hello everyone thanks for tuning in again you can see a white Apple HomePod
sitting right in front of me I finally broke down went out and bought one of
these devices so what we're going to do today get it set up tell you a little
bit about the device and obviously do a little bit of comparison here with some
of its main competitor so let's get going
alright now first up obviously there's a massive massive differential here in
terms of price when you're comparing these devices so don't get me wrong even
though the these are competitors this is in a whole different class and it's
expected to be in a whole different class of speaker the other thing that
we're expecting is complete and utter integration with the Apple ecosystem of
products so I have an Apple iPhone we also have an Apple watch here in the
home and of course Apple TV and all of those other services you're going to be
looking for Apple music working all of those different things basically to be
working with this Apple HomePod so that's really the big reason you go out
and you get one of these and ultimately I think speaker quality here is tops in
the industry and I'm going to show you a little bit of that here so let's get
going now like I said this is a white and you can just see the device visually
there's really nothing in terms of features around the whole device there's
the power cord which is about six feet long and on top there's the feature I
mean there's really nothing here to look at on the bottom you do have the Apple
logo and that's really the only feature that you have on the entire device so
very clean very nice looking device from Apple now really quickly in terms of a
comparison of size you can see here next to its two main competitors that the
device is relatively height wise a little taller and obviously a lot wider
now the big question is you know when we're combining or we're comparing to
the size of other devices I'm going to move the Google Home here quite far
there is the echo sub right next to it so you can see there is a fairly
significant differential still there the echo sub is much larger so overall if
you're looking at one speaker or one speaker system you can see that the
Apple HomePod is still singularity going to be a lot smaller than a pair of
Echoes or Echo Plus' and an Echo Sub so let's get this plugged in and get it
working now what I'll tell you just from that sound that played there that is a
immense speaker here I could feel it all throughout the desk and this thing is
barely on now as the device gets set up you can see right there there's a
spinning light this tells you it's basically getting ready to set up here
and I have my Apple iPhone and I'm basically just going to keep it near to
this device now the official Apple instructions just say you just need to
unlock your iPhone and basically have it near the Apple HomePod so I'm going to
try that here for a couple of minutes and then I'm going to move into the
Apple HomeKit application and I know there I can start the process if
it doesn't just show up here on my phone alright so if you're like me the process
didn't automatically start up here on my Apple iPhone so I am going to go into
the home application once inside of there I'm going to give it another
second here and then I'm going to hit add accessory so now that I'm inside the
Apple HomePod or the HomeKit application here I'm in my home that
I've already set up and if you don't have one it's a simple process of just
naming the home but now I'm going to hit add accessory and inside of there you
may get a little screen that shows up I'm not anymore so I'm going to go into
don't have a code or can't scan and as I do that you're noticing the HomePod
right there now you are likely to get a screen just showing up as soon as you
get this little flashing light here on top going that little light
basically says that the HomePod is ready if you don't get that screen come
into the home application like I've done and you can always go through this
manual method so I'm going to tap on HomePod and then I get the screen now
this is actually what you're supposed to get and I'm going to tap on setup now
I'm setting it up in this new our home that I've created and I'm going to hit
continue where is the device is my next question and I'm going to place this in
the living room in the end so I'm going to choose that and now do I want to
enable personal requests so this is the part where your Apple account basically
that being connected to this device is going to give you access to things like
messages phone calls and of course your calendars and your reminders so those
are big things for a lot of people and I'm going to enable my personal request
next up is just hitting continue on Siri and ad agreeing to terms and conditions
now I'm going to use my cloud account you'll notice the little icon there for
Siri and for Apple music now that's the big thing I think a lot of people are
looking for when they buy a HomePod so I'm going to tap on transfer settings no
as it's just setting up my HomePod with all my settings this is very very
similar to what Apple normally does what they're set up it's basically a
walkthrough of their screens there's nothing really complicated here and you
know even for me I had to factory reset this device because of how I purchased
it so you know the worst thing that you can have happen is basically that I'm
Siri welcome to HomePod you can't tell but I'm waving to get my attention say
hey Siri let's try it say hey Siri what can you do hey Siri what can you do I
can do lots of things like turn on the lights give you a news update and tell
you about the weather you try say hey Siri play some music hey
Siri play some music one moment okay here's a personal radio station built
just for you
so there you go now obviously this is all set up I'm going to turn down the
music there now I just want to show you guys how this looks on the top of the
device and I think this is another thing that Apple does so well they go ahead
and they create great visual experiences already this device is amazing but when
I go ahead and I say hey Siri hmm so you can see that little multicolored
basically that little multicolored movement going on there that's very
similar to what you get from the Siri application basically that icon there
and it's fitting right in line with what we see from Siri all the time so you'll
need to update the software on this HomePod before I can help with personal
requests so you just heard it there actually my Apple HomePod said
basically before I can do things like send messages and make phone calls you
need to go through an update so top left in the application you actually can tap
on the home there and you'll notice speakers is now there now that you have
this connected to your home application you can now go through the software
update process now it's going to go ahead and check for updates and then I
go ahead and I install that and I'm able to do those personal requests so you can
see iOS 12.0 has shown up that wasn't on this device before I got it so now I've
got to go ahead download and install that update alright now I've gone ahead
and I've updated my Apple HomePod so let's go ahead and go through all of the
different requests basically that you're going to want to do as you get this
device set up so we're gonna start obviously with the biggest thing that
anyone who is going to buy an Apple HomePod is looking for and that is the music
capability so I already have an iTunes or Apple music account rather connected
I've paid for that so you will have to do that or this is
going to work now as soon as you've done that and it's on that right account then
you can go ahead and you can ask Siri to go and play some music so hey Siri play
dear Rouge sure here's a personalized station of dear Rouge
now you can see right there and you can see that I can pause it here so you can
see that I can control from the top of this device I can also tap to restart
the music I know you can't hear that but I can tap to start tap to stop and also
the plus and the minus like I showed you earlier show up on the top of the device
I can also see in my Apple Home the application here I can play and I can
pause from there now of course once I've started playing like with everything I
can go in to the different settings here for my HomePod now once I'm in the
settings I can change what room it's in I can go through the different music and
podcast related settings so I can change whether or not I want to kind of keep
the playing history things like that and then I can also adjust for series so I
can change that it's not going to listen for as I go through things here so I can
change that I can also use a touch and hold to get it to wake up and I can also
change whether or not I want that light on the top to show up so a number of
different capabilities here and down at the bottom you can see your version some
of the accessibility features are not going to go through all of that here
today there are also alarms that I can set with this device and obviously you
can do that by voice as well so now let's go ahead and let's get through
some of those personal requests so one of the first things is sending a message
so hey Siri send a message to Elizabeth what do you want to say just a test your
message to Elizabeth says just a test ready to send it yes I'll send your
message what do I have on my calendar today you have two appointments at 4:00
p.m. Google Home versus echo plus second generation versus echo plus first
generation and at 5:00 p.m. appointment so there you go those are my two
appointments that I have today and I can go ahead and I can add another
appointment so hey Siri add an appointment to put out the garbage at 6
p.m. I scheduled your appointment for today from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. the
appointment is called put out the garbage let me know if you want to make
any changes no thank you okay I won't update the event
so now just inside of my calendar here you can see it already and that was
real-time there's no editing there I put it in through through the Apple HomePod
here and it shown up in my calendar instantaneously on my iPhone so that's
pretty fantastic in terms of a timeline now on top of that of course we can make
phone calls and this is one of the biggest features now what you had to
make sure you did before was those personal results you had to make sure
that you did that and you also have to make sure that this is updated to at
least iOS 12 point Oh so hey Siri make a phone call who do you want to call
Elizabeth calling now when you're done just say hey Siri hang up now it's shown
up on my phone here but it is showing a little green light here on the top you
have reached the Siri hang up so there you go I did
successfully make a phone call apparently my wife doesn't want to talk
to me right now we'll get her at a later date on the
channel but anyways so there you go I've already gone ahead
I've sent a message to her I phoned her and all of my contacts were instantly
uploaded I've gone ahead and I've created calendar entries and also had
those read back to me so all of that capability is there right out of the box
and of course Apple music as long as you've gone ahead and you've connected
your account all right well there you go you've seen tons of functionality here
from your Apple HomePod it's all set up in your home and
you have access to that home application and of course the next time on the
channel here as we work through this device I'm going to show you how to
integrate that with home control in a number of different systems so I'm going
to show you Phillips you I'm going to show you the IKEA trad free I'm going to
show you all of the integration you can do between this HomePod and your home
control elements or your different smart home products so we'll see everyone next
time and thanks for watching