With Apple acquiring Bowers & Wilkins talent to develop AirPods, it's clear they are taking audio more seriously".
It works extensively with Apple Music, allowing you to use Siri to suggest songs from Apple Music's catalog to help you find what you like. Meanwhile, the Google Home, unsurprisingly, is great for Googling things.
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Apart from the Amazon video app, a BuzzFeed report said Amazon will also start reselling the Apple TV on its site. In fact, police recently tried to get an Echo's recordings as evidence in a recent murder trial.
But here's the wrench in the Sonos comparison: Sonos has been building mics into its speakers for a couple years. The Google Home can tell different voices apart and ties in with the company's many helpful online services, like translation.
All Google Homes require an account tied to it, but it's possible to create dummy accounts that wouldn't have all your personal information on it.
The HomePod boasts a level of privacy that the Google Home and the Amazon Echo don't have.
Siri may have been the first virtual assistant, but Apple failed to turn it into a leader.
There was no overwhelming differentiation in HomePod, according to the analyst.
This week, Apple gave notice that it was entering the arena with the HomePod. David Limp, Amazon's Senior VP of devices and the person in charge of Alexa and the Echos, also said that he would like to see Siri and Alexa "talk to each other" and cooperate.
Apple says the $349 HomePod will be rolled out from December, initially being sold in Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.
As for multi-room support, this is something the HomePod (via AirPlay) and the Google Home (via Google Cast) can do, but the Amazon Echo can't - although it's expected to add the capability soon. But Amazon dropped in, seemingly out of nowhere, with a voice-based virtual assistant that won the early fight of the voice assistant war. "But compared to Sonos, they are very likely to win the fight". A six-microphone array will be able to detect your voice commands, even with music playing.
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