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after months of delays and tens of millions of devices shipped by their

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competitors apple's late entrant to the home smart speaker game has finally

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arrived but can it possibly compete with the google home max a speaker twice its

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size armed with the almighty google assistant

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yes but it's also a little more complicated

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than that

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cablemod pro series cables use extra thick wires for a fuller more robust

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look merged terminals on the component side of each cable have also been

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eliminated for a cleaner build check them out below

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despite some people's observations that it looks kind of like a giant toilet

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paper roll subjectively i would still say that the homepod wins on the design

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front the seamless 3d mesh fabric looks great from any angle though i would

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recommend washing your hands before you touch it the capacitive glass top is an

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elegant haptic and visual interface displaying volume buttons when you're

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playing music and a beautiful listening animation when you're talking to siri

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and we even found the physical interface more pleasing to use

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tapping or holding volume buttons feels more intuitive than the slide gesture

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you have to do on the google home max and it's nice to be able to hail siri

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without using your voice a feature that google removed from all of its home

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devices wrong now the homepod is small

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but don't let that fool you it's much heavier than it looks at five and a half

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pounds and this is thanks to the incredible amount of hardware that apple

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packed inside it it's got a four inch subwoofer at the top

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six microphones around the middle and seven tweeters at the bottom

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and not just regular tweeters these are really cool for one thing they are horn

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loaded which allows them to more efficiently turn mechanical energy into

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acoustic energy increasing their effective radiating area and making them

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sound bigger than they are and for another their diaphragms are balanced

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mode radiators meaning that they can produce high frequencies by rippling or

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low frequencies by moving the diaphragm in and out the old-fashioned way so if

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the homepod senses that the base demands will make the subwoofer distort it will

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actually offload work to the tweeters and

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there is more to this technology than just

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using good speakers both homepod and

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google home max use special low frequency calibration microphones to

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give themselves spatial awareness this functionality does allow these devices

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to map the room around them and then apply automatic base correction to

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increase clarity now apple said in their keynote that the

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homepod would direct certain musical assets like the main vocals to the

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center of the room and ambient sounds and backup vocals to the side which is

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really good news because otherwise an omnidirectional wired speaker would not

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be ideal a lot of the time

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so i guess it's all of that stuff combined that made this thing take so

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darn long and also what allow the homepod to avoid

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distortion even when it's turned way up so the rumors are true it sounds really

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really good especially for its size

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but what about the elephant in the room the google home max

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from our evaluation it actually sounded just as good but

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with a different sound signature while the homepod has pronounced mids and

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highs that are very forward max offers a

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wider sound stage with deeper chest bumping bass thanks no doubt to its dual

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four and a half inch high excursion subwoofers although this is interesting

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while max gets significantly louder before it starts to compromise on sound

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quality at lower volumes the homepod can

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actually deliver surprisingly strong and pleasing bass compared to the max due we

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think to its ability to transfer sound down into the surface it's resting on

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okay then so they both sound great but

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these aren't just speakers they're smart speakers which brings us to the next

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question we have to answer which one is smarter

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while both assistants offer the usual fare weather stock prices

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news we were disappointed to learn that

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unlike her competitors sirion homepod

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doesn't search the web so while she can rely on native API

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hooks to answer questions like who is the president of france the answer i

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found is emmanuel macron at this time she stumbles on novel

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queries like how long is the average ferret i can't

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get the answer to that on home pod ferret typically has a length of 15

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inches it's very gebo of you siri

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sad although your mileage may vary since some people have reported it working but

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while that's a clear disadvantage today the two devices are about equal when it

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comes to response time latency and their ability to hear your commands over loud

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music and homepod does have one awesome

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feature that google home doesn't have yet siri

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send a text message what do you want to say

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with that said homepod does not have voice recognition profiles like google

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home does so in theory anyone could ask

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your homepod to read out your last text message whenever they want i found your

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most recent message from edsel hey fire buns

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last night was amazing speaking of privacy while both devices allow you to

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turn off the microphones max is the only one that lets you do it with a physical

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switch so which one should you buy then

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we actually think the answer is pretty simple and comes down to whether or not

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you use apple music see with a google

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home or amazon echo you can use all the major music platforms spotify google

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play music pandora iheartradio you pretty much name it including apple

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music and the same goes for the homepod

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so why did we bring that up ah because it's how you can interact with

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those services that makes all the difference here

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with google or amazon solution you get

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full voice control with everything but

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apple music which is limited to next song and pause with the google assistant

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and even then only if you are casting your entire device via bluetooth

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by contrast the homepod does feature voice control with apple music

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but only apple music so if you're using spotify the only way to control it even

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if you have an iphone will be through the buttons on your device

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and there's some more general inflexibility like we've come to

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expect from apple unlike the max the homepod does not include a three and a

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half millimeter jack for third party speakers and it requires an iOS 11

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device for its initial setup that's right Android users and even

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those of you with older iOS devices you will need to go buy an ipod touch on

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craigslist to get your home homepod working

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well mostly working which brings us then to the features

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that apple promised that aren't out yet and won't be until airplay 2 launches

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later on this year one the ability to connect multiple home pods in stereo and

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two multi-room playback from airplay 2

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devices be they homepods or apple tvs or whatever

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max can do both of these things today

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so then that answer wasn't so simple after all but it's okay i have a summary

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if you don't have any wooden tables and

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you're already deep into apple's ecosystem with an apple music

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subscription and a bunch of money sunk into itunes

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homepod is a beautiful piece of hardware and a fantastic speaker

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but if you are almost literally

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anybody else you're probably better off with a competitive offering like a

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google home max and alexa enabled sonos

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or even some regular dumb speakers plugged into an echo dot

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hey siri tell me a joke

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well this whole experience wasn't very funny at all so this has been quite the

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project so far yeah i know hey siri read out my last text message i

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found your most recent message from edsel hey fire buns last night was

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