Apple at WWDC 2019 today announced that the HomePod is gaining Handoff support, allowing users to place an iPhone near the HomePod to hand over music, podcast, or a phone call.
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Apple also announced that AirPods are getting a new Audio Sharing feature, allowing users to share a song or movie with a friend with just a tap.
Tags: Handoff, AirPods Guide
Buyer's Guide: HomePod (Caution), AirPods (Caution)
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Not only does handover fix this, the physical act of “picking up” or ‘dropping off” what’s playing by putting your iPhone near the HomePod is ingenious. This is pure Apple on display.
It is a pointless battle because you don’t understand how things work. I mean, you thought that you had to go to Settings to change the speaker.
To add on... I have a large music collection from years of ripping, collecting... just pony up the $15 MRC for a family subscription and let your music and choices curate new music into your rotation you wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.And you’ve made clear that you don’t know how iTunes Match works either. It first tries to match with a song in the existing iTunes library and if there isn’t a match, it uploads it to the cloud. I have songs that I recorded at concerts myself that I listen to on my HomePod.
What’s worse than not understanding something is being too stubborn to realize that you’re out of your depth and won’t listen to others trying to explain it to you.
You can’t just put one leg into this ecosystem - jump on in it’s worth it!
HomePods throughout the house to AirPods, Apple Watch out the door is amazing.
To add on... I have a large music collection from years of ripping, collecting... just pony up the $15 MRC for a family subscription and let your music and choices curate new music into your rotation you wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.
If he doesn’t care about any music other than the music he has, then Match is just $25 bucks per year. That’ll give him access to all of his own music anywhere, on all devices, including his HomePod that he’s complaining about.You can’t just put one leg into this ecosystem - jump on in it’s worth it!
HomePods throughout the house to AirPods, Apple Watch out the door is amazing.
I'm coming at from the perspective of my wife who also has her phone containing all of her music. If she has to go into the settings and select the homepod as an output device for airplay and then hit the play button she'll just blow a fuse. That makes the homepod just become an expensive and more cumbersome BlueTooth speaker.
That’s not how AirPlay works. That’s not at all how it works. You don’t have to go into settings to select your HomePod as a speaker.Whenever you’re playing music, hit the AirPlay button in the playback controls and choose your HomePod. It’s also in Control Centre.
As for playing your own music, that requires iTunes Match. It’s a service to get your music into the cloud. If you purchase Match, you can convert your own library to listen to it anywhere like Apple Music, even if it’s not downloaded to your device.
As expected, Apple can strategically make Apple Music available everywhere to compete with Spotify while also offering their own premium, native solution to listening to music in an Apple type experience.
I’m fact, putting Apple Music on Amazon Echo will actually help sell HomePods. A lot of people have Echos already. Making Apple Music available there, keeps them on Apple Music rather than moving to Spotify if it were the only option. Eventually, those people will build brand loyalty to Apple Music and will want better sound and a native Apple Music experience.