HomeTech.fm - Episode 343 - Goodbye, Siri in a Can

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

This week on HomeTech: The Original Apple Homepod is discontinued, Sonos audio in autos, Google wants to watch you sleep, and of course, the Pick of the Week...Fan of the show? Want to support our efforts? Please consider becoming a Patron!Show NotesHomeTech HeadlinesOriginal HomePod Discontinued – 512 PixelsApple researching modular light switches to expand HomeKit | AppleInsiderSonos partners with Audi to bring its audio tech to carsGoogle's latest Nest Hub smart display detects motion to track your sleep | EngadgetWith a new Nest Hub, Google wants an invite into your bedroom - Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysisPick of the WeekZoom Escaper lets you sabotage your own meetings with audio problems, crying babies, and more

This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, March 19th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson, and welcome to the Home Tech Podcast. A podcast all about all aspects of home technology and home automation. This week, we've got to dive into a couple of home tech headlines and some sad news from Apple. Of course, we've got a nice pick of the week. First, I do want to quickly chat about, remind everyone, and I guess if you're listening to the podcast, you probably have missed out on it, but we're doing our first Home Tech Talk tomorrow, which is Thursday. So today is Wednesday, which is St. Paddy's Day.

So happy St. Paddy's Day. Tomorrow is Thursday. And on Thursday, around 3 p.m. Eastern, we'll have our first Home Tech Talk. We're going to be talking about video distribution. We're going to talk about a couple of product launches that happened this week, a couple of Q&A, but mostly around video distribution versus streaming. What's the relevance of a video distribution system right now in streaming? What are the advantages or disadvantages of having something like that? I think overall, it'll be a pretty good conversation. Also talking about what products work, what don't, that kind of thing. So excited to have that, finally sit down and have that conversation among peers. I still have a video distribution system in my house. And it's funny. It's like, I've got a one by four. How many TVs do I have? Three TVs.

I guess I have a one by four technically, but it's like an IP video distribution system. I don't actually need what I have, but I have it. Um, and there's a couple of reasons it's convenient for me and I'll, I'll save that for the conversation tomorrow. So, um, with that, let's get started with the, uh, home tech headlines. Oh boy. Oh boy. So I'm got to play, got to play the sad music here. All right. gotta play the sad music here alright so dearly beloved we're gathered here this day to mourn the loss of our dear friend

in a can, Siri in a can and you played music from a single source of music but you did it well not well enough for me to ascribe to that garbage Apple Music app because I wasn't going to use that app at all. And Spotify has the app experience nailed a lot more.

AirPlay 2 is buggy, and God forbid Apple ever let you do a stereo pair of one of the best Apple speakers ever made on your Mac computer. God forbid they ever let you do that. That would be right out wrong. They never gave you a proper iOS app. They lumped you in with all the other home animation products and light switches.

But you still sounded great. You looked great. Except for that power cord. Probably could have used a detachable power cable. Would have been nice. One of those would be nice things, right? Probably could have used a detachable power cable. Would have been nice. One of those would be nice things, right? I could have used that. But may the HomePod rest in peace. That's right. After four years on the market, Apple has decided to discontinue the original HomePod. The company says it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod Mini. There we

go. Which was introduced last year. In a statement to Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, the company said, quote, the HomePod Mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound and intelligent assistant, smart home control, all for just $99. We're focused on our efforts on HomePod Mini and discontinuing the original HomePod. It will continue to be

available while supplies last. Most of what I heard from people about the HomePod was that it was too expensive, even though I think similar products like Sonos ran around the same price point. And it was never quite right for competing with other products in that category. So like, if you put it up against a Sonos, like Sonos did have like the Amazon and Google integrations, but if you put it up against the Sonos, like, well, you got better, you got more out of the Sonos because it gave you more sources. Like you can, Sonos has a ton of sources, both like even commercial and residential now. So like it's, it's, I think the HomePod is a great product, but man, they were really hamstrung. You know, I kind of joked around there in the beginning,

but like it really didn't do much other than play Apple music and Apple music was just a garbage experience. So of course this flagship product wasn't going to sell great. I don't know. It just wasn't the right product for the category. It was a, it was a huge swing and a miss. I think, uh, Gavin, Gavin saying that, uh, you know, HomePod was just too expensive, even though it sounded good. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It was, it's a great little product. Um, just probably, probably we, we, I guess we knew it was not long for the world once Apple stopped updating it very much. So, um So Apple did lower the price on the thing, gave it a permanent price reduction in 2019 to $299. So I guess that was kind of like the writing on the wall. And again, too expensive for the

limited features that they offered. Had they implemented Spotify in any meaningful way or other music services, heck Pandora, I think it would have been a much bigger hit and maybe fix some of the reliability issues around the AirPlay 2. I still use it, I would say every day. I use the HomePods. I have two here in the office garage with me right now. One of them is on my desk. One of them is over there on a far away desk. And I have a projector set up here with a fake screen on, on my garage door, the back of my garage door. So, you know, whenever we want to watch something on Netflix, I just power up the Apple, Apple TV that's connected to it and just HomePod, right? Apple Airplay 2 over to the Apple HomePods. And it sounds great out here. Like having the speaker

that sounds great directly on your desk, it really helps with hearing things and hearing what's going on with dialogue and that kind of thing. It's great bass response. It's a great sounding product. Absolutely great sounding product. Just a huge miss on the services that accompanied it. And I think it was just really hamstrung by the product managers inside Apple.

They really needed to open this product up to more than Apple Music. It really could have done a lot more for them for what it was. So Siri in a can, Siri in a coffee can, we'll miss you. We'll miss you. But you're going to live on my desk until it's actual dying days. I'm not sure when that's going to be, but hopefully a long, long'll miss you. We'll miss you, but you're going to live on my desk until, until it's actual dying days. I'm not sure when that's going to be, but, uh, but hopefully a long, long time from now, considering how much it paid for that. A quick mention of an Apple event that was announced on March 23rd. So keep an eye out for that. Um, I doubt they'll have any new HomePod announcements,

uh, on it. I think it's going to be more based around the, I don't even know they did. They've got a strange announcement. It said something about hair. Um, but I haven't really looked into it. I've heard rumors that they're going to release the new, um, those air tag things that they've been talking about for a long time. So we'll see. Uh, it's always fun to, fun to follow Apple rumors and predict what they're going to launch, uh, whatever writings on the wall, but sometimes they surprise you. And if they, if they come out with a new HomePod pro to replace this one, um, at a lower price point that does more, I see, they're just not going to do it. They're just not going to do it. I, I, this, this product was at a

great price point if it had done more and it just couldn't support itself at that price point. Um, the quality is, is so far above and beyond what the little HomePod mini was. I know that I kind of like poohooed a little bit on the HomePod mini when it came out. I still use that every day, just kind of like trigger automation, uh, you know, at night when I'm going to sleep, you know, turning off lights in the house and that kind of thing. And it works marginally well for that. Um, there's some Wemo switches that I have, uh, configured in the system that seemed to drop networking every couple of days. So, um, you know, I, if that stuff was more reliable,

the HomePod answers every time. Uh, if, if that stuff was more reliable, I think, I think I'd have a better experience with it. But again, the audio off of it, even the voice assistant's audio off of it, it's not all that great compared to what I have sitting on my desk here, which produces nice, deep, rich sound. It sounds like a $300 speaker. It really does. It blows the play threes that I have laying around the house out of the water, in my opinion. But the play threes that i have laying around the house out of the water in my opinion but the play threes i can actually use i can actually play music out of them so not to spend too much longer longer on this but we do we will miss you home pod rest rest rest in peace there should probably we should probably just move on though so um and and speaking of uh

apple the company is looking at expanding its functionality of home kit with new modular wall units to replace light switches. According to a patent granted to the company, Apple outlines a way that could allow consumers to quote, more easily can customize scale and reconfigure their homes in a more effortless and user-friendly manner for whatever that means. I mean, I guess you can just get a patent for anything these days. The system centers around what seems to be smart outlets, fixtures,

and could include technologies such as radar, Wi-Fi, ultrasonic communications, or, now this is interesting, ultra-wideband communication. So UWV, that was announced a while back and, uh, there's only a couple of products that actually have that in there. Um, the, the newer, the iPhone 11 and 12s have them. And, uh, I think the, I, the, the, the, the, the, the series six watches have them as well. Um, and supposedly these air tags have it as well as well. So this is, if you have two

iPhone 12s right now, or an iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, and you do an AirDrop to somebody, you can actually hold your phone up, kind of like in a vertical position, and kind of move it around the room. And when your phone is aiming at that person, it clicks. You'll feel it physically click and you'll see like the little picture shine, you know, for the person you're pointing at. So that's, that's what this ultra wide band technology can do. Uh, and, and, and think about that, like, well, think about it when it goes to these air tag things, if you're looking for lost keys or whatever, and you got one of these tags on there, you can move your phone around your house and it'll point you in the right direction of your lost keys that are's probably in the underneath the cushions of the couch.

But think of it when it comes to like setting up a home system, like you could, this is like, you could install a bunch of smart outlets in your house and he's like, okay, it's time to go set a mob. Now they have like the NFC and you can go tap on them. But what if they had the ultra wide band in there and you don't have to go like tap to the things you can just kind of move your phone around on the wall

and it centers on that product and picks it up. Um, I think that's, that's an encouraging thing. Um, I think it's an encouraging thing. I think that's a really cool piece of the puzzle that, that for at least on road onboarding and adopting new products, making it easier for more people to put it in. Um, you know, it could allow, it could allow that part of the operation to go a little bit better. And then, I mean, even thinking about from a control perspective, um, it would be, it would be really neat to have ultra wide band in a bunch of different products where you could just kind of like aim your phone around the room or maybe even your watch one day. I mean, this is built into the watches as well. Maybe you could just kind of like aim your phone around the room or maybe even your watch one day. I mean, this is built into the watches as well. Maybe you could just hold your wrist up and say, you know, turn that light on over there.

And it knows what light you're talking about because you're facing that way. So I don't know. We'll have to see. Of course, you have to you have to the last line of this article here that we'll link to in the show notes. Apple files numerous patents applications on a weekly basis. So patents are poor indicator, uh, of, or when a particular feature or technology will actually make it to market. So, um, fun to talk about, but, um, maybe, maybe not always the, uh, the, an indicator, a leading indicator of, of what's actually, actually going to happen next.

So Sonos has partnered with Audi to equip automakers Q4 e-tron with sound, a first for the California-based audio company best known for home speakers. The news was confirmed Tuesday by Sonos CEO Patrick Spence after Audi published images of the Q4 e-tron interior showing the Sonos logo. So like on the door panel itself, instead of saying Bang & Olufsen or whatever, it says Sonos. It's kind of cool. Here we go from a quote from Patrick Spence. We want it to be in all the different categories of audio, and a big chunk of that is in auto. Our first partnership of bringing our sound experience to automobiles is with Audi. It's not a bad partnership. I think Audi is like, uh,

especially the Q4 cars. Those, those tend to be like the Apple of cars. Like they have all sorts of features. Uh, the Audi doesn't seem to be a, um, scared of putting a computer in a car and letting do what a computer is supposed to do. So not a bad partner. With the announcement, Sonos joins a long list of audio companies that have made the jump to autos, including Bose, B&W, and Bang & Olufsen. The partnerships are seen as a way for home audio companies to diversify revenue sources and for automakers to use brands known for premium audio to sway your buying decision. So kind of an interesting story.

I like the partnership. I like what it could possibly mean for Sonos in the future. Like, you could get a Ford one day and have a premium Sonos audio system. I think this is kind of like the road for Sonos, in my opinion. Like like Sonos should be branching out into different market spaces um there's no reason that they should end with home on home audio when they they offer such a decent I say decent like the app could be better I trash the app every chance I get but they they do offer a great experience and and the ability to like group all of your music sources together and not live in these silos is actually really nice. And it's a feature missing from a lot of home audio products these days,

especially in the consumer space. Sonos really lets you do what you want with the gear when you buy it. And I've always found that quite nice. So something to keep an eye on. Hopefully it would like, it would be nice to see Sonos built into like TVs, right? Like you just have the Sonos in there. Maybe you'll get a nice screensaver, kind of like what they do with the music choice channels on your, on your TV. If you have cable and you have those music channels, why not, why not have that with Sonos, you know, have the Sonos app, have it as a,

another endpoint in your audio chain at the house and play music out that way. All right. With its with its latest Nest Hub, Google has added a surprise feature that could make the smart display more helpful. Or more creepy, depending on how you look at it. The second generation Nest Hub has a Soli radar sensor that detects motion and it uses that data to determine if you're asleep. So a quick history on Soli. It was a product that was part of Google's Advanced Technology Projects division, and it uses radar to detect motion at various scales. So it was first implemented on a mainstream level back in the Pixel 4, and you could actually wave your hand over the phone, and that would allow you to unlock it or wake it up. And then I think it's also in the Nest thermostat, like the

latest Nest thermostat, and it helps recognize if someone's in the room. So kind of a broad range of uses of a radar technology, kind of a cool idea. So what they're doing with this, Soli will allow the device to watch you while you sleep. And I put that in quotes because it's not using a camera. Like there's no camera on this product at all. They've removed the camera completely. So less creep factor there, but, um, you know, this radar can, can watch you sleep too. Uh, Google is calling this feature sleep sensing, and it's totally opt-in. Uh, you'll need to set the display up within a couple of feet of your bedside and angle it towards your torso. After calibration and setup process, the sensor can catch movements at an incredibly

precise level. Then Google's algorithm will analyze your motion and determine when you're asleep, restless, awake, and give you a report each morning so that you can choose to share that info with the Fit app to see how your sleep patterns work out over time. The Nest Hub also has a third mic compared to the previous model, which had two, and uses them to detect if you're coughing or snoring overnight. It'll only, this is kind of wild, like it's a snore microphone? Okay. It'll it'll quote only turn the mic on when it senses you falling asleep and the audio is processed, is processed locally and not sent out to the cloud. Uh, so don't worry. There's not going to be that Ukrainian, uh, farm of people,

uh, you know, going through and, and, and checking off. Oh yeah, this guy was snoring. This is an actual snore. Nope, that's not a snore. That's something else. The display also has a new temperature sensor, which it uses in addition to the ambient light sensor to identify changes in the environment. And in the morning you get a nice report on how you slept and if things like how cold or bright was in the room affected the sleep. Of course course it's going to bring up privacy concerns. Um, you know, not, not having a camera on, on the thing is kind of, kind of an interesting move. Um, and just putting, putting, having this radar thing on, this is interesting because it's a

different sensor than we're used to. And just having radar on there means that it's going to get different data. And it may be worth taking a look at, you know, we'll link this article in the show notes here, but it may be worth taking a look at and seeing what it looks like, this data looks like that they get back. Because it's, you know, just because it's not a picture, it's, um, it's, it's, it, it does collect an immense amount of data. I mean, it, it, it may be more data than you're, you're comfortable with. So, um, keep in mind that just because it doesn't, maybe the camera, maybe the dumbest sensor that they have, I guess is kind of where I'm going. That like, they could do better than Gavin, Gavin, uh, Gavin's making some jokes in the, in kind of cracking me up here. I, I, I get the same thing. Uh, who needs a Google? My wife tells me how I'm sleeping in real time.

Uh, jab means talking, kick means snoring. Yep. That that's, that's, uh, I have that. And every morning I get a summary about the night. So yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh, definitely been there. Am there. Uh, I, I think, uh, a couple of new features on this as well. They upgraded the audio system, uh, promising 50% more base. So it's similar to the nest audio speaker that's out right now. It should be a little faster because the new processors that are built in, it's got thread radio built in it. So this stuff is getting ready. So we'll start seeing chip products released, I think, in 2021. That's this year.

I say that with a question mark because I don't know how COVID is going to affect. We know it's having all sorts of effects on everything else, but how is that going to affect the release cycle on these mainstream products? I haven't seen that yet. So we'll be curious. This thing's a hundred bucks though, and it's $50 less than the original. So that's a, that's a great price point actually for a nice Google screen with, you know, summary and this decent feature of being able to process your sleep track, do like sleep tracking without having to wear like an Apple watch or a fitness band or something like that. Like not a bad feature to include, especially for only a hundred dollars. Um,

pre-order it now, if you need it, if you want it, I should arrive in stores March 30th. So as with all these things, I always recommend don't buy it now, unless you absolutely have to have it. But, uh, you know, I'm sure this thing will be $50, uh, come Black Friday. That's, that's how those things, that's how those things go. So, um, I'll link, uh, an article in here from Stacy Higginbotham too about she, she had a really good article about the implications of putting a Nest Hub in the bedroom. All the links and topic we discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 343. Don't forget, you can join us live in the chat room like Gavin and Greg

have done tonight, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more how to do that at hometech.fm slash live. And I've cut off the Facebook feed. It seems to be YouTube seems to be working the best for whatever reason. So I'm using YouTube. That's where we're going with that. I don't know what is going on with the camera, though. Everything is all set up. I hit go.

Now the camera's gone all wonky on me. Yeah, that's what you get for doing it live, I guess. All right. All right. All right. I've got a great pick of the week here. It's called the Zoom Escaper. This it lets you sabotage your own meetings with audio problems like crying babies, choppy audio and more. So I'm sure we're all tired of being in Zoom meetings these days. And a developer has decided to take it into his own hands. And he's made this thing called the Zoom Escaper. And it basically injects dogs barking, upset a baby crying, echoing, distortion, all sorts of crazy things, construction sounds. And then you can emulate like a bad audio connection with choppiness. And it's all got

sliders on this stuff. So you have to see how this is. It also has a man weeping, which I thought was one of the funniest things. You play that and there's a guy crying in the background. So, um, I don't know, this seems like a great idea for the, for the right time. And, uh, yeah, you, you, it does take a little bit of setup or know-how to set this thing up, um, because you kind of have to feed your audio through it and then back out, uh, to zoom. Not very hard to do. I do it. I do it all the time when we're doing the podcast here, but, um, yeah, easy way to get out of the, the zoom environment. Easy way to get off a zoom call is just to click that choppiness, poor connection and say, Oh, I'll have to catch you guys next time. Greg, Greg puts in the chat needs a police drug raid. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. That's not a bad idea. I'm being swatted right now. So yeah,

too, too good, too good, too good. So if you have any feedback, comments, questions, picks of the week or any ideas for the show, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. You can visit the website at hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. And with that, I want to give a thank you to everyone who supports the show and is continuing to support the show, especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about the Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over five bucks gets you a big shout out on the show, but every pledge gets you an

invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and everybody can gather together and talk about all sorts of fun stuff in there, but also get you an invite to our new Zoom. I guess we're using Zoom right now, but it'll be our Home Tech Talk conversation. So any patron level, that'll get you in as well. So keep an eye on that. All that information gets posted over on Patreon. You'll probably get emails on it as soon as I post that stuff out. So I'm looking forward to that tomorrow and kind of reporting back on how it goes next week.

So it should be a fun time. If you want to help out on the show, but can't support the show financially, totally understand. You appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating in the podcast app of your choice. And with that said, that's another week in home technology news. I want to thank everybody for hopping in the chat there

and joining in. Still got camera problems. Every single scene, camera problems here. So thanks everybody for, for joining in. I really do appreciate you guys helping out with the show and adding in your, your conversations as things go on. Next week, I will have an interview. So that should be interesting and we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping to have it, uh, be able to have it ready for the show, uh, you know, for the live show. So we should be able, I don't think the interview is going to be live, but it'll be ready for the live show and be able to watch and kind of chat along in the chat, uh, as it goes, as it goes on live. So it should be a good interview.

I'm having a Jack, uh Jack from over at PixelGen. They've got a new cool product that they teamed up with a company called Darby Vision. And it's a really neat 4K video processor that really just kind of like changes the game when it comes to what you can expect out of your display. So I saw that they had released it, and it looks interesting. So we're going to talk with them about it and do a deep dive on it and do some nerdy tech talk. If there's anybody that can talk nerdy tech talk around HDMI and 4K processing, it's going to be Jack over at Pixabay.

So can't wait to chat with those guys next week. Thanks, everybody, again for joining us, and thank you for listening't wait to chat with those guys next week. Uh, thanks everybody again for joining us and thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next week.