HomePod Smart Speaker Arrives This Friday

Yes, it was first announced back in June of 2017 and soon Apple’s long-awaited HomePod will ship in the US, UK, and Australia on February 9th for $349. You can get it in space gray or white. We ordered one of each. Watch out Amazon Echo and Google Home, there’s a new smart speaker coming soon. Why is the HomePod any different...or dare we say, better? 

Amazon and Google focused mostly on how you could interact with their smart speakers. Apple, however, is placing emphasis on audio quality that HomePod users and music lovers can enjoy. The HomePod has seven beam-forming tweeters for high-frequency acoustics, coupled with a large woofer for deep, clean bass, in a cylindrical package just under 7 inches tall. The sound will be unmatched.

An A8 chip is what makes the HomePod much smarter than regular speakers. The HomePod has processing power equivalent to an iPhone 6. The software running on the HomePod gives it spatial awareness. What does this mean? It can sense its location in the room and adjust the audio automatically for the best listening experience. What?!

Want to know something else that is pretty cool? With a free software update due later this year, you’ll be able to control multiple HomePods throughout your home. You can control each one independently or playing the same music on all of them, perfectly in sync. Also, if you put two HomePods in the same room, you’ll be able to set them up as a stereo pair. Sounds pretty awesome, right?

Order your HomePod now at Apple.com ➚

Keep in mind, the HomePod can do more than play music. It uses Apple’s Siri voice assistant to listen for your commands with an array of six microphones, so you can ask Siri to send messages, set timers, play podcasts, read the news, get the weather, check sports scores, and more. Apple has even expanded Siri’s knowledge of music for the HomePod. You can also transfer a phone call from your iPhone to your HomePod for a hands-free conversation - Awesome when you are cooking!

What if you don’t want to talk to your HomePod? You can tap its top to play/pause (single tap), move to the next track (double tap), or go back to the previous track (triple tap). Touching and holding invokes Siri without saying “Hey Siri,” and you can tap or hold the + and – buttons to adjust volume.

Home automation/Smart Home enthusiasts will be excited to know that they can control HomeKit accessories via Siri on the HomePod as well. The HomePod can act as a HomeKit hub that can trigger automations and let you control HomeKit accessories while you’re away from home.

But what most people will use the HomePod for, most of the time, is music. For full music functionality, the HomePod would work best with an Apple Music subscription. We love ours! However, those who don’t subscribe to the $9.99 per month Apple Music will still be able to play music purchased from iTunes, stream Beats 1 Radio, and listen to podcasts.

Setting up a HomePod is simple—just plug it in, and your iPhone or iPad will detect it automatically, just like a pair of AirPods. The HomePod will require an iOS device. It must be relatively recent (iPhone 5s or later, iPad Air or later, iPad mini 2 or later, or sixth-generation iPod touch), and it must be running at least iOS 11.2.5—you’ll want to install the latest available version to keep up with tweaks as Apple rolls them out.

It will be a couple weeks before the HomePod can be fully tested against the various other smart speakers. Undoubtedly, we think the HomePod will sound much better than the more-established products from Amazon and Google. Along with adding multi-room audio and stereo capabilities, Apple will also be one to introduce new capabilities on the HomePod over time.

Order your HomePod now at Apple.com ➚

Watch Amazon Prime Originals on Your Apple TV

First, you need an Amazon Prime membership? How is it different from your regular Amazon account? Well, if you're not familiar with Amazon Prime, it is basically an upgrade to the standard Amazon account and we like ours a lot! It costs $99-per-year, which amounts to $8.25 per-month and is well worth it. An Amazon Prime membership provides a number of perks, including FREE 2-day shipping (you can't beat that) from the Amazon online store and FREE streaming access to Amazon’s media libraries.

Until now, accessing Prime Video content for Apple TV users has been a tiny bit frustrating, because there was no Amazon app for the Apple TV. That has all changed now. If you have an Amazon Prime membership and an Apple TV, it’s time to download the new Amazon Prime Video app. It gives you a ton of awesome additional video content, including Amazon’s original programming. Seriously, google "Amazon Prime Original Series" and see what you are missing. Especially if you have run out of Netflix Originals...it is time. 

You can find the app on your fourth-generation Apple TV or Apple TV 4K in the App Store app. If you are still using a third-generation Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video should appear automatically on your Apple TV Home screen. Get the blankets and snacks, it's binge-worthy.

What's your favorite Amazon Prime Original series? 

Adjust Web Site Behavior with Safari’s Site-Specific Settings

So it seems that macOS 10.13 High Sierra was a little light on new features. However, it did bring one welcome addition to Safari...site-specific settings. What's that mean? If you regularly visit a blog that you prefer to read using Safari’s Reader view. Rather than invoke it each time you visit, you can now set Safari to use Reader automatically on that site. Just the same, if there’s a site whose text is too small, Safari can remember your page zoom setting for that site. Simple and convenient!

Want to know how to make the most of Safari’s site-specific settings? 

First, load a site whose settings you’d like to customize. Then choose Safari > Preferences and click Websites in the toolbar. You will see a list of general settings in the sidebar at the left, followed by any plug-ins you’ve installed. For each setting or plug-in, you can set what happens when you visit the site you just loaded. Or if you have a bunch of sites open in different tabs, you can customize the behavior for any open site. Here are some options.

Reader

Reader view displays an article as a single page that’s formatted for easy reading, without ads, navigation, or other distractions. It’s such a significant change that it’s off by default. You enable it by clicking the Reader button to the left of the URL in the address bar. To turn it on for all of a site’s articles, in Safari’s Websites preferences, select Reader and choose On from the pop-up menu next to the site name.

Content Blockers

You can also see fewer Web ads by installing a Safari content blocker. Choose Safari > Safari Extensions to open Safari’s Extension Gallery, and then scroll down slightly to find the page’s Search field, where you can search for blocker. There are many - you can look for one like Adguard AdBlocker that supports Safari’s content blocking API. Once you’ve installed one, select Content Blockers in the Websites preferences. By default, Safari blocks ads on all sites, so choose Off from the pop-up menus for sites whose ad content you want to see.

Auto-Play

How much do we dislike sites that play a video when a page loads, scaring everyone including yourself at the office and distracting you from the text you want to read. Even worse are those sites like Macworld, we’re looking at you, that auto-play videos that aren’t even related to the page. Safari squelches auto-playing videos by default, but for sites like YouTube, you might want to allow videos to play. You can also choose to stop only videos that have sound!

Page Zoom

Most of us know how to hit Command-Plus to zoom in on a page, increasing the text and graphics  but who wants to do that every time you visit a page sporting tiny words? With the Page Zoom setting, Safari will use your preferred zoom every time you visit a particular site. You don’t have to do anything other than set a zoom level with Command-Plus when you’re viewing a site because Safari remembers it automatically, as you can see in the Configured Websites section for Page Zoom. To tweak it manually, choose a zoom level from the site’s pop-up menu.

Camera & Microphone

You’re unlikely to run across many sites that want to access your Mac’s camera and microphone, maybe but for Web conferencing services. That’s why the Camera and Microphone settings default to asking you whenever a site wants permission to record you. If you find it irritating to be asked constantly by a site you use often, you can change this and choose Allow from the pop-up menu for that site. And if a site asks repeatedly but you never want to allow it, choose Deny to stop the prompts.

Location

Most Web sites that ask for your location want to determine how close you are to particular stores - they want to help! If that’s information you’re interested in sharing, let them see where you are, by all means. And if you’re using a mapping service that wants your location, it’s entirely reasonable to set its pop-up menu to Allow. But if a site keeps asking and it feels creepy, set it to Deny.

Notifications

Are there sites whose new posts you’d like to know about right away? If they support Web notifications and you give them permission, they can post push notifications that appear on-screen and in Notification Center, just your other notifications. Same goes for ones you don't want to see - make em' stop!

The Notifications preferences look different from the others because they show only sites that have asked for permission in the past. Safari remembers your choice, and if the site gets annoying later, you can always take back permission by changing the Allow pop-up menu to Deny. And if you never want to be prompted for push notifications—they can be distracting—uncheck the “Allow websites to ask for permission to send push notifications” checkbox at the bottom of the pane.

Plug-ins

It’s impossible to know what plug-ins you’ve installed, but Safari is configured to make sites ask for permission to use a plug-in each time you visit. That’s the safest setting, but for any given site and plug-in, you can use the pop-up menu to give the site access (choose On) or not (choose Off). And if you can’t even remember what a plug-in does, you can deselect its checkbox to disable it.

And there you have it! Some of Safari’s site-specific settings work without any interaction from you, such as your page zoom and notification preferences. Others require a tiny bit of configuration, but that’s a small price to pay for the Web working more the way you want.