Sweet sounds from HomePod

The Apple home comes a step closer with the company’s first Siri speaker

With so many rumours flying before WWDC, it was no surprise to see Apple launching a Sirienabled speaker. As is so often the case, Apple has let other tech firms go first before entering the speaker fray with what it hopes is a superior product. In this case, Apple is going after both Sonos and Amazon; Sonos on audio quality, Amazon Echo on voicecontrolled smarts.

Apple said it wanted to achieve three things with the HomePod: rock the house, make it spatially aware, and make it fun to use. In order to achieve that first goal, Apple has kitted the speaker out with a four-inch upward-facing subwoofer and an array of seven beam-formed tweeters, each with its own driver. Controlling it all is the A8 chip found in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Siri-ous music

As for being spatially aware, the HomePod detects the space it’s occupying and uses this to adjust its audio output and send it in the optimal direction. Moreover, it can detect and connect to other HomePod speakers automatically, and then balance the sound between the two.

You control the HomePod with Siri, and Apple has kitted it out with six microphones to detect your voice, whether you’re standing near the device or across the room. Apple says its echo cancellation technology means that Siri can hear you even over loud music.

Naturally, HomePod will link up with Apple Music, granting you access to around 40 million songs from 2 million artists. Tell Siri to play something different and it will search Apple Music’s library to play a track from its catalogue. According to Apple, it’s the perfect ‘musicologist’.

Apple has let other firms go first before entering the speaker fray