TBH, sales will be good one way or another. It's just gonna take time for people to adopt. This product will NOT be a flop.

The Look and feel is top notch. The glass on top is sort of frosted, but is smooth to the touch. When I first reviewed the home pod, I noted that it was light. I was comparing it with the heft of my KEF speakers. This thing, as small as it is, weighs 5 lbs. Which is quite dense, and heavy for its size. The Fabric that wraps around it is sturdy, reinforced from inside, and feels very good to the touch.

The Frequency response, Directivity, and ability to correct for the room all go to show that the HomePod is a speaker for the masses. While many of you in this subreddit would be very comfortable doing measurements, and room treatment, there is no denying that most users won’t go through that much trouble, and for those users the HomePod is perfect.

Great sound aside, there are some serious caveats about the HomePod. First of all, because of the onboard DSP, you must feed it digital files. So analog input from something like a Phono is out, unless your Phono Preamp has a digital output which can then be fed to the HomePods in realtime via airplay, possibly through a computer. But you cannot give the HomePod analog audio, as the DSP which does all the room correction requires digital input.

Speaking of inputs, you have one choice: AirPlay. which means, unless you’re steeped in the apple ecosystem, it’s really hard to recommend this thing. If you are, it’s a no brainer, whether you’re an audiophile or not. If you have an existing sound system that’s far beyond the capabilities of a HomePod (say, an Atmos setup) then grab a few for the other rooms around the house (Kitchen, bedroom, etc). It’s also a great replacement for a small 2-speaker bookshelf system that sits atop your desk in the study, for example. When this tiny unobtrusive speakers sound so good, and are so versatile, grabbing a few of these to scatter around the house so you can enjoy some great audio in other rooms isn’t a bad move — provided you’re already part of the Apple Ecosystem.

AirPlay is nice. It never dropped out during any of my testing, on either speaker, and provides 16bit 44.1Khz lossless. However, my biggest gripe is hard to get past: There are no ports on the back, no alternative inputs. You must use AirPlay with HomePod. Sure, it’s lossless, but if you’re an android or Windows user, theres no guarantee it’ll work reliably, even if you use something like AirParrot (which is a engineered AirPlay app). I understand that’s deeply frustrating for some users.

As a product, the HomePod is also held back by Siri. Almost every review has complained about this, and they’re all right to do so. I’m hoping we see massive improvements to Siri this year at WWDC 2018. There is some great hardware at play, too. What’s truly impressive is that Siri can hear you if you speak in a normal voice, even if the HomePod is playing at full volume. I couldn’t even hear myself say “Hey Siri” over the music, but those directional microphones are really good at picking it up. Even whispers from across the room while I was facing AWAY from the HomePod were flawlessly picked up. The microphones are scary good — I just hope Apple improves Siri to match. Until then, you can turn just her off, if you don’t care for voice assistants at all.

Stereo is coming in a future update. I cannot wait to see how two HomePods stack up. I may or may not do measurements in the future of such a feature.

It even applies to things like electronic safes.

-=)x(.:Beau:.)x(=-

Ask Bill Gates that. 20 years ago called and wants its deposition tactics back.

Whoever is saying "so they are almost monopolies, what is the big deal?". Well, it is a big deal. The government in the US is starting to pay more and more attention. They don't want to hurt business in general, but they also do not want these near-monopolies to rule the US and much less the planet.

Mozilla is making this statement to educate the people. As much as I hated history as a youngster, the cliche of history repeating itself is very real. Go see how the public eventually is guaranteed to get screwed when there is a monopoly. Basic econ 101 states that monopolies will eventually charge more for crappier services because there is no competition. Smaller businesses are snuffed out, so those guys hate monopolies. Employees are taken advantage of, think Walmart employing so many in the US and the poor wages. Consumers get less choice, worse service, and higher prices, think one ISP in your town.

Here is where I fed my ram a ghost pepper.

He could not taste the capsashin but was having digestive problems for the next week. It was hilarious.

Do you really believe this?

What Zuckerberg will likely be "curbing" and what Facebook tends to ban:

- claims that racism is not the primary cause of poverty and criminality in minority communities
- pointing out that gender is not a social construct
- using a non-preferred pronoun with a transgendered person
- rude or critical statements about Hillary Clinton (if you use the words she/her, it's automatically misogynist hate speech)
- speech critical of illegal immigrants or advocating the expulsion of illegal immigrants
- speech critical or disapproving of Islam
- anything containing derogatory words for progressive protected classes (but not derogatory words for straight white males)

Of course, the net effect will be that Facebook turns even more into a progressive bubble. And while that may be comforting to progressives, it makes it hard for them to understand why their favorite political candidates or policies don't catch on among Americans in general.