Nobody expected it. With its HomePod refresh, Apple may have finally found a way to stand out in the still-emerging smart speaker market. His trick: bet on spatialized sound to replace the famous surround sound system in the living room of home theater enthusiasts.
Spatial audio is what Apple calls spatial audio. It is a sound technique where the intensity is modulated in order to allow the listener to locate the sound in space, which simulates natural listening. It’s not exclusive to Apple. Since the end of last year, Google has included in its Android 13 software what it takes to be compatible with spatial audio and another sound protocol called Dolby Atmos, a variation on the theme of spatialized sound that reproduces more faithfully and without too many speakers in the room the same sound environment as that of a movie theater.
A single HomePod allows you to listen to the music source of your choice from an iPhone, iPad or Mac, or to tune directly to the Apple Music, Deezer or TuneIn speaker. But there is better: by combining two HomePods, an Apple TV receiver and a television, the home movie buff can recreate the atmosphere of a cinema in his living room, without the clumsy young children of other spectators. The sound experience, whether for music, gaming, TV, or movies, is surprisingly vivid and engaging. All that’s missing is the popcorn.
Apple thus joins Amazon, which dominates the connected speaker market with its Echo products: two of these speakers and a Fire TV Cube digital terminal can also create a home theater experience. But in this game, Apple is doing better thanks to hardware that ages much better than that of its rival. Apple TVs and even first-generation HomePods continue to perform well. Amazon products cost less, but also last much less. Plus, the new HomePod produces surprisingly rich sound that’s powerful enough for even the largest of living rooms.
Big downside, however: it takes two HomePods of the same generation to create a stereo pair. The new model does not match the old one. Fans will therefore have to pay twice $400 (plus the price of a possible Apple TV) to enjoy the full experience.
The return of the connected home?
We learned before Christmas that Amazon had lost 10 billion US dollars over the past ten years in its effort to impose its digital assistant Alexa in the connected home. Apple is taking a risk by returning to the charge in this market. Its speaker is the mouthpiece of its own assistant, Siri. It integrates a thermometer and a gateway for a brand new universal protocol called Matter, created to build the connected home of tomorrow.
People who dream of ordering their home by voice should remember this name: Matter. Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung and others will be charging back over the next year with products that adopt this new industry standard.
It is difficult to say for the moment if it will be enough to make the connected home more attractive. The new HomePod connects all devices compatible with the Apple platform to Matter. This will save those who want to have the latest hardware from spending even more on new gadgets that adopt Matter.
Only problem, it is not the first time that we hear the manufacturers of gadgets for the connected home promise that, this time, it is the good one. And this one, whether we hear it in mono, in stereo or in spatial audio, we believe in it less and less.
More advertising on Spotify
Streaming music is still not profitable. Spotify, the largest subscription-based digital music service, has 450 million registered users worldwide — 200 million of them paying monthly — and still isn’t turning a profit. The solution ? More advertising!
For the moment, Spotify wants above all to make profitable its podcasts, some of which have cost it a fortune in exclusive rights. With the announcement of major layoffs at the end of January, the management of the Swedish company gave some ideas on the track it planned to follow on this side. Basically: replicate the YouTube model and become the go-to platform for podcast creators.
Spotify would like to see its advertising tools adopted by the approximately five million broadcasters already present on its platform. Its goal: to eventually have 50 million podcasts, a target already established in 2018.
The metaverse is faltering
Propelled to the forefront of techno news for two years, the metaverse is already running out of steam. The organizers of the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco published, two months before the event at the end of March, the results of a survey on current trends in video games. The main highlight: 45% of the 2,300 video game creators surveyed say they are disappointed with the metaverse and do not believe that one day we will see a single, huge unified immersive virtual environment prevail. Even worse sign: only 33% thought this a year earlier, at the start of 2022.