Apple’s much-rumored speaker is en route.
Apple today announced its speaker, the HomePod a wireless speaker powered by Apple’s A8 chip with Siri integration that’s just under 7 inches tall.
Phil Schiller, the company’s VP of Worldwide Marketing, offered the following comment:
“HomePod packs powerful speaker technology, Siri intelligence and wireless access to the entire Apple Music library into a beautiful speaker that is less than 7 inches tall, can rock most any room with distortion free music and be a helpful assistant around your home.”
The HomePod combines high quality music playback speakers and smart speaker systems with an interesting feature that can, reportedly, intelligently detect the space it is in with “spatial awareness,” which the company said provides better quality audio playback than its competitors.
The HomePod features an upward-facing woofer as well as an array of seven beam-forming tweeters. It has a six-microphone array that can detect commands even when music is playing loudly. When there are two HomePods in a room, they will automatically detect each other and optimize music playback complementarily. Setting up a new HomePod works similarly to AirPods set up–simply holding an iPhone near a HomePod will pair it.
Users can join a HomePod with an Apple Music subscription and play back playlists, radio stations and additional content found on Apple Music. Siri commands will let users direct the HomePod to play music, add songs to playlists, and even answer music trivia questions.
Siri integration with the HomePod will include support for News, Messages, Podcasts, Stocks, Weather, Reminders, alarms, timers, sports and traffic. HomePod will also function as a HomeKit hub and let users control lights, blinds, locks, and other accessories by voice, even when users are away from home.
The HomePod will launch in December for $349 and will be available in white and space gray in the US, UK, and Australia to start.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via MacRumors