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Grant Hardy shares his thoughts on the Apple HomePod

An Apple HomePod sits on a desk.

The HomePod is an accessible, smart speaker from Apple you can control with your voice. It can play music and podcasts, read and send messages, update your calendar, control your smart home devices, give you news and weather updates, and more.

The speaker is a short, wide cylinder with soft mesh around the sides and a non-stick grip at the bottom for preventing it from sliding around. On the top are touch controls for playing and pausing audio, skipping forward and backward through an album or playlist, and adjusting the volume. Of course, you can do this all with your voice too. At the back is the power cord that plugs into the wall. There are no other controls on HomePod—not even a power button—as the speaker is always standing by and ready to take commands whenever it’s plugged in.
        
The HomePod’s strengths are accessibility, audio quality, ease of use and integration into the Apple ecosystem. Setup is as easy as plugging it in and bringing your iOS device close to HomePod. When you do, you’ll be guided through a simple setup wizard which transfers settings like your Apple ID and Wi-Fi password automatically. If you ever must change a password, changing it on your iDevice automatically updates it on your HomePod—just bring the devices close together for a few seconds. This is a far cry from the hoops you have to go through to set up other smart speakers, which though easy enough if you’re a techy, aren’t exactly elegant.

If you have low or no vision and use VoiceOver on your iDevice, the setup process will enable VoiceOver on the HomePod automatically so that the touch controls are spoken when you tap them. The setup wizard also asks if you want to enable personal requests, which relays your calendar, reminders, notes and messages through your iDevice.

On the other hand, the tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem can be a disadvantage for some. You can’t stream music to the HomePod from non-Apple devices like an Android smartphone or a PC, so an iOS device or Mac is mandatory. And in order to ask for songs, playlists, and stations using your voice, you need to pay Apple a recurring fee for access to one of their music subscription services, either $27.99 annually to store your own music collection in the cloud, or $9.99 per month for access to your music collection plus over 45 million tracks from Apple’s catalogue. This means for the HomePod to be truly useful, you need to live in an Apple-centric household. That said, you can stream whatever audio you want to HomePod from your other Apple devices—and once you get an album or playlist going, you can use voice commands to control the playback. HomePod also lacks support for multiple users, so while it works perfectly for a guy like me living alone, families and roommates will run into trouble with features like calendars, notes, and messages—since HomePod only works with one account at a time. At $449 in Canada, the pricing is much steeper than a typical smart speaker.

 

Grant Hardy's HomePod screen.

HomePod and audio

Personally, I find the audio quality on the HomePod to be amazing. Apple says the speaker has a variety of hardware including “one high-excursion woofer with custom amplifier, an array of seven horn-loaded tweeters, each with its own custom amplifier, and a six-microphone array for far-field Siri.” What that means is you can orient HomePod however you want and get just as good sound out of it, and you can talk to it while playing loud music without ever having to yell.

You’ll mostly control the speaker by using voice by using natural language, beginning with the wake words, “Hey Siri.” 
Here’s how to control music and audio playback on the HomePod:

•    To play one of your favourite playlists, say something like, “Hey Siri, play my workout playlist.”
•    To play something by an artist you like, say something like, “Hey Siri, play Taylor Swift’s Red album,” or “Play the best songs by ABBA.”
•    To play a personalized radio station based on your music listening habits say, “Hey Siri, play some music.”
•    To listen to a podcast, say something like, “Hey Siri, play Live from Studio 5.” You can even say, “Hey Siri, play it faster or slower.”
•    To skip around, say something like, “Hey Siri, skip,” “Hey Siri, next track,” “Hey Siri, previous track,” or “Hey Siri, skip ahead two minutes.”
•    To adjust the volume, say “Hey Siri, softer or louder,” or “Hey Siri, set the volume to 45 per cent.”

You can also send audio from other apps to your HomePod using the AirPlay menu within iTunes on your Mac or apps on your iDevice. And you can remote control the music playing on HomePod from the iTunes app on a Mac and the Music app on an iDevice.

HomePod as a digital assistant

You can ask Siri to help you with many other tasks throughout the day, such as the following:

•    Alarms: “Hey Siri, wake me up at 7 a.m.”
•    Timers: “Hey Siri, set the timer for five minutes.”
•    Math: “Hey Siri, what’s 15 per cent of $56,” or “Hey Siri, convert 150 pounds into kilograms.”
•    Calendar and reminders: “Hey Siri, what’s on my calendar today?” or “Hey Siri, remind me to order groceries when I get home.”
•    Notes: “Hey Siri, note that I spent $50 on groceries today.”
•    Messages: “Hey Siri, do I have any new messages?” or “Hey Siri, read my messages from Mom,” or “Hey Siri, tell Dave I’m running late.”

HomePod and smart home devices

It seems like just about any gadget you can think of around the home—lights, door locks, thermostats, air conditioners, sprinklers—can be controlled via your phone. If you have any of these devices and they work with the Home app on an iPhone, then HomePod should work with them too. You can ask Siri to control them, as in “Hey Siri, turn on my bedroom lights.” But perhaps more importantly, since HomePod is always home, it can automate your home in some really cool ways. You can set the lights to turn off when you leave the house, so you never have to think about doing that. You can turn your kettle on at a certain time every morning, but only if you’re home. And if you have a motion sensor, you can be notified whenever you aren’t home and movement is detected in the home.

You manage smart home devices, and the automations I’ve just described, using the Home app on your iDevice. Planning your smart home is a topic worth exploring further, and depends a lot on your individual needs. Starting with a couple smart light bulbs may be the simplest option. You’ll never be left guessing whether the lights are on or off, since you can automate them however you want.

Conclusion

The HomePod packs a lot of punch for a relatively new product, and it’s fully accessible. It still has room to evolve with new software features but is a fantastic sounding speaker. If you use a lot of other Apple tech, it will fit in well into your home.