1 Week with HomePod!
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Hey Siri, Wow Wowie!
Hey, guys! If you're new here, I say "while we" all the time. And I am going to present blame my friend Edie for saying it once and then me laughing really hard about it, and now we say, "well, we all the time." Now that I've calmed down from the Siri while we—I just wanted to make a follow-up video to sum up the home pod videos that I made. Because I made a lot of them: an unboxing, a review, basically showing the features of the HomePod. But this was before I really spent much time with it.
Having spent at least a week with the HomePod, I will say it sounds absolutely incredible—something that no one can deny. I listen to a lot of music all day long when I'm working, editing, doing whatever—I always have music playing. Securely judging this thing as a speaker and a music playing device, it is beyond fantastic. One of the things that I think people are comparing this to is Sonos because Sonos has really great sound qualities.
I have so no speakers all throughout my house—in every room, I have one speaker whether it's a very small one or in the kitchen, I have a very large one that produces a lot more sound. It's one of their newer ones. I don't have any of the Alexa-powered Sonos though; all the ones that I have are from the past few years.
The mass appeal for me of the Sonos is playing them and never seeing the room, whereas right now this little guy is not capable of that, and that is a huge, huge letdown. I bought a few of them—this is my most recent purchase, a space gray one so that would match my Space Gray iMac. Obviously, in my iMac setup video, I hadn't got this one yet; I was still using the white one. But this definitely fits with the desk aesthetic much more.
But all those things aside, what has it been like spending a week with the HomePod since then? I've had a home 5 party and I've spent plenty of time with a HomePod. I've also converted my entire house over to everything HomeKit, whereas before I would specifically use the Hue app but now everything is voice-enabled through Siri. I turn my lights on or off; I've enabled routines when I come home or I leave so certain lights will turn on. I have motion activity—so now everything is integrated with HomeKit.
Where this falls flat is very, very sad for me because I really do love this thing a lot, especially being an Apple fan. This just fits into my entire Apple ecosystem. And of course, you guys know that I'm a huge Apple fan, so yes, I'm slightly biased but what I'm not biased about is my love of Sonos. I have loved Sonos for so long—they sound great. But the sound quality in comparison to some of their smaller speakers—this definitely is much better quality.
Well, that being said, these Sonos speakers are less expensive—you can also get two of the Alexa-powered Sonos for the same price as this guy—but this looks so incredible and yes, it is Siri-enabled but no—it's not as smart as Alexa or Google and that is the real unfortunate reality. But the thing is all of those things are software updates—so easily, this can have the potential to be the next Alexa or the next Google Home, but right now in its current state, those two are still far superior.
They've also been around a lot longer—but Siri has also been around for quite a while. I still feel like Siri has not unlocked her full potential but again—it's a software update so now the ball is in Apple's court. Let's get Siri to the level of Alexa and Google and then we're talking this did not ship with its full capabilities.
Without airplay, you're not able to play in different rooms—you're not able to sync them all up together. I wanted to have one in every room—I really wanted this to be a Sonos replacement but right now it can't be because I cannot play music all throughout my house at the same time—that's not going to be available until airplay 2, which should be later sometime this year.
And you also aren't able to do stereo speakers so if you want to do surround sound and have two of these set up in front of your TV and watch a movie on Apple TV because that's the only way that you can use them—only there was a way to sync this to your television with an optical cable like there is for the Sonos of the sound bar—that would be really, really awesome.
The reality is, the HomePod is not as smart as Alexa or Google but the good news is it definitely has the potential. These are easily updated with software—so now it's basically just Apple's choice. Thanks, Alexa! Another thing that I feel like my HomePod and my Apple Music—it's well, it's not a bad thing but I feel like I bought a lot of music around 2002. My Apple Music tends to supply me with a lot of music from like the early 2000s.
"Hey Siri, play me some music." Here's a personal Oh station built just for you—let's kick things off with some Third Eye Blind. Every time look—I mean, I still am like a huge Third Eye Blind fan. Hey Siri, stop playing—but it's so crazy because it's still definitely favors music that I've purchased over music that I've recently streamed using Apple Music.
So I've been doing a lot of work kind of retraining Apple Music to like my interests now—so I didn't start really using Apple Music until I got a car that supported Apple CarPlay. Before that, I've just been using Spotify because I had so many great Spotify playlists that I didn't want to completely convert over.
Now I think that I'm using Apple Music more than Spotify mostly because I do drive a lot—so I tend to be talking to Siri a lot in my car. So because of that, Apple Music has slowly taken over Spotify but I'm still absolutely love Spotify and another thing that a lot of people are complaining about is you're not able to use third-party music apps with this. So you can but it has to be playing on your phone—so essentially if you want to listen to Spotify, you have to airplay it to your HomePod from there.
You can still get some sort of smart commands—you can ask for specific questions if it's in the database: live, what's this song? When was this long release? Play another song on this album—so those types of things still sort of will work depending upon what app you're using but my overall thoughts of having spent plenty of time with this over the past I guess at this point maybe a week and a half almost two weeks—I'm definitely looking forward to the AirPlay 2 update so I'll be able to play stereo music, I'll be able to play music in all of my rooms.
But right now I just have one in my office, one in my kitchen, and one in my living room. I was thinking about getting them for surround sound for my TV but I probably won't because I already have the Sonos sound bar integrated into my televisions—so I would love to have them there but since I can't really use them, they're just watching normal TV. You can only use it while you're watching Apple TV.
I feel like they would get more use other places in the house so I think a lot of people may be on the fence if they want to buy a HomePod or not and I think if you're looking to get one now, I would say do it. If you're looking to get more than one, I would say potentially wait until AirPlay 2 is out unless you just want to get them anyway and just wait patiently for it to actually be unlocked to its full potential but until then, I will be the one waiting patiently.
But know this—it will not be replacing my Alexa anytime soon. I feel like there's so much that I have integrated into Alexa that she is just sort of another addition to my smartphone essentially.
So I hope you're having fun with me—I don't know—are you having fun with me so far? Hmm—that's something I don't know—Oh no, come on, girl. Calling me hanging in front all my friends—play me some music okay—let's press play starting with "Paper Shoes" by Incubus.
What was the song released? Paper Shoes by Incubus came out on November 22nd, 2006—I also haven't noticed the white ring happening because I don't really have a lot of wood surfaces in my house. I don't know if any of you guys have experienced that—let me know in the comments below if you've molted my services are either mirrored reflective or this just like a white lacquer so I have not run into that at all yet—that's also kind of an unfortunate thing.
And I feel like Apple's response was a very Apple response like respond they're like, "well, don't put it on a wood surface." So I guess, "don't put it on a wood surface."
All things considered—I really like the HomePod and I'm not just saying that because I'm a huge Apple fan girl. I love small compact speakers—this looks good in any room—it matches my setup perfectly as far as Siri being smarter yeah—it's definitely a possibility there's a lot of things that she is lacking in comparison to Alexa and Google Home but again, it's a software update so fingers crossed that all of these things happen very, very quickly.
Well, thank you guys for watching—I would love to hear your guys' thoughts. I know you have a lot of thoughts because I've been hearing them quite often on Twitter. I will see you guys in my next video—let me know if you have any suggestions for things you'd like to see here and if you're not subscribed already, subscribe. And if it doesn't really matter cuz I don't feel like YouTube subscriptions should make a difference anymore—see you later.
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