HomePod

The HomePod was arguably one of the more divisive products Apple has launched in recent years, next to the Mac Pros, of course. It was terribly late to the smart speaker game and launched with a small set of features compared to the likes of the Amazon Echo or Google Home (now Nest Home). Still, the audio quality was regarded as superb and the quality experience was exactly what Apple was known for. Some, however, have started to wonder if the HomePod was a one-off product but recent changes to the operating system it's running may put those fears to rest.

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For a company loathe to admit it may have made a mistake, you can imagine Apple is pretty eager to redeem the HomePod name. The Siri-powered smart speaker was meant to be Cupertino's retort to Amazon's Echo and Google's Home, not to mention a new foundation in the smart home. Problem is, things didn't turn out quite that way.

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Apple's 2020 iPhone line-up could include four new smartphones, a big 5G upgrade, and an infusion of iPad Pro styling and tech, a new report claims, ahead of the expected launch in September. The new 5G iPhones are also said to be accompanied by important accessories, one seeing Apple's entry into a new market and another updating an under-appreciated current product.

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Despite the lockdowns, quarantines, and shelter-in-place orders, work still has to be done. This is especially true for physical products that have a limited window of opportunity to get out the door. That's harder to do when you very secretive company like Apple that is known for keeping things under tight wraps, or at least as much as they can. The global pandemic has forced Apple to yield some ground and, in doing so, may have also yielded some clues to its upcoming products.

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Just when you thought the nightmares of broken iOS 13 updates are finally over, along comes iOS 13.2. Admittedly, the set of owners affected by a bug that can brick HomePods may be significantly smaller than those that beset iPhone users in the past few weeks. Still, it's a rather stressful experience for owners causing Apple to actually pull out the update before quickly replacing it with iOS 13.2.1 just two days later.

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iOS 13 has been one of Apple's rougher rollouts in quite a while but it seems that things might be settling down a bit now that most showstopper bugs have been addressed. It has definitely not delayed Apple's iOS release schedule, with iOS 13.2 now rolling out to iPhones, iPads, and HomePods. But while the update has good news for almost everyone, owners of Apple's first and so far only smart speaker might want to hold off if they can.

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Apple packed a lot of announcements into its iPhone reveal event yesterday, but one device that didn't get a shoutout is the AirPod. Despite that, it seems that Apple still has big plans for the speaker throughout the rest of the year. In all, there are three incoming features for the AirPod, and one in particular is something users have been asking for since the HomePod launched.

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Apple has cut the price of HomePod, its Siri-powered smart speaker, dropping it below $300. Launched in February last year, HomePod was Apple's response to smart speaker rivals like Google Home and Amazon Echo, as well as more traditional multi-room speakers from Sonos.

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There's no denying that Apple was terribly late to the smart speaker market. Despite marketing it less as a smart speaker and more as a premium audio accessory with smarts, the HomePod has and always will be compared to the likes of the Amazon Echo and the Google Home. And while it might seem that Apple has put HomePod development on the back burner, a recently surfaced patent could give future generation smart speakers an edge over the competition when it comes to hand gestures, face recognition, and even simple visual feedback.

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The latest data from CIRP suggests that Amazon's Echo device active installed user base towers over that of the competition. It's never really been a contest, since the group started recording data, back in December of 2017. Amazon's Echo devices with Alexa started with more than double the smart speaker installed base of their closest competitor in Google with Google Home. Each successive quarter showed a similar pattern, with Amazon in the very, very clear lead and Google Home sitting at around 1/3 the base Amazon commands.

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Apple has just rolled out version 12.1.3 of iOS and while the numbering does suggest it’s just a maintenance update, it’s one that many users might want to apply ASAP. No, it doesn’t add any new feature or activates a hidden one. Instead, it fixes bugs users have been experiencing across almost all of Apple’s products except Macs that have been giving them no small amount of heartache in the past weeks since iOS 12.1.2.

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Ever since the Apple HomePod first launched, Apple Music subscribers with an individual plan have been able to stream music to it while streaming something different to an iOS device. This functionality was particularly handy, as it meant that you could listen to music on an iPhone while out and about as someone else used the same Apple ID to stream different music on Apple's smart speaker at home. As it turns out, that functionality wasn't intended by Apple.

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