Apple’s SVP of Global Marketing Phil Schiller said Sonos aren’t smart speakers and Amazon Echos aren’t good speakers. So Apple wants to combine the best of both worlds. It’s a smart marketing strategy. HomePod is shipping later this year — it’s not quite ready for prime time.
The device is a pill-shaped circular speaker. It has a seven beam-forming tweeter array. It has a custom-made woofer and an Apple A8 chip. It has multi-channel echo cancellation, real-time acoustic modeling and more.
Of course, the speaker works well with Apple Music. You can talk to the speaker to play anything in your Apple Music library and more. You can say “play more songs like that,” or “I like this song.”
You also can ask other Siri queries, such as news headlines, the weather, sports scores and more. And if you have HomeKit-enabled devices, you can control your lights, garage door, air conditioning and more using this speaker.
