Smart Speaker – Page 4

Apple’s Siri-powered HomePod smart speaker is finally launching on Feb. 9.

There are a dozen reasons why you shouldn’t buy one — it’s kind of big, it’s expensive, it doesn’t support the ballyhooed multi-room audio at launch, Siri (lol) — but my biggest concern hinges on its key selling point: music.

Specifically: HomePod only works with Apple Music and that’s a huge non-starter for me and most people.

Now, I haven’t seen a HomePod in person, nor have I listened to one, so I can’t speak to how loud or clear it sounds. (It supposedly sounds better than a Sonos.) But I do listen to music — a lot of music — and none of it’s streaming through Apple Music. Read more…

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Facebook wants you to video chat on its platform, so it’s taking on Amazon, Google, and Apple with hardware of its own.

The company will release Portal later this year, Cheddar learned in an exclusive report. It will be something like Amazon’s Echo Show, a voice-controlled smart speaker with a screen.

Reports about the video chat device came out last year, but more details — like the name “Portal” — have now been revealed. It looks like a speaker patent discovered last year is part of the Portal project.

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