Apple’s Stumbling HomePod Isn’t the Hot Seller It Wanted

[suicidalfranco]

6 hours ago, General Winter said:

i trust none of them, they're all hoarding your data for profit, apple just keeps their doors closed the tightest

 

and why not use a bluetooth speaker, if its worth shelling out $X00 dollars more for functionality already in the $1K iphone then sure, burn more money i guess

 

it really isn't warranted as convenient for myself or the majority of people i know, especially in apartments or other shared housing, you just piss off others and if you're having a party then you use standard powerful speakers anyway, especially for their asking price

 

 

 

if a tiny speaker that does nothing worthwhile outside voice commands and has lack luster sound quality compared to the competing speakers then its really not worth it (i would say get a phone with a better battery life but you're in the shitty apple ecosystem so i pity your dilemma) 

hence why i'm buying some raspberry pi and attaching them to the already present speakers in my home and installing Mycroft on them.

Open source voice assistant

No data hording 

Active, growing community of developers expanding it's abilities

checked all the box for me

[asus killer]

you can't win all of the time, Apple's been beating pretty much everybody on the different new products that came out on the last couple of years, ipod, iphone, ipad. With the money they got it should be difficult to just change the flaws.

[General Winter]

9 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

hence why i'm buying some raspberry pi and attaching them to the already present speakers in my home and installing Mycroft on them.

Open source voice assistant

No data hording 

Active, growing community of developers expanding it's abilities

checked all the box for me

cool, i never heard of that before (mostly cause it never interested me)

 

but if i did ever become interested in such a device in the future, im glad to know i don't have to kill audio quality and this mycroft thing looks interesting (i've never heard of an open source smart assistant, i'll look into it when i need it); thanks for the idea

 

[ARikozuM]

10 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

hence why i'm buying some raspberry pi and attaching them to the already present speakers in my home and installing Mycroft on them.

Open source voice assistant

No data hording 

Active, growing community of developers expanding it's abilities

checked all the box for me

Links, please. 

[General Winter]

10 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

hence why i'm buying some raspberry pi and attaching them to the already present speakers in my home and installing Mycroft on them.

Open source voice assistant

No data hording 

Active, growing community of developers expanding it's abilities

checked all the box for me

 

32 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Links, please. 

just looking up the name shows you the site https://mycroft.ai/

 

also the mark 2 is promising if you don't have the DIY skill and you want mycroft

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mycroft-mark-ii-the-open-voice-assistant#/

[dizmo]

8 hours ago, Some Random Member said:

Maybe it is only US smartspeaker sales, because correct me if im wrong, but you cant properly use the ALexa outside America(US and canada) so the Google has much higher market share in Europe.

That would make sense.

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

It's probably because amazon has a wider brand reach, if only because when you open amazon.com you get an ad for their stuff.

Yeah I suppose. I always found their devices lacked a lot in the aesthetics department, and for something I'd have more or less on display, Google just has a nicer one. It's that glass plastic. Can't stand it.

8 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

I think the thing people miss is that HomePod was designed to be a speaker first and a smart assistant later. Apple even went out of there way at the announcement to say that Siri on HomePod was not the same Siri that is in something like and iPhone. 

 

Still, 10% of the market with that price tag is not bad. 

Really? It's not even that good of a speaker though. There's bluetooth speakers that are significantly better at the same price.

If it's not trying to be a smart assistant first, it's just a pretty lackluster speaker.

[DrMacintosh]

22 minutes ago, dizmo said:

There's bluetooth speakers that are significantly better at the same price.

I haven't heard anyone say that in a review

[DrDerp]

Personally I see the failure being the lack of other streaming services. Apple Music is such a small portion of the market, and what really makes me confused is that there is not any support for Tidal (I haven't followed closely so they may have added support, sorry if I'm wrong) or other HiFi sources, as it seriously deserves superior quality files to drive such an awesome setup. I don't care for Smart Functions much, I have an Echo Dot and I rarely use it for anything but music. Spotify or Soundcloud support would be amazing. I don't think that the price point is a turn off, as people will buy it just because it is Apple. If there was not such a lack of support I would have told my parents to invest in one instead of an Echo, as they are practically locked into the Ecosystem at this point.

[Commodus]

7 minutes ago, DrDerp said:

Personally I see the failure being the lack of other streaming services. Apple Music is such a small portion of the market, and what really makes me confused is that there is not any support for Tidal (I haven't followed closely so they may have added support, sorry if I'm wrong) or other HiFi sources, as it seriously deserves superior quality files to drive such an awesome setup. I don't care for Smart Functions much, I have an Echo Dot and I rarely use it for anything but music. Spotify or Soundcloud support would be amazing. I don't think that the price point is a turn off, as people will buy it just because it is Apple. If there was not such a lack of support I would have told my parents to invest in one instead of an Echo, as they are practically locked into the Ecosystem at this point.

I see it more as an either-or.  Apple ought to either support third-party streaming services (less likely, although AirPlay 2 will help) or significantly improve Siri so that it's closer to the abilities of Alexa or Google Assistant, including support for third-party skills.  Support everything or give users a really good reason to stay within the Apple fold.

 

The $349 price doesn't help, either, although there are reports that Apple is looking at a lower-cost model.

[Bigbootyjudy]

wow, I thought google would have had a better share as honestly, I think that their assistant has more uses and abilities. this is especially true if you connect it to your smart home stuff like lights and thermostat. I just think Amazon has a bigger share because they advertised so much and pretty much was the first good smart speaker.

[potoooooooo]

On 4/21/2018 at 5:41 PM, suicidalfranco said:

Jobs' one was better.

 

glad to see to see cook's bastardisation of it fail.

 

The HiFi was 50 dollars at walmart within what, two years of launch? It was a failure, technologically and commercially. Apple has in the past few months claimed 10% of the market. Sonos and Google have been in the market for years and Google only has 4% more. Apple has 5 times as much as Sonos. People calling the homepod a failure are hilarious.

[DrDerp]

5 minutes ago, potoooooooo said:

The HiFi was 50 dollars at walmart within what, two years of launch? It was a failure, technologically and commercially. Apple has in the past few months claimed 10% of the market. Sonos and Google have been in the market for years and Google only has 4% more. Apple has 5 times as much as Sonos. People calling the homepod a failure are hilarious.

It still undersold what it was supposed to. However, I do think it honestly did better than I expected it to because of the high price. However, I still believe it has too many problems to actually justify a high price tag.