Apple WWDC as it happened: Tech giant updates every product it makes and releases new HomePod Siri speaker
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Your support makes all the difference.Apple just updated every single one of its products. And released some new ones as well.
The company is holding its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, and kicked it off with its most wide-ranging event of the year.
As well as updating the software for all of its products, as it always does, the company showed off. That included updates to the iPad and Mac line – but most of all was the Siri speaker, a talking music system for the home.
Find full coverage on each of those releases – iOS 11, the new macOS, a new Siri and the HomePod speaker – below.
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That said, it does look very smart: it separates out all the different parts of the music into its composite parts. It can then find out all those parts and pull it together into one "rich mix that can dominate the room".
Next: "a musicologist". The speaker system works together with your Apple Music subscription. The speaker can get the music directly from the cloud. It can respond to your Siri commands – not just asking things like artist names, but stuff like "When was this recorded?", "Play some lullabies in the baby's room" or "Play something mellow".
In summary: it's called HomePod. It has the power to "rock the house", it has "spatial awareness", and it makes Siri into a "musicologist". It's also a "great and helpful home assistant".
The HomePod works with HomeKit (as Siri does). That means you can just say to it "turn my lights on", for instance, and it will do so. And because the HomePod is in your house, you can do that from anywhere you want.
Now the big question, especially for Apple: Privacy. It won't send anything to Apple until you say "Hey, Siri". Once you do say it, everything you say will be anonymised and encrypted.
The HomePod is $349. That's really cheap, if it sounds as good as Apple claims.
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