Originally scheduled for December
United States, the HomePod, has beenpostponed until next year
for reasons not cited by the Cupertino company.
While waiting to have a release date, the American newspaper Bloomberg
has just published a report which highlights thegestation difficile
from the Apple speakerover the past five years, a project
who wasabandoned and revived several times.
We thus learn that the Apple speaker was originally a hobby or
leisure project started by a group of sound engineers
working on the Mac. Their desire was to create a speaker better than the
competition (Bose, JBL, Harman Kardon) and which is unanimously approved by
audiophiles.
One of the first prototypes was almost 1 meter high, which made it
put in the category of living room speakers and not a speaker
portable.
Two years later, this project obtained its first code name
"B238" and was officially adopted by the division
accessories from Apple with the aim of making it a connected speaker and
intelligent.
While in 2014 Apple engineers were working on a prototype of the
Homepod, the team in charge of the project wastaken by surprise by the exit
by Echo, Amazon's connected speaker and its voice assistant
Alexa.
Over the next two years Echo became a hit on the
American market thanks in particular to Alexa's ability to control objects
home automation and respond to many other requests, for its part Apple does not
didn't yet know how to differentiate its product from Amazon's.
Unlike Echo which is an independent device communicating with the
cloud, the Homepod mustgo through apps on iPhonepour
perform requests that are limited to playing Apple Music, sending
messages, task management, and note-taking.
Apple instead focused onthe qualitative aspect of the soundproduct
by the Homepod to differentiate itself from other smart speakers like
Google Home or Echo.
In the meantime, the Homepod is missing a very busy end-of-year holiday period.
important, which will benefit competing speakers, nothing more
ensures that better sound can trump smart capabilities
by Echo.
Deputy editor-in-chief, also known under the pseudonym Teza. Former video games journalist, who has been immersed in tech and Apple products since his very first iPhone 3GS in 2009. He has since worked for several American tech sites and now for iPhon.fr. Incidentally YouTuber and Apple product specialist on the MobileAddict channel. To contact me: maxime[a]iphon.fr
