The HomePod is Apple's first completely new gadget since the Apple Watch.
It came out on Friday.
I picked mine up then and I've been listening to it ever since.
Setup was pretty easy.
Take it out of the box.
There are no cords.
Nothing to plug in except power.
So you just plug it into power and then you unlock an iPhone or an iPad close to it.
The first time you get this little prompt there and it just walks you through a few
steps.
Once it's setup you can control it then from any other iOS device or Mac that you've got
using your same Apple ID.
It's both an AirPlay device, so you can use AirPlay to basically have music or any sound
coming from your Mac or any iOS device and it can also can play stuff on its own.
You've basically got two modes for the HomePod.
One is as an AirPlay device where you're streaming music from either a Mac or an iOS device.
The other is when it's playing music on its own.
Let's look at AirPlay first.
So on the Mac the only real way to control it is either to go to your speaker icon here
and select the HomePod as your AirPlay device.
Your audio out device.
I've got my HomePod setup and called Office.
So if I were to select it here then any sound that I play from my Mac, whether it's a YouTube
video I'm watching on the web or music I'm playing or anything I'm doing, it's going
to go out to the HomePod.
Now, it doesn't work that great.
This is just AirPlay One.
AirPlay Two comes out in a few weeks and hopefully it will improve it.
The main problem is there's a lag, a delay, in the music.
So if you're trying to watch a video you've got a fraction of a second delay.
Hopefully AirPlay Two will take care of that.
Until then it's not kind of ideal to do that.
But listening to music is no problem because you don't notice the delay.
There's no visual cue to show you that the music is like a fraction of a second behind
what you're computer is playing.
Now the other way to do it is inside of iTunes itself.
You have the ability to select your output and you can select office here for my HomePod.
It even shows you a little icon of a HomePod and just iTunes now playing music out of the
HomePod.
On your iPhone you can also use it as an AirPlay device.
Anywhere you have a choice of an AirPlay output you can choose your HomePod.
So, for instance, here for music I can go and change to Office and use it in the Music
app, in this case, or in any other app that has AirPlay which is just about everything.
So that's really nice to be able to do.
It works on the iPhone and the iPad instantly.
Any app really that has sound is going to be able to play through the HomePod.
So if you're using the HomePod on its own you just say the magic words and you ask Siri
to play some music.
Now, you're really going to need Apple Music to be able to do that.
It really doesn't work with anything else.
It does work with iTunes Match so if you have iTunes Match you can ask it to play any music
that you have.
But it's really meant to work with an Apple Music subscription.
Now once you have it playing there's no visual feedback to what's playing.
The screen at the top really just has plus and minus buttons for volume and when you're
talking to Siri you can see the colorful orb in the middle listening.
But it doesn't show you what song is playing.
You can actually do that on your iPhone.
There' s no way to do it on the Mac but on the iPhone or iPad you can bring up Control
Center and you've got these controls here.
Notice you've got the control at the top for what's playing on your iPhone.
You have these other controls for every AirPlay device it can find.
So there's some of my Apple TV's and there's my HomePod called Office and it shows what's
playing.
You can switch to any one of these by just tapping on it.
So you just switch to the HomePod and now I can see what's playing even if it was Siri
that initiated the music playing not my iPhone itself.
It still gives me that feedback and allows me to control the HomePod a little bit.
So that's kind of nice.
I wish there was a way to do that on the Mac but it's nice that at least there's a way
to do that in iOS.
Now there are some settings for the HomePod.
The way to get to those is you have to be using an iOS device and you have to do to
the Home app.
The Home app is usually used for home care.
You know controlling lights and the thermostat and everything in your house.
But even if you don't use it for that you're still going to find the HomePod there.
You can select the HomePod and it will actually start playing or stop playing just like turning
on and off a light.
If you tap and hold it, it will being up this screen here and you've got a details button
and you can bring up the details.
Here you can change the name of the HomePod and the room that it's in.
You can do a bunch of different things.
You can also work with some of the settings.
So, for instance, you can turn on some of the music type settings like whether Apple
Music Explicit Contents allowed.
Whether it ties into your listening history with Apple Music.
You can turn on or off Hey Siri.
You can see I've turned it off here so that it doesn't respond like it would have just
now.
Touch and Hold which allows you to touch the screen on the top of the HomePod.
All sorts of different things to customize it.
Even accessibility features and things like that.
So you've got some settings you can control.
You need an iOS device to do that.
But it's good to know that those are there.
Other than that it does sound great like everybody else is saying.
It has a great woofer in it.
You really can feel the music.
Siri responds great.
You don't have to raise your voice to talk to Siri.
Even if the music is really loud you can speak at a normal level and it will hear you through
the music.
You can ask Siri normal things like the weather or what movies are playing nearby and set
reminders and timers and things like that.