The Apple loudspeaker is being news in the networks for the last hours and is that after the delays it is already close to starting the opening of the first reservations, something that was seen to come for days but that had never arrived.
Now that we have this date ready and everything is ready for its launch, the first analysis or contact with this speaker that Siri adds begins to arrive, and the truth is that we expected more media to have access to it but not to been so. The point is that some like Refinery29, did manage to access the speaker for an hour and they talk about it on their website.
Refinery29 explains that the HomePod is a powerful device and above all much better than the competition in terms of sound quality. We do not have to forget this when we talk about the HomePod, it is a speaker with spectacular quality and Apple already explained that it was that, a speaker to listen to music. In this case they compare it and say directly that it is even better in sound than competing Google Max, Amazon Eco or Sonos One models. We leave images of the three models mentioned for those who do not know them:
The HomePod can be considered an assistant
Clearly having Siri makes this HomePod a "new assistant" and it will automatically remember us as if it were advertisements, about the events on the calendar that we have scheduled for the day. Something that can be interesting and allows the user not to have to ask the tasks, it will directly offer them to us.
The HomePod is capable of detecting if we are at home but the way in which it does it is not really known, but what it allows is that Siri is not activated to give information about new messages, calendar events, reminders or any alert that we have configured in our device when we are away from home. In principle and because of what they say on the web that they have had access to the HomePod, it is only allowed to link with an iCloud account, the one that we link will be the account that offers us the data and the aforementioned information about events, messages and others when we are at home.
The mic is sensitive, don't yell
Like the new Apple Watch Series 3 and its improved microphone, this Homepod seems to have a really good mike and according to this first contact, it is not necessary to shout or raise your voice too much for it to hear us. This is something very interesting considering that the location of the speaker could be the dining room or living room, in this way when saying "Hey Siri" or even sending a voice command it will hear us perfectly.
The truth is that all are good words in this first contact, it will really be necessary to see What do the rest of the users and media who can buy the HomePod say Apple, so far it looks good.
What worries me from what I have read is that you will not be able to listen to your iTunes library if you have not bought the songs through the music store, a serious mistake since most people include music not bought by other sources.
I don't think that's the case, I understand that if you have your iTunes with all your personal library on your mac / pc, it can be played without problems through the HomePod, similar to what happens with Apple TV.
Let's also think that apple says that the homePod is compatible with the FLAC format and this is not sold in the iTunes Store ……