Apple has finally introduced HomePod, its
Siri-powered smart speaker in India. The company has also pushed iOS and iPadOS
13.3.1 update that brings support for Indian English Siri voices for HomePod.
To remind you, it was introduced at WWDC 2017 and went on sale in Australia,
the UK and the US from February 9, 2018 priced at US$ 49,
and got a price cut to US$ 299 in April 2019.
It rolled out in Canada, France, and
Germany in June 2018 and in Spain and Mexico in October 2018. It went on sale
in China and Hong Kong in January 2019 and in August 2019 in Japan and Taiwan. The
7-inch tall Homepod adapts to wherever it’s playing and is controlled through
natural voice interaction with Siri like playing music, checking the news and
controlling other connected devices in the home. It uses spatial awareness to
sense its location in a room and automatically adjust the audio. It has six
microphones that enables easier interactions and can learn preferences and also
handle advanced searches within the music library.
The Homepod is powered by A8 chip and
Apple says all the instructions to the speaker are recognized locally on the
device, and they are encrypted. It features a large, Apple-designed woofer for
deep, clean bass, a custom array of seven beam-forming tweeters. The Apple
HomePod is priced at Rs. 19,990, making it the cheapest in the world, and will
be available from Apple’s Authorized resellers across India starting from
March.
