Together. Feels Right. Even Though. You’re Crazy. For This. Home. POD. Remember. Two Is Better Than One. Just Playing (Dreams). It’s a Party. Everybody’s Coming To My House. Even You. Come As You Are. Fruit Machine. No Matter What You’re Told. We’re Going To Be Friends. 398. The Sonos Two bundle allows users to have a stereo pair or have music in two rooms.
Then there’s the Microsoft Cortana powered Harman Kardon Invoke speaker that arrived in October 2017. Like Sonos, Harman Kardon is well established in the speaker world. Incidentally, Harman Kardon is a subsidiary of Samsung and Samsung has its own smart speaker plans - the Samsung Bixby powered smart speaker is due to arrive later this year.
It’s not the first time that Apple has launched a product in an already established market. The iPod became hugely successful despite the fact that there were already MP3 players around, nor was the iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone. But those devices did the job of being an MP3 player or a smartphone better than the rest.
But is the HomePod a good smart speaker and does it do the job of being a smart speaker better than the already established competition, and the many new players joining that market, We haven’t been able to look at all the speakers we’ve mentioned above, but we have looked at the big three - Apple’s HomePod, the Amazon Echo, and Google Home.
We’ll start by looking at what people expect from smart speakers. It’s probably fair to say that we expect a lot more than sound. This new category of gadgets might look like speakers, but they are also voice-activated, intelligent digital assistants that help us manage our lives. They alert us to appointments on our calendars, set alarm, update us on the weather and the news, connect us to the gadgets in our homes, and give us access to almost anything via the internet.
They just happen to also be speakers that can access huge libraries of music (if you pay for a subscription). The way you interact with the speaker is dependent on the digital assistant software used by the speaker. The digital assistant is essentially the operating system - it’s how you interface with the speaker. So this round up of smart speakers is really a case of comparing Apple’s Siri to Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant, and that’s where we will start. When choosing a new speaker it’s no longer a question of how good the music sounds.
The voice assistant, be it Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, is essentially the operating system. It is the way that you interact with the technology. So it needs to understand you and be able to grant your wishes. For many, the choice of smart speaker will be based on whether it works with the same voice assistant as their phone or tablet. If you already own an iPhone, iPad or a Mac you will likely be familiar with Apple’s Siri.
Because all Apple products are closely integrated, you would probably expect Siri on the HomePod to work in a similar way to how it works on the iPhone. To a point this is true, but there is a lot that Siri on the HomePod can’t do, or doesn’t do as well as it does on an iPhone. Siri on the HomePod integrates well with Apple Music, but beyond that there are limitations.
You may consider Amazon’s Echo to be a good option if you already have an Amazon tablet and a Prime subscription as you will be able to take advantage of Amazon Prime Music. You may already be familiar with Alexa as its available as an app on smartphones - Android and iPhones - so you could already be using it there. You can download the Amazon Alexa app for iPhone here.
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