HomePod is scheduled to be released by the end of the year or until next year, this should be a great opportunity for Apple to seize the smart speaker market.
In a recent Bloomberg story that revealed Apple's HomePod development process, in fact, HomePod took more than five years from development to production - earliest, HomePod was just an amateur project for Apple employees and experienced multiple reflows Created, it has become what we see today.
Apple staff amateur project, a prototype of a meter high
Nowadays, the Apple HomePod is a humble little guy about 6.8 inches tall and 5.6 inches in diameter with black and white colors, with a grid on the body Apparently no apple LOGO.
HomePod was not designed in the first place, and near Apple Cupertino headquarters, there is an office building called Valley Green 1, one of which is filled with a variety of HomePod prototypes. In the past few years developing HomePod, Apple's designers have done various attempts.
There is a prototype that looks like a tablet with a mesh screen in front of it; there's a prototype one meter tall, five times the size of the HomePod now, with dozens of speakers built in; and Apple also considers HomePod Beats label, and even designed a colorful body for HomePod.
In the end, all of these ideas were abandoned: From the beginning, HomePod had only one core philosophy - perfect Beam forming to create an immersive 3D audio experience.
According to Apple's official website, HomePod equipped with seven "beam-shaped" tweeter, can accurately detect the indoor environment.Through this technology, no matter where the user indoors, HomePod can receive user voice commands, And render the best sound quality.
Recently released Sonos One, Google Home Max and other smart speaker products are also equipped with a similar technology, Amazon Echo is the use of this technology for radio, so that users no matter where the room can be issued to Echo voice commands.
The concept of HomePod came as early as in iPhone 5 in 2012. A group of Mac audio engineers wanted to build a fever-class product that rivals big-name audio makers such as Bose, JBL and Harman Carton - In technology companies such as Google, companies encourage employees to do some part-time work as long as you can promise to do their job.
Amazon main hit smart, apple return music
In the first two years of HomePod's development, the project was repeatedly shuttered and restarted several times until 2014. HomePod was formally established until 2014 under Apple Accessories, codenamed "B238", where AirPods was born .
This year, HomePod officially launched this project, Amazon suddenly released Amazon Echo.This voice assistant with intelligent speaker HomePod team was surprised.However, Apple engineers disassemble Echo after that this product is not superior sound quality, HomePod can do better.
What Apple Engineers did not realize was that Amazon Echo was not a musical product at all, but a product of Amazon's search for AR technology.
According to a Bloomberg report, the hardware division at Amazon was simultaneously developing a smartphone, the Fire Phone, and another AR product. Unfortunately, the AR product was abortive and the project team was reorganized to include another A product team - and later Amazon Echo, an employee at the Amazon hardware department said:
Jeff (Amazon CEO) has a vision, he hopes the product can take care of all aspects of the user's shopping process.
It is also because of Jeff Bezos's obsession, voice assistant Alexa's performance will be so outstanding, become a big selling point of Amazon Echo.
When Amazon Echo went public, Apple's own voice assistant Siri was released for more than three years, no longer as useless as it was when it first went public in 2011, but the Siri team was not deeply involved in the development of HomePod.
In fact, when you let HomePod open a third-party application by voice, the request is not sent to the cloud, but to the iPhone.
At this stage, HomePod more like an iPhone accessories.Developers can not develop applications for HomePod, only through the iPhone App to Adapt HomePod.Apple's HomePod interface is very strict control, currently only supports the message, reminder And notes three functions.
In contrast, HomePod's opponents are much smarter.
Amazon Echo has long formed a separate ecosystem that supports more than 7,000 apps and you can practice yoga with Echo Shopping, Taxi, Takeaway and even voice commands Amazon also opens Alexa Voice Assistant to other hardware vendors, Sonos, Lenovo and other companies have launched a smart speaker equipped with Alexa products.
Google's three smart speaker products are equipped with Google Assistant, you can search, buy tickets, control smart home products; even the domestic Xiaomi AI speakers, Lynx X1 are compatible with their products.
Obviously, HomePod positioning is not a personal voice assistant, but the high-end wireless speakers.People's agency informed sources were informed that Apple plans to ship 4 million HomePod in 2018. This is an ambitious figure, you know, listed more than three years Amazon Echo, the cumulative sales of only 15 million units.
This is not Apple's first attempt at speaker products, as early as in 2006, Apple introduced an iPod-compatible stereo iPod iPod HiFi, the same price as HomePod is $ 349. Unfortunately, the sales are not satisfactory, a year and a half After a hasty end.
HomePod is not so much the field of intelligent speaker followers, it is better that HomePod is a return to Apple's music products.As for HomePod whether blockbuster, only to wait until 2018 to see the outcome.