Apple unveils an Amazon Echo competitor

An early glimpse at updates to iPhone and Mac software has become a tradition at Apple’s annual conference for app developers, which begins Monday in San Jose, California.

Apple was expected to announce a smart speaker, a market that Amazon – with its sleeper hit, the Echo – and the later Google Home, powered by Assistant – now dominate, given them an integral place in users’ lives.

“We really believe it is going to take your home music experience to the next level”, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said as he unveiled it.

Unlike those other smart speakers, Apple is positioning the HomePod primarily as a way to listen to and discover new songs and artists.

Of course, premium pricing is Apple’s typical strategy, and the company attempts to justify this premium by saying that the combined cost of a Wi-Fi speaker and a smart speaker can easily run $400 to $700.

If you want a good laugh, try digging through old internet posts to see the scorching criticism of Apple releases that went on to be huge successes.

Apple’s HomePod will not come cheap, with a debuting price of $349 (£270 / AU$465) when it releases later in December in the US, UK and Australia.

HomePod will support HomeKit, Apple’s smart home platform, but HomeKit has been pretty underwhelming, even three years after introducing the application programming interface (API).

Siri serves as the brains for HomePod. Apple has Siri baked into it, which explains why everyone was calling it the Apple Siri Speaker ahead of today’s launch event.

While there’s a chance Apple could reveal more colors for the HomePod between now and December, nothing was said to imply that. Having said that, there is a significant change with this version of the operating system with the now mandatory use of the Apple File System, APFS. Although Apple announced an expanded version of Siri for iOS at the conference, it seems the HomePod offers a smaller selection of commands more relevant to the situation. However, they were soon joined in the race by Google Home.

The Echo, released in 2015, and Google Home, released past year, were the first entrants in a promising market. You’ll also find an Apple-designed 4-inch woofer, 6 microphone array, and Apple’s A8 chip to power it all. Starting in the fall, Apple Watch compatible equipment will start coming to gyms from companies like Cybex, Schwinn and Matrix.

Apple’s new macOS, High Sierra, was described as “fully baked” by Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, to lots of whoops and clapping.

From a business perspective for Apple, this another opportunity to keep users within its closed network of products.

Created to work with an Apple Music subscription for access to more than 40 million songs, HomePod provides deep knowledge of personal music preferences and tastes, and helps users discover new music. Once again, Apple has illustrated how they prefer to take a step back and assess where the market is moving before throwing their virtual hat in the ring and carving out their own niche.

Using the New AirPLay 2 wireless standard, multiple HomePods can also be used for Sonos-style multi-room audio.

In addition, Apple says that all updated notebooks feature new SSD storage modules which are “up to 50% faster” than previous models.