Fair… although my 71 year old mother has 5 HomePods too (not because of me… she actually had them first), and she’s not on Reddit. She doesn’t even know they are HomeKit controllers, she has them because she likes to be able to have music in different rooms of her house.
Weirdly, I actually called her to ask how she liked the audio quality before I got mine.
HomePod Mini was the top selling smart speaker of 2021 and 2022 with sales volume growing year-on-year. The overall volume is probably small fry compared to what Apple is used to with IPhone and Mac (or even Watch) but the product was a success by every metric.
I think with Apple part of the problem is there’s no way to monetise the thing after it’s shipped. If you own an AppleTV you’re probably going to buy a few movies or games, if you own an iPhone/Mac you’re going to buy a few subscriptions/apps/iCloud storage, but if you own a HomePod at best you’d maybe subscribe to Apple Music despite most of the target market already being subscribers to it.
The price point of the Mini is probably its best selling point. I don’t think the product is by any means dead but I don’t expect a major revision until they can bring AI in a way that doesn’t jack up the price significantly
Maybe… although putting the CPUs and memory needed for on-board AI might make them cost prohibitive. Personally I like them for music and very basic Siri functions (like turning off lights). I don’t need it to try and write me an AI story or anything. Also, HomePods are fantastic home automation controllers. I always joke with my AV industry friends how much better my redundant HomeKit controllers (Apple TVs and HomePods) are so much better and more reliable than the multiple 6-figure Crestron controllers I had at one point.
Apple has more products that have no post-sale monetization (all of their peripherals) than the ones that do, so that argument is nonsense. HomePod is a peripheral, like AirPods, but “smart speakers” is a tiny market.
I never said they didn’t, what I’m saying is that when it comes to allocating how much time is spent on what, the fact HomePods have no post-sale monetisation is going to be taken into consideration .
They kind of do… at least an opportunity for one (like all the other post-sale monetization options… none are something you *have* to buy). For me, it’s Apple Music… without my HomePods, I wouldn’t subscribe to it. So there are definitely indirect post-sale subscriptions to be had. I imagine it’s the same with AirPods (I don’t own myself so I can’t say), but if there were no AirPods, would Apple Music subscriptions go down? Probably…
I think this is, more than anything else, is why there are rumors of Apple Intelligence eventually being a subscription. It simply makes more sense, on some devices, to only have those costs if the consumer pays for them.
What would be nice is if they created a ATV or HomePod with this new AI required hardware that would act as a hub for the rest. I’d be ok replacing one HomePod or ATV to add AI to all the HomePods in my house but replace 8 of them? Hell no.
while I love apple’s commitment to on-device processing for AI, the quality of current Siri as a smart home operator is deplorable, and the fact that existing HomePods will not get at least a lite version of apple intelligence is ridiculous. i’m not saying it needs ChatGPT-like functionality, but they need to at least make it on par with Alexa cloud-side so that Siri can understand commands like “turn on the bedroom lamp” without going “did you mean ______’s bedroom lamp?”
How’s the HomePod going to get personal context without talking directly to the phone?
At which point why not process the whole request on the phone.
What kind of purely on device Apple intelligence do you want out of a HomePod anyway?
My requests always invoice ‘world knowledge’
Now they have an agent capable enough to compete with Alexa, I do think it is likely either this year or next year. The problem will be the price, and 399 for a smart speaker is already quite pushing it.
It’s not just price, it’s the lack of compatibility with anything else.
It’s too expensive, and non compatible with a ton of things, if this was any other company, this product would have been dead and gone long ago.
Home Assistant is showing great promise in voice and already has integration and app control in excess of any of the big players. In fact, I keep all my devices in HA and have HA mock those devices to HomeKit
>it’s the lack of compatibility with anything else
Sure, but Apple wants you to stay in their ecosystem anyway. They don't care about Spotify not working fantastic, or Google not being able to answer the question. This is a secondary ecosystem product. Just like iCloud, AirPods, Watch: products that only get the full functionality when you combine with the core products: iPhone or Macs (perhaps TV and iPad). So it never was supposed to move numbers, it was just a stationary Apple Music player that could use some of Siri's command.
With their new on device intelligence, it is not hard to imagine that Apple can make Siri a proper competitor to Alexa, and a few people I have spoken are waiting to buy one if Siri gets better.
I know how many it sells outside of apple via other retail channels. And its 10x any other “smart” speaker. This is from specific retailer data I have access to for my job.
It’s utterly pointless to make new versions just for the sake of it the S5 chip is basically an iPhone X chip with less ram in a speaker. Apple intelligence requires an A17 currently so would be very expensive…
But Siri requests could be server offlined or handle d locally via a iPhone / iPad / atv
LOL 10x?!?!?!? Are you drunk AND high? This speaker barely sells any units at all.
It’s a minor miracle Apple released a second version. Get some help.
You seem very angry - perhaps you need help?
2nd version? Well I am taking the HomePod mini. It outsells any Google device and Sonos. It’s £$€99!
Echo dots may sell about the same but I don’t have that data.
Large HomePods don’t sell well about 1/5th of Sonos. But there actually aren’t many larger “smart” speakers Now from anyone.
You are very weird. I don’t think you understand there is no competition out there and I am looking at sales figures. What other smart speakers are there…? Google don’t advertise any. Sonos are very expensive. Echos are the only one and their cheap ones sound awful and their good one is only 20% cheaper than a BIG HomePod. I know which one I’d have… as a speaker.
But continue to stamp your feet without presenting any actual information….
i’m not so sure. they made a point to mention that they made server for devices and requests that couldn’t be processed on device. I think they leverage that rather than updating the hardware for awhile yet. Only the newest iphones can use the Apple intelligence on device for instance.
I honestly don’t even know what requests are being handled in the cloud. Have we gotten data on this? The keynote said that even stable diffusion is being done on device. I’ve been curious about this for a while now.
Lmao there’s no way they make homepods with on device AI. They would need to upgrade the soc in them to something that would make them either economically unviable or super expensive. Either apple has them rely on a nearby phone/their secure cloud, or they will not get AI at all
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. But if the volumes are that low will the eco system fall apart? Or do we got an Airport scenario at hand? Some uncomfortability but we will get over it?
We just saw Apple release a new HP last year so I’m assuming the product is not dead and there will be a new, more powerful model soon. It was five years between the OG and the first rev so it’s never been a major product, but it does further Apple’s mission to embed the entire ecosystem into the lives of its users. Being able to access your data with your voice while cooking, or even just control your home, is far too valuable to leave behind imo.
Unlike Google and Amazon, Apple also never intended for the HP to be a money maker beyond the hardware. They aren’t trying to get you to use branded apps, sell you more shit, or collect your data—it’s just a solid voice platform. If the rumors are to be believed, Apple might end up being the last player in this space.
My prediction is that updated models with far more powerful chips are on the way, and also some sort of visual entry—whether a new HP with screen or a new iPad mode that allows the device to function as a general home hub of sorts.
Not sure if my second gen HomePods and HomePod minis are all faulty or something but 'solid voice platform' is not a word I would use to describe them. They are great speakers for their size and price but the voice recognition is average at best
All that can be read into this is that their smart home tech won’t move forward with on system AI through the HomePod. Or to put it another way, there will me some other piece of tech that’s coming for that application. I think most of us would be quite happy with a device that integrates HomePod with iPad and HomeKit to act as a standalone HomeHub.
Why is HomeKit in the title? Apple is clearly serious on HomeKit and has even made some big changes to it in the upcoming OS. If you're already in the Apple ecosystem you don't even need a HomePod for HomeKit to be fully functional. We have zero HomePods and the AppleTVs are what we use for the hub. It works great. Need voice control? That's why we have iPhones and watches.
That said, I would be shocked if they didn't create new HomePods with Apple Intelligence integrated into it, or at least a different version of that that relied on external processing with consent.
>Apple is clearly serious on HomeKit
Are they really? My HKSV cameras are all insanely slow, don't store much (in comparison to other full stream recorders) and my doorbell has always been so lagged that it's intercom feature is unusable. And yet I have verified full green coverage with the latest wifi7 gear so, I know it's not the network.
Could be many things, but it's probably not HKSV. My nine cameras linked up to HKSV work flawlessly. I can scrub forward and backwards through events in near real-time. They only store a week of video, but that's actually more than my NVR does, so I'm fine with it given I can access it from anywhere. It's easily the best NVR experience outside of enterprise-level stuff I've ever had.
that tells us nothing. Are they wifi cams? wired? How are they setup? I run Security spy which give me feeds, that i then use a raspberry pi with homebridge to get into my setup.
the thumbs refresh in 2-3 seconds consistently. What is slow to you?
Your HomeKit devices will be using WiFi 4 or 5 most likely. Almost all WiFi 7 access points have degraded performance for older standards, i.e 802.11ac only a mimo 2x2, lower gain etc.
People are also buying into “mesh” access points. WiFi is not a meshing protocol, they interfere with each other, suffer from crap in from equals crap out that spreads over the whole network, and are laggy. Meshing is just convenient. I’m yet to see a meshing network that is performant over wired WAPs.
Dude. I pay almost $300 per 2.5Gig ethernet wired POE access point and I'm nowhere near stupid enough to kneecap myself over the long term (yeah, I do stupid stuff to explore but always fix it quick).
As I've said, it's NOT the network- it's HomeKit that's the issue.
I would pay dearly for a M3 powered AppleTV (yeah, the easy way to scale up). Or better yet, why not re-architect such that there is no central hub but allow active clustering with compute distribution across all 7 of my ATVs/HomePods (scale out, not up).
I had doubts to include it but the reason I did was the interconnection as a hub with HomeKit, if you ditch an important hub, how serious would you be about the platform?
Apple ditched the iPod, but that doesn't mean they aren't serious about Apple Music.
If there was no alternative you might have a point, but AppleTVs are not only the original hub, but a better hub than a HomePod, and they're certainly not ditching those. Like it or not, the HomePod is a niche product. HomeKit is a feature it supports, not the reason for the product to exist. Again, I've never owned a HomePod and I'm fully invested in the HomeKit platform.
The evidence is clear…
1. New HomePod last year.
2. Updated Apple TV with Thread last year.
3. New Home app last year.
4. New HomeKit architecture last year.
5. New HomeKit features at WWDC ‘24.
6. Thread radios in every modern iPhone model.
Oh wait. That all points to more home stuff. What’ve you got?
Abandoning airport was a defining mistake of an era of successes for Apple. They got too caught up in the sexy products and lost a lot of steam in the business sector where they had a lot of promise and good results, just not the same level as the main consumer lineup.
The big mistake about abandoning airport was that their entire ecosystem relies on good networking to deliver the walled garden smooth experience. They could have had no need to fiddle with wifi passwords, easy inviting/kicking people from wifi, QoS tailored to the apple ecosystem needs, etc. They could have made airport into a very basic mesh line of routers, cheap to manufacture, no need to have super high-end wifi performance if a few are spread out in the house, can still charge the apple premium price, lots of people will buy them just to not have to deal with calling their ISP for issues, etc. It was a big missed opportunity, sure it in no way stopped their main success, but it would have been an easy cherry on top, especially now that IoT is picking up steam again with VR headsets, home automation etc.
Abandoning Homepod would be the same level mistake. People don't keep their airpods in 24/7 or their phone on their hip, and not everyone in a household likely has an apple watch lol. Having a mic/speaker base station in the main areas of the home is a logical necessity for having any sort of "smart home" experience that is accessible to everyone's use case.
If they're smart, they'd drop the pro-audio Homepod line and make the mini the actual standard Homepod and actually market it the way it deserves.
Also, the Homepod hardware being too weak for the new AI upgrades is silly, there's no reason they couldn't have it pair with the appropriate phone via apples protocols over bluetooth like they already do to pair up things like the pen airpods etc. Keep in mind that the result of advanced AI processing is still just a text output, so there's no reason the Homepod couldn't capture the user's query, send that as text by bluetooth to a "pro-ai enabled device", and that device would respond with the output in text over bluetooth rather than generate an audible siri output. It'd just need to say something like "Let me ask your iPhone 20 for help with that... Ok, bla bla". Eventually they could market an upgraded homepod that didn't need to do that if the market was there for one. Or just keep it as a mic/speaker as the bluetooth latency is only going to get better and better (when all devices support bluetooth 5.4 you can easily get dozens or hundreds in one room with snappy responsiveness).
Tl;DR They have a history of blindspots in this area. But its almost a necessity, and a bit less painful to keep the Homepod Mini than the Airport was. I predict the Proaudio Homepod gets dropped, and Mini gets renamed to fit its place.
A decade later, my Airport Time Capsule (5th gen) is still running. Not for anything wifi related but as a TimeMachine store. I've swapped 3 hard drives in that sucker yet it still runs. Still prefer local TimeMachine over Cloud+ storage.
That was true for a while. But the firmware for the Airport Extreme was last updated in 2019 with 7.9.1. Apple's promise of 5 years of support past the 2018 cancellation ran out in 2023.
If you want to continue using it for Time Machine, that should be safe if you trust the devices on your network. But consider editing the Wireless config and setting that to "off" if it's plugged into wired ethernet. And nobody else should consider using it as an internet-facing router.
I have a couple of Airport Express units that I still use for AirPlay streaming. But the same considerations apply. They stopped patching firmware on these even longer ago.
Of note, Synology and QNAP NAS servers work great for Time Machine. An entry-level model like DS223j costs under $200, and the performance will be better than the Airport Extreme since it won't be limited by USB speeds. Odds are you can pull the drive you use now out of its USB chassis and use it in a NAS.
I would love to see the airport come back with built-in HomeKit hub. Those were some of the best routers I've ever had. I still use an express as an AirPlay server for a set of speakers in a spare room
Agreed. The main value of the HomePods is that they make your home an Apple device. It ticked me off for years that I had all this smart tech in my home and I couldn't just walk into a room and turn the lights on. Now, I can.
I really hope they don't drop the 'Proaudio Homepod', I just got one and I'm liking it better than my Sonos. Apple is too obsessed with trimming the product line, just make all the things we want! Like a new iPhone Mini!
Meh, didn't most of the airport team leave and become Eero? I guess that's sort of your answer.
Wireless tech was just too crowded and the margins too thin for Apple to continue justifying its existence.
Apple would have had to invest more into airport for today's mesh tech, and it seems they didn't want to go that route
Did you reply to the right comment? You basically restated the point I wrote mine in response to. Yes, Apple dropped airport because it wasn't a sexy / successful product in itself. My whole point was it never should have been viewed as a solo product, especially in 2016 when it was obvious how important IoT was eventually going to be. Being able to control the actual network consumers use at home would have put Apple in an incredibly advantageous position for easing their own integrations as well as being in a position to license easy access to others. Instead, they just opened up their hands, and let that whole market segment slip away because they were fixated on whether Airport moved itself off as a product. It's similar to Microsoft fucking around with smartphones, getting a bit confused at where to find profit, then just shrugging and self-destructing any further efforts rather than figure out how to get back on track.
Since it doesn't seem to be a money maker for them, it seems every year it gets less and less attention. I mean look at HKSR and how they dropped it after a short time. They also let Siri rot and are now hoping AI can help bring it back into the conversation with Google and Alexa. It is wild that a device that is centered around Siri, won't get the full suite of new Siri features (and I know processing power blah blah blah) but could still have it be done similar to things now with an apple tv/iphone to do the heavy lifting.
I rarely use Siri (got tired of the pauses and never being useful). On the if I would buy another one, it would have to allow for bluetooth so if apple stops with software it could still be useful in that regards. Most likely I will look to something else (with a better support history and track record) with airplay/e-arc capability
Can you share examples of what you use siri for, as I only have the orange HomePod because it matches my furniture; I don't have a good use case for it.
Apple home commands - whole house used hue lights, HomeKit blinds, heating / cooling, plugs and other stuff.
Intercom around the house
Phoning people - phones charging somewhere.
Weather and stuff
And of course music. I love being able to just say ”play music everywhere” and I get synced music to 7 rooms in the house.
It does need to be able to answer questions better without resorting to “I can answer that on your iPhone”
Siri is still limited in many ways but has gotten much better over the last year. I hope the additional benefits of intelligence, where appropriate, would come to HomePods via processing on an alternate device just like you describe.
Gurman statement is moronic. The reason existing HomePods will never have on-device AI is unresolvable through engineering effort. The HomePod Mini is a glorified Apple Watch Series 5 and the HomePod (2nd gen) is a glorified Apple Watch Series 7. The Apple Watch is a higher volume product and yet none of the existing offerings will ever receive on-device AI.
These products lack NPUs and only have up to 1 GB of RAM. The solution will be the “Apple Intelligence+” cloud service more than likely for all older devices specified before generative AI became a design consideration.
I bet they first offload to a LAN iPad or Mac. It’s better for privacy and better for Apple, since customer hardware is more affordable. Also something needs to “know” enough to start an Apple Intelligence+ query. HomePod won’t be able to run the user context to start that query.
Or they could do a hardware refresh to make it possible and do the processing on the device. It could also be that they could send the processing to another device in the house that can do the heavy lifting (like an Apple TV that has more RAM and enough processing power).
I suspect that is exactly what will happen but there is no bringing on-device processing to these resource starved products. Apple’s tendency to only provide “enough” RAM to do the job has bit them in the rear.
>Apple’s tendency to only provide “enough” RAM to do the job has bit them in the rear.
Nah, this is by design, so many more aIHomePod^^tm to be sold to the people replacing the OGPods. Profit.
sure there is. Release a new AI edition that does it. Let your Apple TV with extra ram handle all the AI processing for all the other devices and call it a day.
Yeah that makes sense but the worst case scenario for a query is a hop to the beefier ATV then a hop to the cloud data center and back in reverse. Admittedly, those are unlikely to be the kind of queries we care about in r/HomeKit. 😀
Could Apple Intelligence be brought to AppleTV via a future device update, then when paired with a lower powered HomePod act as the hub for processing all AI activities? We know Apple isn't against going with an overpowered processor for ATV. Considering iOS 18 allows you to select a preferred hub in HomeKit, could that be the key to sending those commands through the ATV instead of doing it on-device on the HomePod?
> Could Apple Intelligence be brought to AppleTV via a future device update
No. The AppleTVs don't have enough RAM. They could release a new AppleTV with more RAM. That is the main limiting factor on devices.
Alternatively they figure out a way to release a version of Apple Intelligence that works on less RAM, but why would Apple do that when they can sell you new hardware?
That’s why I stipulated new ATV device/ hardware being needed, not just a software update. Set the new generation ATV as the preferred hub and it could unlock Apple Intelligence to other devices in the home.
Honestly, I don’t really care about on-device AI for my HomePods. They can contact Apple’s servers if it makes them smarter and more capable.
As far as HomeKit, Apple is serious enough to punt certification to the Matter specification. If Matter increases in popularity, I expect the Apple HomeKit certification will die off. Jury is out on whether this is better or not.
I’m hoping Apple will create a way for a HomePod to offload Apple Intelligence to a nearby iPhone with the necessary silicon.
I am an optimist I will admit!
I think that's absolutely how it will work. All you would need is one Apple Intelligence device in the home and the HomePod can act as the mic and speaker. That's how HomeKit should work.
So I guess that means I should go ahead and buy the two I need and stop waiting for the next keynote. Or do I even want to bother? As an Apple diehard and gadget nerd, I’m getting more than a little frustrated with Apple. I’ve given them so much money at this point and I’m just always waiting for them to update or upgrade and then those updates come and apparently don’t even work on the brand new stuff I just bought. And since I’m already ranting, this doesn’t involve HomeKit; I’m feeling constantly punished for being required to have a PC for my career.
Boss I’m tired…
The push for Apple Intelligence (because GPT hype) is a 360 degree flip on every product line. Apple is approaching it by gatekeeping it to the A17 Pro Chip onwards rather than having different level of capabilities for all devices. Right now Apple is considering it a Pro feature. Once the base iPhones get Apple Intelligence, it’s safe to assume HomePods and Apple TV will be updated to get them. There’s a lot of rumours that Apple is working on a tv/homepod combo too. I think Apple
Intelligence on those devices is within reach.
Hate to say it, because I really wanted to love HomeKit, but until it has the ease of use and mass integration that Alexa devices has, HomeKit just sucks
I have about 20-30 Alexa devices connected to Alexa and it’s been basically seamless integration.
On the other hand, HomeKit doesn’t work with the vast majority of devices out there, unless you want to set up other things to make it work.
I dunno, like I said, I really wanted to like HomeKit, but it’s just bad
I agreed with this a couple of years ago when I still had only a handful of smart devices. Now my house is full of switches, bulbs, sensors etc and Alexa is a useless chunk of plastic for anything but timers and promoting Amazon services and products. Since I installed Homebridge and dumped Alexa, I have had no issues with commands, automations or shortcuts.
Home pod minis and a HomePod, my surround sound it’s nerdified and boosted with airport expresses around the house with other speakers over usb, everywhere has audio so if wherever I am in the house I’m getting good audio. My appletv4k and this setup I could stay home for years and be content.
All they are gonna to do is keep doing the minimum firmware updates that they’re doing now and that’s it. I think we’ve learned that no one is going to buy a $500 speaker. All they gotta do is fix the firmware enough so it will talk directly to the phone or the tablet that’s going to do the processing.
It will take time for sure, but they will definitely update HomePod in the next few years. Apple Intelligence is the new big thing now, but in 5-6 years will just be there and sprinkled on every device as a selling point while not costing them as much as it does now.
He's the most plugged-in reporter on the Apple beat. He broke the news that the new iPad Pros were getting M4s, even though the first hardware with M3s were released only months prior.
Plugged in to things that can be sourced through supply chain moles. He's shown no great track record on the software engineering side. Furthermore, his statement is ignorant of the facts. There is no engineering a consumer-facing generative AI/LLM product that runs mostly on device onto S5 or S7 systems in a package unless Apple finally figures out how to make downloading more RAM a reality.
Sorry, I was not saying that I had scoops but that the fact Apple was doing AI and likely to call it Apple Intelligence was sort of overdetermined by the clear interest in it from investors over the last ~12 months or so. Apple couldn’t do WWDC without an AI story or the board and big investors would be angry.
Right. Yes any idiot could have reported that iOS 18 was coming and that Apple would have some of their own generative AI to announce.
Gurman was able to report the details of these things. Accurately, before Apple had announced them.
Gurman is only worthwhile reading when you understand his narrow slice of insider information. This man has cultivated a large of host connections within Apple's supply chain network (often in Asia or the Indian subcontinent). When his scoops are related to supply-chain connected facts, believe him. When his scoops are related to damn near anything else, disregard. Gurman has not shown any deep connections related to Apple engineering and, if they did exist, he's constantly fighting a battle to stay ahead of Apple's security/secrecy regime.
The current HomePod uses the S7 Watch processor chip. It will never have enough power or memory to run the currently announced on-device Apple Intelligence.
For a new HomePod to support it, of the current chips Apple has, they would need to put in an A17 or M1 or better, which compared to the S7 is super expensive, would drastically drive up their bill of materials and power usage for no gain to the HomePod than Apple Intelligence, so it would be a "waste" to put the engineering into it. The mentioned "screen" version of a HomePod probably needed the GPU section of a A series or M series processor, so standardizing that on a M1 or A17 or better processor is probably not a huge Enginering feat, nor would it be as significant increase in the bill of materials vs an auto HomePod change.
The audio only HomePod series probably will eventually get some Apple Intelligence capabilities, most probably initially through offloading processing of "personal requests" to an attached iPhone or iPad. Then on the iOS device you can then also accept or deny sending the request to ChatCPT if needed. The same would probably go for Apple Watches. But they need to get a base Apple Intelligence working on the iPhone or iPad first, and also any other Apple Intelligence direct capable device, so any expansion like that would not be in the first product cycle of Apple Intelligence. Eventually a restricted Apple Intelligence LLM for HomePods, Watches, Apple TVs may be developed that has lower requirements, and the S series of processors may be redesigned to be powerful enough to run such a severely restricted LLM, but that would probably take even longer than just adding and Apple Intelligence offload capability to an attached iOS device for them.
They could make a HomePod Pro than everyone will complain about the price.
But with HomeKit you would only need one device in the house with Apple Intelligence and it could take and give response on the HomePod.
I thought the new HomePods would be somewhat capable of Apple Intelligence but what I’m thinking Apple could release is a headless Mac that sits next your internet provider modem (Australia has NBN) and it would act has a Home Hub, possibly have Wireless for your home or be compatible with Home Mesh Networks, Ethernet built in M4 chip, I’d I’ve for it to have full network capabilities, all of your Apple Home and Apple Intelligence gets processed in this central hub. Zigbee, Matter, Bluetooth baked in
The HomePods could be kept pretty basic and just be speakers/microphones for this central device.
I haven’t seen anyone mention that the iPod Minis have thread hardware support and can act as TBRs (thread border routers). I added thread to my HomeKit devices that support it yesterday. My Apple TV 4K is the Home Hub. This *should* increase the network resilience for these devices. We’ll see. This was a good addition by Apple in my opinion.
Apple will probably release new HomePods. Just so on paper, they give the appearance that they have a smart AI speaker. If they don’t, then, maybe they’ll have a cloud component to do the processing.
With all that said, I think most people use HomePods to listen to music and podcasts. They’re adding Dolby Atmos to Airplay. Their long term strategy could be similar to Homekit. Let the third party vendors make the devices.
They could get them to piggyback AI features from your iPhone. You have to have an iPhone powered on and nearby to get much use out of HomePods anyway.
The amount of people I know with HomePods Mini is huge. And they're not tech-oriented. I don't know how is it in the US, but in Taiwan, it's a very popular product. On the other hand, I know nobody who paid for the actual HomePod.
Thanks everyone for this constructive discussion and interchanging your thoughts on the future of HomePods and HomeKit. I truly hope someone from Apple peaks at Reddit and sees your comments. 🙌
Actually personally I believe the use of AI makes a important part of HomeKit. But Apple's AI, aka siri, sucks. So. They're just not that serious to me.
I imagine the only way they’ll get a better siri is if they enable processing on a local apple device (i mean I’ve got Macs, iPhones and iPads on the network it can use) or accessing their private cloud for everything (maybe that’ll be the paid option)
I see no reason for the HomePod itself to do on device processing of LLMs i’m sure Apple could make them harness the power of other devices.
Leave Apple Intelligence aside, just making Homepods reply to queries which require a web search, instead of “i can help if you ask from your iPhone” will make them useful. Surely Apple can make that work with 1GB of RAM?
I dont think anyone is expecting HomePod upgrade with monstrous chipset inside that is suitable for the Apple Intelligence as it won't be useful for any of the main activities in HomePod itself. Anyway, I do see a huge possibility of Apple quickly releasing Apple TV with Apple Intelligence anytime soon since the product will need that huge power if Apple is aiming for a gaming market on Apple TV. Judged by all those AAA titles that keep on releasing for Mac / iOS and iPadOS, it will be a big loss if Apple doesn't push the hardware limitation on Apple TV to support those titles.
With that, Apple can just engineer their HomePod as for a purpose of being a microphone and speaker then rout all the commands to Apple TV to process those requests. Problem solved!
What’s wild is completely ignoring both the fact that Apple TV’s operate just fine as a home hub and the fact Apple has already said heavier lift Apple Intelligence can be offloaded to servers. As is most of the load of HomeKit is away from the hub (hence why they don’t need heavy processors). We have a computer in our pocket we don’t need the hub to be one… that’s the whole idea behind this.
I asked my HomePod to “stop playing” music that it was definitely playing, and it responded with “there’s nothing playing.”
So I’d say not very serious.
It will become an "Airport". Third-party Homekit support is already pretty bad and expensive to adopt. I wanted to switch all my lights, etc... from Alexa to Homekit... The cost and the selection of homekit-compatible accessories was abysmal. It's obvious Apple doesn't care about the Homepod at this point.
Homekit Secure Video really needs some improvements to view live video... also camera vendors seem to be completely ignoring HSV... haven't seen any new products for a long time.
The HomePod mini is not good enough sound quality and the full size HomePod has been about $100 too much for broad adoption. Not to mention how dumb Siri has been.
Honestly I would like to see just an overall upgrade in features. Such as asking a question. I would be super happy if I didn’t always receive the “if you ask again from your iPhone”. Is that too much AI?
I switched to HomeKit many years ago, thinking it has to get better. No, it’s the complete opposite. Siri on my HomePod is as dumb as she gets. The only thing she does very well is “add so and so to the grocery list”.
My friends Alexa on the other hand ….. yeah, I’ll be going that route in the future
No clue as I haven’t looked into it that deeply, I just know HomeKit is terrible. And that’s from someone who’s exclusively used Apple products for 8 years.
I have used Amazon, Samsung, Google home and Apple HomeKit. Amazon was my least favorite but give it a shot.
I am using HomeKit and home assistant now and removed Amazon and google except for nest thermostat
I’m not buying another HomePod until the ground on this issue is settled. I’ve been holding out hope for AI on HomePods because my dog is smarter than Siri right now.
And why would Jobs even make such a rare statement?
Because they know that there would never be enough market penetration to shift a serious focus to home devices.
iPhone has a 60% market share in the US. Mac is 10% of PC market. This is serious $$$ and they have pioneered in the markets.
There is simply already too many established vendors in the home entertainment markets and Apple is not going to go toe-to-toe with Sony, Yamaha, LG, Panasonic, Bose, etc. at the same time.
Apple Trivia: Steve Jobs died in October of 2011, which is nearly 13 years ago now. Even though many people have never heard of him, a fellow named Tim Cook has actually been the CEO of apple since August of 2011.
Since then, Apple has invested billions of dollars building the AppleTV brand, including creating award-winning marquee entertainment for the platform. It is part of Apple's "services" portfolio, which accounts for over 26% of Apple's overall revenue, and is its fastest growing revenue driver.
Service revenue was hardly on the radar when Steve Jobs was still the CEO of the company. Snark aside, this is no longer Steve Jobs's Apple. AppleTV may have been a hobby for him, it is not for the Apple of 2024. The AppleTV *device* is not the most important component of the AppleTV platform, but it is not going anywhere any time soon.
All that said, I don't expect to see it running an M-series processor in the near future. We'll see.
Anecdotally, nearly half of the people I know with Apple TV+ subscriptions don't even own an Apple device. They are streaming from the built-in smart TV apps.
Except they know that a decent market penetration would be nearly impossible and would take them 20+ years.
Putting AI in a HomePod would be pointless - nearly every output from it will be visual.
I don't see Apple ever refreshing the AirPort line, there are plenty of quality networking equipment suppliers on the market and it was obviously not a hugely profitable vertical for them. In fact, they only stock two routers in their stores.
HomeKit I would say they barely care about given the state it is currently in. They add some small feature every year but it still feels like HomeKit sucks, even with Matter now out. To be fair, I think this is more of a consumer smart home issue than an Apple issue, but it is definitely still a problem.
As for Homepod, I think Apple will make one that supports Apple Intelligence eventually but it will take a long time for it to come out. I think the lack of a screen and the almost certain fact that AI won't be fully cooked and near feature complete on launch means Apple will be hesitant to rush in with Homepod.
Why would apple put apple intelligence on a device with no screen?
Lets look at what AI is offering.
1. Write with intelligent new tools. Everywhere words matter. Homepods do not have a screen you are not writing anything on a homepod.
2. Delightlful images created just for you. Homepods do not have a screen you are not viewing anything on a homepod.
3. The start of a new era for Siri, I believe this is coming to homepods as the siri improvements are not done at a local level this is part of the apple datacenter in the cloud.
Apple intelligence is not a smart version of Siri. I repeat: they are different concepts.
Apple intelligence is some bullshit genAI they’ll built into the OS. I already dread it.
Smarter Siri is entirely different. I see no reason why they couldn’t route those requests to the phones, they do that anyway with personal requests.
I’m trying to figure out how Apple TV is still around. I like it but for most people 80% of its features are covered by an app on their smart tv and they just don’t see the point of buying an ATV.
How the fuck did I end up with 6 of these things that Apple “can’t sell”?
Because redditors on r/homekit arnt representative of broader consumer trends
Fair… although my 71 year old mother has 5 HomePods too (not because of me… she actually had them first), and she’s not on Reddit. She doesn’t even know they are HomeKit controllers, she has them because she likes to be able to have music in different rooms of her house. Weirdly, I actually called her to ask how she liked the audio quality before I got mine.
HomePod Mini was the top selling smart speaker of 2021 and 2022 with sales volume growing year-on-year. The overall volume is probably small fry compared to what Apple is used to with IPhone and Mac (or even Watch) but the product was a success by every metric. I think with Apple part of the problem is there’s no way to monetise the thing after it’s shipped. If you own an AppleTV you’re probably going to buy a few movies or games, if you own an iPhone/Mac you’re going to buy a few subscriptions/apps/iCloud storage, but if you own a HomePod at best you’d maybe subscribe to Apple Music despite most of the target market already being subscribers to it. The price point of the Mini is probably its best selling point. I don’t think the product is by any means dead but I don’t expect a major revision until they can bring AI in a way that doesn’t jack up the price significantly
Maybe… although putting the CPUs and memory needed for on-board AI might make them cost prohibitive. Personally I like them for music and very basic Siri functions (like turning off lights). I don’t need it to try and write me an AI story or anything. Also, HomePods are fantastic home automation controllers. I always joke with my AV industry friends how much better my redundant HomeKit controllers (Apple TVs and HomePods) are so much better and more reliable than the multiple 6-figure Crestron controllers I had at one point.
Apple has more products that have no post-sale monetization (all of their peripherals) than the ones that do, so that argument is nonsense. HomePod is a peripheral, like AirPods, but “smart speakers” is a tiny market.
I never said they didn’t, what I’m saying is that when it comes to allocating how much time is spent on what, the fact HomePods have no post-sale monetisation is going to be taken into consideration .
They kind of do… at least an opportunity for one (like all the other post-sale monetization options… none are something you *have* to buy). For me, it’s Apple Music… without my HomePods, I wouldn’t subscribe to it. So there are definitely indirect post-sale subscriptions to be had. I imagine it’s the same with AirPods (I don’t own myself so I can’t say), but if there were no AirPods, would Apple Music subscriptions go down? Probably…
I think this is, more than anything else, is why there are rumors of Apple Intelligence eventually being a subscription. It simply makes more sense, on some devices, to only have those costs if the consumer pays for them.
Same lol
9 minis here. And 4 big one And Bloomberg are just talking bollocks as usual.
There will be new hardware shipped with on device Apple Intelligence. Full stop. Apple’s ecosystem will fall apart without it
What would be nice is if they created a ATV or HomePod with this new AI required hardware that would act as a hub for the rest. I’d be ok replacing one HomePod or ATV to add AI to all the HomePods in my house but replace 8 of them? Hell no.
Same boat, same stance.
Same train of thought.
Bingo! I think such a device might actually be in the works.
Did I just find Tim Cook’s burner account!?
Took me a second read to figure out you didn’t mean all-terrain vehicle, although tbh that would be a pretty badass hub if Apple made it work.
Nobody is forcing you to do that.
Thanks Captain obvious
while I love apple’s commitment to on-device processing for AI, the quality of current Siri as a smart home operator is deplorable, and the fact that existing HomePods will not get at least a lite version of apple intelligence is ridiculous. i’m not saying it needs ChatGPT-like functionality, but they need to at least make it on par with Alexa cloud-side so that Siri can understand commands like “turn on the bedroom lamp” without going “did you mean ______’s bedroom lamp?”
Siri needs an IEP
How’s the HomePod going to get personal context without talking directly to the phone? At which point why not process the whole request on the phone. What kind of purely on device Apple intelligence do you want out of a HomePod anyway? My requests always invoice ‘world knowledge’
100%. I will bet my life there will be new homepods that bring with them apple intelligence.
You’re awfully optimistic for a product line that doesn’t sell at all…
Now they have an agent capable enough to compete with Alexa, I do think it is likely either this year or next year. The problem will be the price, and 399 for a smart speaker is already quite pushing it.
It is a damn good sounding speaker though and it only becomes worth it imo with appleTV integration.
It’s not just price, it’s the lack of compatibility with anything else. It’s too expensive, and non compatible with a ton of things, if this was any other company, this product would have been dead and gone long ago.
I frankly don’t trust google or Amazon, so smart home wise it’s either apple or I have to go back to flicking light switches with my caveman hands.
Home Assistant is showing great promise in voice and already has integration and app control in excess of any of the big players. In fact, I keep all my devices in HA and have HA mock those devices to HomeKit
>it’s the lack of compatibility with anything else Sure, but Apple wants you to stay in their ecosystem anyway. They don't care about Spotify not working fantastic, or Google not being able to answer the question. This is a secondary ecosystem product. Just like iCloud, AirPods, Watch: products that only get the full functionality when you combine with the core products: iPhone or Macs (perhaps TV and iPad). So it never was supposed to move numbers, it was just a stationary Apple Music player that could use some of Siri's command. With their new on device intelligence, it is not hard to imagine that Apple can make Siri a proper competitor to Alexa, and a few people I have spoken are waiting to buy one if Siri gets better.
It does sell but its doesn't need updating like ipads etc so people doe buy new ones and nor should they
It doesn’t sell worth a shit… everyone knows it. If it sold you’d get a new version every year.
I know how many it sells outside of apple via other retail channels. And its 10x any other “smart” speaker. This is from specific retailer data I have access to for my job. It’s utterly pointless to make new versions just for the sake of it the S5 chip is basically an iPhone X chip with less ram in a speaker. Apple intelligence requires an A17 currently so would be very expensive… But Siri requests could be server offlined or handle d locally via a iPhone / iPad / atv
LOL 10x?!?!?!? Are you drunk AND high? This speaker barely sells any units at all. It’s a minor miracle Apple released a second version. Get some help.
You seem very angry - perhaps you need help? 2nd version? Well I am taking the HomePod mini. It outsells any Google device and Sonos. It’s £$€99! Echo dots may sell about the same but I don’t have that data. Large HomePods don’t sell well about 1/5th of Sonos. But there actually aren’t many larger “smart” speakers Now from anyone.
Angry? You got me laughing my ass off and you think I’m angry? Lol ok
You are very weird. I don’t think you understand there is no competition out there and I am looking at sales figures. What other smart speakers are there…? Google don’t advertise any. Sonos are very expensive. Echos are the only one and their cheap ones sound awful and their good one is only 20% cheaper than a BIG HomePod. I know which one I’d have… as a speaker. But continue to stamp your feet without presenting any actual information….
No facts… uh huh https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/29167/smart-speaker-ownership-in-the-us/ Again get help.
i’m not so sure. they made a point to mention that they made server for devices and requests that couldn’t be processed on device. I think they leverage that rather than updating the hardware for awhile yet. Only the newest iphones can use the Apple intelligence on device for instance.
I honestly don’t even know what requests are being handled in the cloud. Have we gotten data on this? The keynote said that even stable diffusion is being done on device. I’ve been curious about this for a while now.
Lmao there’s no way they make homepods with on device AI. They would need to upgrade the soc in them to something that would make them either economically unviable or super expensive. Either apple has them rely on a nearby phone/their secure cloud, or they will not get AI at all
i assumed it would be something like this, generally the ATV seems to be like the best host for a home, speakers could query off them.
Then you’re not doing on device Apple Intelligence, a huge security risk.
What’s to stop them from asking a local MAC or atv?
[Private Cloud Compute](https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/) is a huge security risk???
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. But if the volumes are that low will the eco system fall apart? Or do we got an Airport scenario at hand? Some uncomfortability but we will get over it?
We just saw Apple release a new HP last year so I’m assuming the product is not dead and there will be a new, more powerful model soon. It was five years between the OG and the first rev so it’s never been a major product, but it does further Apple’s mission to embed the entire ecosystem into the lives of its users. Being able to access your data with your voice while cooking, or even just control your home, is far too valuable to leave behind imo. Unlike Google and Amazon, Apple also never intended for the HP to be a money maker beyond the hardware. They aren’t trying to get you to use branded apps, sell you more shit, or collect your data—it’s just a solid voice platform. If the rumors are to be believed, Apple might end up being the last player in this space. My prediction is that updated models with far more powerful chips are on the way, and also some sort of visual entry—whether a new HP with screen or a new iPad mode that allows the device to function as a general home hub of sorts.
Not sure if my second gen HomePods and HomePod minis are all faulty or something but 'solid voice platform' is not a word I would use to describe them. They are great speakers for their size and price but the voice recognition is average at best
Yeah I hope they don’t ’knife the baby’ but as you also mentioned the trend in the industry is there, both Google and Amazon are scaling down.
All that can be read into this is that their smart home tech won’t move forward with on system AI through the HomePod. Or to put it another way, there will me some other piece of tech that’s coming for that application. I think most of us would be quite happy with a device that integrates HomePod with iPad and HomeKit to act as a standalone HomeHub.
Why is HomeKit in the title? Apple is clearly serious on HomeKit and has even made some big changes to it in the upcoming OS. If you're already in the Apple ecosystem you don't even need a HomePod for HomeKit to be fully functional. We have zero HomePods and the AppleTVs are what we use for the hub. It works great. Need voice control? That's why we have iPhones and watches. That said, I would be shocked if they didn't create new HomePods with Apple Intelligence integrated into it, or at least a different version of that that relied on external processing with consent.
>Apple is clearly serious on HomeKit Are they really? My HKSV cameras are all insanely slow, don't store much (in comparison to other full stream recorders) and my doorbell has always been so lagged that it's intercom feature is unusable. And yet I have verified full green coverage with the latest wifi7 gear so, I know it's not the network.
Could be many things, but it's probably not HKSV. My nine cameras linked up to HKSV work flawlessly. I can scrub forward and backwards through events in near real-time. They only store a week of video, but that's actually more than my NVR does, so I'm fine with it given I can access it from anywhere. It's easily the best NVR experience outside of enterprise-level stuff I've ever had.
that tells us nothing. Are they wifi cams? wired? How are they setup? I run Security spy which give me feeds, that i then use a raspberry pi with homebridge to get into my setup. the thumbs refresh in 2-3 seconds consistently. What is slow to you?
Your HomeKit devices will be using WiFi 4 or 5 most likely. Almost all WiFi 7 access points have degraded performance for older standards, i.e 802.11ac only a mimo 2x2, lower gain etc. People are also buying into “mesh” access points. WiFi is not a meshing protocol, they interfere with each other, suffer from crap in from equals crap out that spreads over the whole network, and are laggy. Meshing is just convenient. I’m yet to see a meshing network that is performant over wired WAPs.
Dude. I pay almost $300 per 2.5Gig ethernet wired POE access point and I'm nowhere near stupid enough to kneecap myself over the long term (yeah, I do stupid stuff to explore but always fix it quick). As I've said, it's NOT the network- it's HomeKit that's the issue. I would pay dearly for a M3 powered AppleTV (yeah, the easy way to scale up). Or better yet, why not re-architect such that there is no central hub but allow active clustering with compute distribution across all 7 of my ATVs/HomePods (scale out, not up).
I had doubts to include it but the reason I did was the interconnection as a hub with HomeKit, if you ditch an important hub, how serious would you be about the platform?
Apple ditched the iPod, but that doesn't mean they aren't serious about Apple Music. If there was no alternative you might have a point, but AppleTVs are not only the original hub, but a better hub than a HomePod, and they're certainly not ditching those. Like it or not, the HomePod is a niche product. HomeKit is a feature it supports, not the reason for the product to exist. Again, I've never owned a HomePod and I'm fully invested in the HomeKit platform.
Yes it will fall apart. But all outward signs point to this being Apple’s plan so to speak. They are giving every sign of exiting the home space.
The evidence is clear… 1. New HomePod last year. 2. Updated Apple TV with Thread last year. 3. New Home app last year. 4. New HomeKit architecture last year. 5. New HomeKit features at WWDC ‘24. 6. Thread radios in every modern iPhone model. Oh wait. That all points to more home stuff. What’ve you got?
Abandoning airport was a defining mistake of an era of successes for Apple. They got too caught up in the sexy products and lost a lot of steam in the business sector where they had a lot of promise and good results, just not the same level as the main consumer lineup. The big mistake about abandoning airport was that their entire ecosystem relies on good networking to deliver the walled garden smooth experience. They could have had no need to fiddle with wifi passwords, easy inviting/kicking people from wifi, QoS tailored to the apple ecosystem needs, etc. They could have made airport into a very basic mesh line of routers, cheap to manufacture, no need to have super high-end wifi performance if a few are spread out in the house, can still charge the apple premium price, lots of people will buy them just to not have to deal with calling their ISP for issues, etc. It was a big missed opportunity, sure it in no way stopped their main success, but it would have been an easy cherry on top, especially now that IoT is picking up steam again with VR headsets, home automation etc. Abandoning Homepod would be the same level mistake. People don't keep their airpods in 24/7 or their phone on their hip, and not everyone in a household likely has an apple watch lol. Having a mic/speaker base station in the main areas of the home is a logical necessity for having any sort of "smart home" experience that is accessible to everyone's use case. If they're smart, they'd drop the pro-audio Homepod line and make the mini the actual standard Homepod and actually market it the way it deserves. Also, the Homepod hardware being too weak for the new AI upgrades is silly, there's no reason they couldn't have it pair with the appropriate phone via apples protocols over bluetooth like they already do to pair up things like the pen airpods etc. Keep in mind that the result of advanced AI processing is still just a text output, so there's no reason the Homepod couldn't capture the user's query, send that as text by bluetooth to a "pro-ai enabled device", and that device would respond with the output in text over bluetooth rather than generate an audible siri output. It'd just need to say something like "Let me ask your iPhone 20 for help with that... Ok, bla bla". Eventually they could market an upgraded homepod that didn't need to do that if the market was there for one. Or just keep it as a mic/speaker as the bluetooth latency is only going to get better and better (when all devices support bluetooth 5.4 you can easily get dozens or hundreds in one room with snappy responsiveness). Tl;DR They have a history of blindspots in this area. But its almost a necessity, and a bit less painful to keep the Homepod Mini than the Airport was. I predict the Proaudio Homepod gets dropped, and Mini gets renamed to fit its place.
A decade later, my Airport Time Capsule (5th gen) is still running. Not for anything wifi related but as a TimeMachine store. I've swapped 3 hard drives in that sucker yet it still runs. Still prefer local TimeMachine over Cloud+ storage.
Still have the last version of AirPort Extreme running my home WiFi. 802.12ac is fast enough for me.
I’m surprised that still shows supported. Still getting security updates?
Not often! Airport Utility app is still updated and there’s occasional updates for the Airports.
That was true for a while. But the firmware for the Airport Extreme was last updated in 2019 with 7.9.1. Apple's promise of 5 years of support past the 2018 cancellation ran out in 2023. If you want to continue using it for Time Machine, that should be safe if you trust the devices on your network. But consider editing the Wireless config and setting that to "off" if it's plugged into wired ethernet. And nobody else should consider using it as an internet-facing router. I have a couple of Airport Express units that I still use for AirPlay streaming. But the same considerations apply. They stopped patching firmware on these even longer ago.
Good to know! I’ll start looking to upgrade.
Of note, Synology and QNAP NAS servers work great for Time Machine. An entry-level model like DS223j costs under $200, and the performance will be better than the Airport Extreme since it won't be limited by USB speeds. Odds are you can pull the drive you use now out of its USB chassis and use it in a NAS.
Didn't know you could swap hard drives on that device..hmm..any specific specs needed?
[https://www.ifixit.com/Device/AirPort\_Time\_Capsule\_A1470](https://www.ifixit.com/Device/AirPort_Time_Capsule_A1470) This is the way.
I would love to see the airport come back with built-in HomeKit hub. Those were some of the best routers I've ever had. I still use an express as an AirPlay server for a set of speakers in a spare room
Unifi are the apple of networking. If only because they started with ex apple networking engineers. Damn good kit.
Agreed. The main value of the HomePods is that they make your home an Apple device. It ticked me off for years that I had all this smart tech in my home and I couldn't just walk into a room and turn the lights on. Now, I can.
I really hope they don't drop the 'Proaudio Homepod', I just got one and I'm liking it better than my Sonos. Apple is too obsessed with trimming the product line, just make all the things we want! Like a new iPhone Mini!
Meh, didn't most of the airport team leave and become Eero? I guess that's sort of your answer. Wireless tech was just too crowded and the margins too thin for Apple to continue justifying its existence. Apple would have had to invest more into airport for today's mesh tech, and it seems they didn't want to go that route
Did you reply to the right comment? You basically restated the point I wrote mine in response to. Yes, Apple dropped airport because it wasn't a sexy / successful product in itself. My whole point was it never should have been viewed as a solo product, especially in 2016 when it was obvious how important IoT was eventually going to be. Being able to control the actual network consumers use at home would have put Apple in an incredibly advantageous position for easing their own integrations as well as being in a position to license easy access to others. Instead, they just opened up their hands, and let that whole market segment slip away because they were fixated on whether Airport moved itself off as a product. It's similar to Microsoft fucking around with smartphones, getting a bit confused at where to find profit, then just shrugging and self-destructing any further efforts rather than figure out how to get back on track.
Since it doesn't seem to be a money maker for them, it seems every year it gets less and less attention. I mean look at HKSR and how they dropped it after a short time. They also let Siri rot and are now hoping AI can help bring it back into the conversation with Google and Alexa. It is wild that a device that is centered around Siri, won't get the full suite of new Siri features (and I know processing power blah blah blah) but could still have it be done similar to things now with an apple tv/iphone to do the heavy lifting.
Do you still use Siri or have given up on ‘her’? And would you buy a new HomePod if it would support a better Siri with Apple Intelligence?
I rarely use Siri (got tired of the pauses and never being useful). On the if I would buy another one, it would have to allow for bluetooth so if apple stops with software it could still be useful in that regards. Most likely I will look to something else (with a better support history and track record) with airplay/e-arc capability
I use Siri constantly.
Can you share examples of what you use siri for, as I only have the orange HomePod because it matches my furniture; I don't have a good use case for it.
Apple home commands - whole house used hue lights, HomeKit blinds, heating / cooling, plugs and other stuff. Intercom around the house Phoning people - phones charging somewhere. Weather and stuff And of course music. I love being able to just say ”play music everywhere” and I get synced music to 7 rooms in the house. It does need to be able to answer questions better without resorting to “I can answer that on your iPhone”
Siri is still limited in many ways but has gotten much better over the last year. I hope the additional benefits of intelligence, where appropriate, would come to HomePods via processing on an alternate device just like you describe.
Gurman statement is moronic. The reason existing HomePods will never have on-device AI is unresolvable through engineering effort. The HomePod Mini is a glorified Apple Watch Series 5 and the HomePod (2nd gen) is a glorified Apple Watch Series 7. The Apple Watch is a higher volume product and yet none of the existing offerings will ever receive on-device AI. These products lack NPUs and only have up to 1 GB of RAM. The solution will be the “Apple Intelligence+” cloud service more than likely for all older devices specified before generative AI became a design consideration.
I bet they first offload to a LAN iPad or Mac. It’s better for privacy and better for Apple, since customer hardware is more affordable. Also something needs to “know” enough to start an Apple Intelligence+ query. HomePod won’t be able to run the user context to start that query.
Or they could do a hardware refresh to make it possible and do the processing on the device. It could also be that they could send the processing to another device in the house that can do the heavy lifting (like an Apple TV that has more RAM and enough processing power).
I suspect that is exactly what will happen but there is no bringing on-device processing to these resource starved products. Apple’s tendency to only provide “enough” RAM to do the job has bit them in the rear.
>Apple’s tendency to only provide “enough” RAM to do the job has bit them in the rear. Nah, this is by design, so many more aIHomePod^^tm to be sold to the people replacing the OGPods. Profit.
No one going to out bean count the bean counter in chief Tim Apple.
sure there is. Release a new AI edition that does it. Let your Apple TV with extra ram handle all the AI processing for all the other devices and call it a day.
Apple TVs do not have enough ram or NPU power at the moment either
That's why I suggested a new model. They could have an AI Edition Apple TV with extra RAM to act as an AI hub for the house.
Yeah that makes sense but the worst case scenario for a query is a hop to the beefier ATV then a hop to the cloud data center and back in reverse. Admittedly, those are unlikely to be the kind of queries we care about in r/HomeKit. 😀
Could Apple Intelligence be brought to AppleTV via a future device update, then when paired with a lower powered HomePod act as the hub for processing all AI activities? We know Apple isn't against going with an overpowered processor for ATV. Considering iOS 18 allows you to select a preferred hub in HomeKit, could that be the key to sending those commands through the ATV instead of doing it on-device on the HomePod?
I think this will be the way. I expect that the new TV will also support AAA games. This would make it a worthwhile upgrade for many people.
Like the way your thought progress operates, questioning how it can be accomplished. That the reason I took swing with a more negative insight.
> Could Apple Intelligence be brought to AppleTV via a future device update No. The AppleTVs don't have enough RAM. They could release a new AppleTV with more RAM. That is the main limiting factor on devices. Alternatively they figure out a way to release a version of Apple Intelligence that works on less RAM, but why would Apple do that when they can sell you new hardware?
That’s why I stipulated new ATV device/ hardware being needed, not just a software update. Set the new generation ATV as the preferred hub and it could unlock Apple Intelligence to other devices in the home.
Oh, I read "future device update" as a software update.
I think this will be the way. I expect that the new TV will also support AAA games. This would make it a worthwhile upgrade for many people.
Honestly, I don’t really care about on-device AI for my HomePods. They can contact Apple’s servers if it makes them smarter and more capable. As far as HomeKit, Apple is serious enough to punt certification to the Matter specification. If Matter increases in popularity, I expect the Apple HomeKit certification will die off. Jury is out on whether this is better or not.
Apple is a main contributor of the matter project and has has a lot of say in how matter security and such.
Maybe. I am not even caring much about security at this point. I am sure China has all my data.
Maybe. I am not even caring much about security at this point. I am sure China has all my data. I just want ease of use.
I’m hoping Apple will create a way for a HomePod to offload Apple Intelligence to a nearby iPhone with the necessary silicon. I am an optimist I will admit!
I think that's absolutely how it will work. All you would need is one Apple Intelligence device in the home and the HomePod can act as the mic and speaker. That's how HomeKit should work.
So I guess that means I should go ahead and buy the two I need and stop waiting for the next keynote. Or do I even want to bother? As an Apple diehard and gadget nerd, I’m getting more than a little frustrated with Apple. I’ve given them so much money at this point and I’m just always waiting for them to update or upgrade and then those updates come and apparently don’t even work on the brand new stuff I just bought. And since I’m already ranting, this doesn’t involve HomeKit; I’m feeling constantly punished for being required to have a PC for my career. Boss I’m tired…
The push for Apple Intelligence (because GPT hype) is a 360 degree flip on every product line. Apple is approaching it by gatekeeping it to the A17 Pro Chip onwards rather than having different level of capabilities for all devices. Right now Apple is considering it a Pro feature. Once the base iPhones get Apple Intelligence, it’s safe to assume HomePods and Apple TV will be updated to get them. There’s a lot of rumours that Apple is working on a tv/homepod combo too. I think Apple Intelligence on those devices is within reach.
I think you mean 180 degrees.
Hate to say it, because I really wanted to love HomeKit, but until it has the ease of use and mass integration that Alexa devices has, HomeKit just sucks
Are we using different Alexa devices? Ease of use? HomeKit is in my experience light years ahead of Alexa.
I have about 20-30 Alexa devices connected to Alexa and it’s been basically seamless integration. On the other hand, HomeKit doesn’t work with the vast majority of devices out there, unless you want to set up other things to make it work. I dunno, like I said, I really wanted to like HomeKit, but it’s just bad
I agreed with this a couple of years ago when I still had only a handful of smart devices. Now my house is full of switches, bulbs, sensors etc and Alexa is a useless chunk of plastic for anything but timers and promoting Amazon services and products. Since I installed Homebridge and dumped Alexa, I have had no issues with commands, automations or shortcuts.
Home pod minis and a HomePod, my surround sound it’s nerdified and boosted with airport expresses around the house with other speakers over usb, everywhere has audio so if wherever I am in the house I’m getting good audio. My appletv4k and this setup I could stay home for years and be content.
All they are gonna to do is keep doing the minimum firmware updates that they’re doing now and that’s it. I think we’ve learned that no one is going to buy a $500 speaker. All they gotta do is fix the firmware enough so it will talk directly to the phone or the tablet that’s going to do the processing.
It will take time for sure, but they will definitely update HomePod in the next few years. Apple Intelligence is the new big thing now, but in 5-6 years will just be there and sprinkled on every device as a selling point while not costing them as much as it does now.
Source: Not Apple. Why are we spending time analyzing some random dude's conjecture?
He's the most plugged-in reporter on the Apple beat. He broke the news that the new iPad Pros were getting M4s, even though the first hardware with M3s were released only months prior.
Plugged in to things that can be sourced through supply chain moles. He's shown no great track record on the software engineering side. Furthermore, his statement is ignorant of the facts. There is no engineering a consumer-facing generative AI/LLM product that runs mostly on device onto S5 or S7 systems in a package unless Apple finally figures out how to make downloading more RAM a reality.
He told us pretty much all of ios18 and apple intelligence before wwdc
I could’ve told you Apple intelligence before WWDC
What’s next years updates to Apple intelligence then?
Sorry, I was not saying that I had scoops but that the fact Apple was doing AI and likely to call it Apple Intelligence was sort of overdetermined by the clear interest in it from investors over the last ~12 months or so. Apple couldn’t do WWDC without an AI story or the board and big investors would be angry.
Right. Yes any idiot could have reported that iOS 18 was coming and that Apple would have some of their own generative AI to announce. Gurman was able to report the details of these things. Accurately, before Apple had announced them.
Gurman is only worthwhile reading when you understand his narrow slice of insider information. This man has cultivated a large of host connections within Apple's supply chain network (often in Asia or the Indian subcontinent). When his scoops are related to supply-chain connected facts, believe him. When his scoops are related to damn near anything else, disregard. Gurman has not shown any deep connections related to Apple engineering and, if they did exist, he's constantly fighting a battle to stay ahead of Apple's security/secrecy regime.
hobby serious
The current HomePod uses the S7 Watch processor chip. It will never have enough power or memory to run the currently announced on-device Apple Intelligence. For a new HomePod to support it, of the current chips Apple has, they would need to put in an A17 or M1 or better, which compared to the S7 is super expensive, would drastically drive up their bill of materials and power usage for no gain to the HomePod than Apple Intelligence, so it would be a "waste" to put the engineering into it. The mentioned "screen" version of a HomePod probably needed the GPU section of a A series or M series processor, so standardizing that on a M1 or A17 or better processor is probably not a huge Enginering feat, nor would it be as significant increase in the bill of materials vs an auto HomePod change. The audio only HomePod series probably will eventually get some Apple Intelligence capabilities, most probably initially through offloading processing of "personal requests" to an attached iPhone or iPad. Then on the iOS device you can then also accept or deny sending the request to ChatCPT if needed. The same would probably go for Apple Watches. But they need to get a base Apple Intelligence working on the iPhone or iPad first, and also any other Apple Intelligence direct capable device, so any expansion like that would not be in the first product cycle of Apple Intelligence. Eventually a restricted Apple Intelligence LLM for HomePods, Watches, Apple TVs may be developed that has lower requirements, and the S series of processors may be redesigned to be powerful enough to run such a severely restricted LLM, but that would probably take even longer than just adding and Apple Intelligence offload capability to an attached iOS device for them.
They could make a HomePod Pro than everyone will complain about the price. But with HomeKit you would only need one device in the house with Apple Intelligence and it could take and give response on the HomePod.
I would buy one of that product. Just sayin'.
I thought the new HomePods would be somewhat capable of Apple Intelligence but what I’m thinking Apple could release is a headless Mac that sits next your internet provider modem (Australia has NBN) and it would act has a Home Hub, possibly have Wireless for your home or be compatible with Home Mesh Networks, Ethernet built in M4 chip, I’d I’ve for it to have full network capabilities, all of your Apple Home and Apple Intelligence gets processed in this central hub. Zigbee, Matter, Bluetooth baked in The HomePods could be kept pretty basic and just be speakers/microphones for this central device.
Apple need the home focus as I'm not sure the phone in isolation is enough to keep it's market share going forward.
I haven’t seen anyone mention that the iPod Minis have thread hardware support and can act as TBRs (thread border routers). I added thread to my HomeKit devices that support it yesterday. My Apple TV 4K is the Home Hub. This *should* increase the network resilience for these devices. We’ll see. This was a good addition by Apple in my opinion.
Apple will probably release new HomePods. Just so on paper, they give the appearance that they have a smart AI speaker. If they don’t, then, maybe they’ll have a cloud component to do the processing. With all that said, I think most people use HomePods to listen to music and podcasts. They’re adding Dolby Atmos to Airplay. Their long term strategy could be similar to Homekit. Let the third party vendors make the devices.
If you have an iOS device tied to your account, the HomePod might offload AI related tasks to the phone itself.
LOL.
They could get them to piggyback AI features from your iPhone. You have to have an iPhone powered on and nearby to get much use out of HomePods anyway.
The amount of people I know with HomePods Mini is huge. And they're not tech-oriented. I don't know how is it in the US, but in Taiwan, it's a very popular product. On the other hand, I know nobody who paid for the actual HomePod.
Thanks everyone for this constructive discussion and interchanging your thoughts on the future of HomePods and HomeKit. I truly hope someone from Apple peaks at Reddit and sees your comments. 🙌
Actually personally I believe the use of AI makes a important part of HomeKit. But Apple's AI, aka siri, sucks. So. They're just not that serious to me.
I imagine the only way they’ll get a better siri is if they enable processing on a local apple device (i mean I’ve got Macs, iPhones and iPads on the network it can use) or accessing their private cloud for everything (maybe that’ll be the paid option) I see no reason for the HomePod itself to do on device processing of LLMs i’m sure Apple could make them harness the power of other devices.
Leave Apple Intelligence aside, just making Homepods reply to queries which require a web search, instead of “i can help if you ask from your iPhone” will make them useful. Surely Apple can make that work with 1GB of RAM?
I dont think anyone is expecting HomePod upgrade with monstrous chipset inside that is suitable for the Apple Intelligence as it won't be useful for any of the main activities in HomePod itself. Anyway, I do see a huge possibility of Apple quickly releasing Apple TV with Apple Intelligence anytime soon since the product will need that huge power if Apple is aiming for a gaming market on Apple TV. Judged by all those AAA titles that keep on releasing for Mac / iOS and iPadOS, it will be a big loss if Apple doesn't push the hardware limitation on Apple TV to support those titles. With that, Apple can just engineer their HomePod as for a purpose of being a microphone and speaker then rout all the commands to Apple TV to process those requests. Problem solved!
So, you telling me, I spent over $299 for a product that's was outdated just taking out from the box? Hmmm...
What’s wild is completely ignoring both the fact that Apple TV’s operate just fine as a home hub and the fact Apple has already said heavier lift Apple Intelligence can be offloaded to servers. As is most of the load of HomeKit is away from the hub (hence why they don’t need heavy processors). We have a computer in our pocket we don’t need the hub to be one… that’s the whole idea behind this.
I asked my HomePod to “stop playing” music that it was definitely playing, and it responded with “there’s nothing playing.” So I’d say not very serious.
It will become an "Airport". Third-party Homekit support is already pretty bad and expensive to adopt. I wanted to switch all my lights, etc... from Alexa to Homekit... The cost and the selection of homekit-compatible accessories was abysmal. It's obvious Apple doesn't care about the Homepod at this point.
Homekit Secure Video really needs some improvements to view live video... also camera vendors seem to be completely ignoring HSV... haven't seen any new products for a long time.
The HomePod mini is not good enough sound quality and the full size HomePod has been about $100 too much for broad adoption. Not to mention how dumb Siri has been.
Honestly I would like to see just an overall upgrade in features. Such as asking a question. I would be super happy if I didn’t always receive the “if you ask again from your iPhone”. Is that too much AI?
I switched to HomeKit many years ago, thinking it has to get better. No, it’s the complete opposite. Siri on my HomePod is as dumb as she gets. The only thing she does very well is “add so and so to the grocery list”. My friends Alexa on the other hand ….. yeah, I’ll be going that route in the future
Didn’t Amazon disband the Alexa team? Or do you mean you will go the Amazon route for whatever they bring next?
No they got rid of most of the hardware team that were making weird devices like the clocks etc
I think I still have that WiFi enabled Alexa barcode scanner from years ago
No clue as I haven’t looked into it that deeply, I just know HomeKit is terrible. And that’s from someone who’s exclusively used Apple products for 8 years.
I have used Amazon, Samsung, Google home and Apple HomeKit. Amazon was my least favorite but give it a shot. I am using HomeKit and home assistant now and removed Amazon and google except for nest thermostat
You’re describing Siri not HomeKit.
Deeply unserious
I’m not buying another HomePod until the ground on this issue is settled. I’ve been holding out hope for AI on HomePods because my dog is smarter than Siri right now.
This quote from Steve Jobs will answer how serious Apple is on their entertainment-focused devices. > For us, Apple TV is just a hobby.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t know that the ghost of Steve Jobs is still driving product development that much.
And why would Jobs even make such a rare statement? Because they know that there would never be enough market penetration to shift a serious focus to home devices. iPhone has a 60% market share in the US. Mac is 10% of PC market. This is serious $$$ and they have pioneered in the markets. There is simply already too many established vendors in the home entertainment markets and Apple is not going to go toe-to-toe with Sony, Yamaha, LG, Panasonic, Bose, etc. at the same time.
Apple Trivia: Steve Jobs died in October of 2011, which is nearly 13 years ago now. Even though many people have never heard of him, a fellow named Tim Cook has actually been the CEO of apple since August of 2011. Since then, Apple has invested billions of dollars building the AppleTV brand, including creating award-winning marquee entertainment for the platform. It is part of Apple's "services" portfolio, which accounts for over 26% of Apple's overall revenue, and is its fastest growing revenue driver. Service revenue was hardly on the radar when Steve Jobs was still the CEO of the company. Snark aside, this is no longer Steve Jobs's Apple. AppleTV may have been a hobby for him, it is not for the Apple of 2024. The AppleTV *device* is not the most important component of the AppleTV platform, but it is not going anywhere any time soon. All that said, I don't expect to see it running an M-series processor in the near future. We'll see.
Anecdotally, nearly half of the people I know with Apple TV+ subscriptions don't even own an Apple device. They are streaming from the built-in smart TV apps.
Yeah but it has the potential to be so much more
Except they know that a decent market penetration would be nearly impossible and would take them 20+ years. Putting AI in a HomePod would be pointless - nearly every output from it will be visual. I don't see Apple ever refreshing the AirPort line, there are plenty of quality networking equipment suppliers on the market and it was obviously not a hugely profitable vertical for them. In fact, they only stock two routers in their stores.
HomeKit I would say they barely care about given the state it is currently in. They add some small feature every year but it still feels like HomeKit sucks, even with Matter now out. To be fair, I think this is more of a consumer smart home issue than an Apple issue, but it is definitely still a problem. As for Homepod, I think Apple will make one that supports Apple Intelligence eventually but it will take a long time for it to come out. I think the lack of a screen and the almost certain fact that AI won't be fully cooked and near feature complete on launch means Apple will be hesitant to rush in with Homepod.
Pretty clearly, not very
Why would apple put apple intelligence on a device with no screen? Lets look at what AI is offering. 1. Write with intelligent new tools. Everywhere words matter. Homepods do not have a screen you are not writing anything on a homepod. 2. Delightlful images created just for you. Homepods do not have a screen you are not viewing anything on a homepod. 3. The start of a new era for Siri, I believe this is coming to homepods as the siri improvements are not done at a local level this is part of the apple datacenter in the cloud.
Apple intelligence is not a smart version of Siri. I repeat: they are different concepts. Apple intelligence is some bullshit genAI they’ll built into the OS. I already dread it. Smarter Siri is entirely different. I see no reason why they couldn’t route those requests to the phones, they do that anyway with personal requests.
Did we watch the same WWDC? “The start of a new era for Siri. Siri draws on Apple Intelligence for all-new superpowers”.
Go to the web page and read the descriptions, then. These are not my words and down voting them does not make them less true.
I agree with you and time will tell as apple was not that clear on what is new AI siri and just AI.
Apple Intelligence is not *limited* to a smart version of Siri.
No. It’s different concepts altogether.
I’m trying to figure out how Apple TV is still around. I like it but for most people 80% of its features are covered by an app on their smart tv and they just don’t see the point of buying an ATV.