To Understand HomePod Appeal, Stick It in Your Ear

I have serious misgivings about whether the HomePod itself will be a success. Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy tweets that unaided awareness of the product, which is the ability for consumers to recall the name of a product in a survey without being offered multiple choices, is very low, which could mean low sales at launch.Still, the HomePod fits perfectly within Apples strategy. The best product to predict HomePods success is not the much less expensive Amazon and Google devices (Googles Max speaker notwithstanding). Its Apples own AirPods.AirPods are low on features compared to the competition. They have no fitness monitoring sensors. They do not employ touch controls. Its not quite clear what role they play in advancing Apples Siri ambitions. Even with those concerns, they were sold out leading up to the 2017 holiday season. Why? Ecosystem.AirPods follow Apples basic philosophy of It just works. The first time you pop the lid on your AirPods, nearby iOS devices start managing the heavy lifting of pairing, cross-device synchronization, battery monitoring, etc. They work instantly and seamlessly with your iPhone, your iPad, your MacBook.If you dont think this is a big deal, congratulations! You are more comfortable with technology than most consumers. Most consumers are daunted by simple Bluetooth pairing, especially on tiny devices like wireless earbuds with few or no obvious buttons and instruction. Synchronize Bluetooth earbuds with multiple devices? No chance most consumers would feel confident in their ability to pull off that feat. I doubt many could even tell you how to check the battery level on these devices that often need separate apps and downloads for fine-tuned control.Enter HomePod. I havent spent time with the device, but from Apples history I can surmise that it will work similarly. Your AppleTV will recognize your HomePod, as will your iPhone and all of your other Apple devices nearby.Is that a big deal for Consumers? Absolutely not, thats why it is important. To contrast, the Amazon Alexa app and the Alexa Skills market are complex and uncurated. The connections to my various mobile devices are tenuous at best, nonexistent more often. Apple encourages these connections to happen seamlessly in the background, and bakes the process into the system. Though lacking in features, the HomePod will simply work, while Amazon and Google devices often simply do not, at least not easily, and not without loading more apps onto your phone.

It would be a mistake to judge the success of Apples smart speaker, and henceforth Apples expanding living-room-takeover, based on the first week of sales. Reviews will not be entirely positive, as reviewers try to objectively compare Apples basic, intuitive speaker with feature-rich competitors from Amazon and Google, or sonically superior offerings from Sonos.That $350 price point is far too high. If the device sells out, it is likely due to a lack of supply, not a glut of interest. I could imagine Apple winning decisively with a smaller device in the $179 $249 price range. Alternatively, often Apple improves the features and value on their devices instead of dropping prices, though there have been notable exceptions.This is not the Apple Hi-Fi. That ill-fated device debuted with supposed audiophile credentials at the strikingly similar $349 price point. However, it was ungainly and unattractive. At a time when buyers were regularly picking up Bose SoundDock speakers in the same price range, the Apple Hi-Fi was doomed because it did not fit with Apples style ethos efficient portability. Also, a $350 speaker dock launched 12 years ago, before the iPhone even existed, landed in a much different market than HomePod inhabits.

Apples best chance for success will be to convince buyers of HomePods value, and that does not lie in its smart assistant, nor its audio fidelity, no matter how Apple positions it. Google and Amazon must sell their speakers for much less because smart assistants, while convenient and genuinely useful, are not yet perceived as valuable. With its cross-device synchronization features and simple ecosystem support, it will be much easier for new buyers to imagine fitting HomePod into their lives and their living rooms.

Philip Berne has been a technology reviewer and reporter since 2000, writing for publications including eTown.com, MacNN, PCMag, and Slashgear. Then there was that time he ran product reviews for Samsung Mobile for 6.5 years

·RELATED QUESTION

Can I use an Apple Homepod as a speaker and microphone for WebEx, Skype voice, etc?

Unfortunately no. It is not possible to use the HomePod's built-in microphone for recording audio to a Mac. You cannot Bluetooth pair the HomePod to a Mac in order to use it as a combined speaker/microphone either.Other products exists that does what you're looking for. For example I'm using the Logitech Group speaker/microphone combination for web conferences. However, it is quite a different product from the HomePod