Category Archives: iPhone

Help me! I can’t justify getting a HomePod!

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I really…REALLY…want to buy an Apple HomePod. This should not be a surprise to anyone who knows me. I’ve been a dedicated Apple fan for decades. Our home is filled with almost every product Apple sells — from iMacs to MacBooks to iPhones to iPads to Apple TVs. The HomePod would fit perfectly into our personal Apple ecosystem. And, from what I’ve read (as well as my own in-store testing), the HomePod sounds great — as good or better than any comparable digital speaker. Its price is on the high side — but not way out of line for what it delivers.

So what’s the problem? What’s stopping me from going immediately to my local Apple Store and grabbing one off the shelf?

The answer is that I don’t know what I’d do with the HomePod when I got it home. There is no appropriate place to plunk it down. Literally. To explain exactly what I mean here, allow me to take you on an audio-centric tour of our home.

We start at the lower level — the family room. Here you’ll find a full-featured home theater setup. At its core is a Denon receiver with a 5.1 set of Polk speakers. Connected to the Denon hub, via HDMI ports, are a television, a Blu-ray player, a TiVo DVR and an Apple TV. I see no advantages to including a HomePod in this setup.

Even if I just wanted to play Apple Music, the Denon supports AirPlay; I can stream directly from my iPad or iPhone to my home theater. Although some reviews have gushed about the HomePod’s “audiophile”-grade quality — capable of amply filling up a large room with booming sound, let’s be clear: there’s no way the HomePod comes close to what my home theater setup delivers. Praise for the HomePod’s sound is relative — it depends on what you’re comparing it to. If you think the HomePod represents the “best sound ever” — you’ve never experienced what truly great audio sounds like.

So…nope…no HomePod in the family room.

Climb the stairs to the main level of our house and you’ll be at the door to my office. Hmmm. Maybe the HomePod would fit here — connected to my iMac. Sorry, but no. Currently, the iMac’s audio-out goes to a pair of original Monsoon speakers (with its matching floor-standing subwoofer). This may well be the oldest computer accessory still in active use in my house — and there’s a good reason for this. Despite its age, the Monsoon remains one of the best desktop speakers ever created. The HomePod may be able to shake your desk at loud volumes, but so what? My Monsoons have been doing this for years…even when the volume is nowhere near its maximum. Plus, the Monsoon flat panels provide superb stereo separation — something a solo HomePod cannot do at all.

Strike two. The HomePod will not find a home in my office.

We now arrive at the final (non-bedroom) location in our house: the open-floor-plan living room/dining room/kitchen. Here, you’ll find a Yamaha YAS-706 soundbar (plus subwoofer) connected to a television and the usual collection of other peripherals. While not comparable in quality to the downstairs setup, the Yamaha is still capable of delivering distortion-free room-filling sound.

The soundbar supports both AirPlay and Bluetooth. Via AirPlay, I can send music from iTunes on my Mac — or from my iOS devices — directly to the Yamaha, without having to separately turn the soundbar on. It’s all automatic. Similarly, via Bluetooth, I can almost instantly connect the Yamaha to my second-generation Amazon Echo sitting nearby; this combines excellent sound quality with the convenience of Alexa voice commands.

Add it all up and there seems no benefit to a HomePod here. “Wait a minute!” you may be thinking, “How about replacing the Echo with a HomePod? You’ll have a better sounding speaker than the Echo and you can use Siri instead of Alexa.” True enough — except for one major caveat: My home is already immersed in the Alexa ecosystem. In addition to the afore-mentioned Echo, I have four other Alexa devices spread throughout our home!

With my current setup, I can simultaneously play music over three (non-Dot) Echoes — providing inexpensive Alexa-controlled multi-room sound. The HomePod won’t be able to match this until AirPlay 2 arrives. Yes, the Echo’s audio quality is inferior to the HomePod — but it’s still fine enough for quick and casual listening.

Of course, the Echoes do more than play music. They work with our Ecobee thermostat and several smart lights we’ve installed. We also use Alexa throughout the day — for timers, reminders, calendar events, shopping lists, movie times, weather, news and too many other tasks to list them all here. While I might be able to transfer the bulk of this to Siri — why bother? Especially when Siri remains the weakest feature of the HomePod. Plus, at $350 a pop, there is no way I am going to invest in five HomePods.

Bottom line: I don’t see a switch from Echo/Alexa to HomePod/Siri coming any time soon. As things now stand, every relevant location in our house contains technology that better serves our wants and needs than a HomePod would. As much as I would love to justify buying a HomePod, I can’t see how.

I’m sure many people live in places where a HomePod would be an ideal fit — especially if they have not already heavily invested in other alternatives. That’s great. But I’m also confident that my situation is not an unusual one. That is, a home, even one that is otherwise super-friendly to Apple, where the HomePod winds up being too little too late.

All is not completely lost. I can envision a second or third generation HomePod (perhaps even a line of HomePods at different price points) that would convince me to abandon my Echoes. But I can also imagine this never happening. For now, it’s a game of wait-and-see.

How I (almost) succeeded in getting an Echo to work well with my soundbar — and all my other components

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My wife asserts that, should I die first, she will get rid of almost all the audio-video and computer equipment we now own. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy using the equipment. She does. It’s just that she believes it will be hopeless for her to maintain the plethora of technology without my assistance.

I’m sympathetic. We currently have three TVs. Each is connected to a TiVo device, an Apple TV, a Blu-ray (or DVD) player and some sort of speaker/amplifier. Each TV setup also has its own Harmony Remote. Meanwhile, our office houses three Macs, two printers, a document scanner and a label printer. My wife and I each have our own iPhone; we share an iPad Pro. There are three Amazon Echo devices scattered about our home. Our initial foray into the world of smart home devices includes a Ring doorbell and a Nest webcam. And all of this is tied together via a complex network that employs both Wi-Fi and Ethernet.

One consequence of all of this complexity is that, anytime we add or replace a component, it may trigger a cascade of unintended and undesired consequences that can take days — or even weeks — to fully resolve.

That’s exactly what happened a few months ago — when I embarked on an “adventure” triggered by my admiration for the Amazon Echo. With the Echo linked to my Spotify account, I could speak to Alexa from almost anywhere on our main floor, request a music selection (such as “Alexa, play the Hamilton original Broadway cast album” or “Alexa, play music by Little Big Town”) and within seconds the requested music would begin. Incredible! Literally without lifting a finger, I had access to almost every recorded song in existence.

There was only one problem: the inferior quality of the sound. Don’t get me wrong. The original Amazon Echo produces surprisingly good audio for its size — better than almost any comparable small or portable speaker. But sitting just a few feet away from the Echo, connected to my TV, were a Yamaha soundbar and subwoofer capable of far better sound. I was already occasionally using the soundbar for music — via the Apple TV. But that arrangement couldn’t duplicate the “magic” of the Echo’s always-ready voice recognition.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” I mused, “if I could use the Amazon Echo for music selections and have the audio play from the soundbar? I could have my cake and it eat it too, as it were.” It sounded simple enough to do. [Spoiler alert: It’s significantly less simple than it sounds.]

A tale of two Echos and two soundbars

The first thing I realized is that the original Echo cannot connect out to a speaker — neither via a Bluetooth nor a wired connection. To do this, you need the Echo Dot. In fact, the Dot almost requires an external speaker for music (as its small internal speaker is far too weak). So I bought an Echo Dot. [Update: This limitation is now gone: All current Echoes can connect to external speakers via Bluetooth and/or wired.]

I could have connected the Dot to my soundbar via a wired connection. But I quickly dismissed this as impractical. The dealbreaker was that a wired connection totally disables the Dot’s internal speaker. This meant that I couldn’t hear any audio from the Dot — unless the Yamaha was turned on and the proper input selected (which it most often would not be). In other words, when the sound bar was off, I couldn’t use Alexa for any non-music tasks, such as asking for a weather report or setting a timer.

Connecting the Dot to the soundbar via Bluetooth seemed to offer a better chance of success — except for one thing: my 11-year-old Yamaha YSP-800 soundbar did not support Bluetooth. To use Bluetooth, I would need to get a new soundbar! I had been thinking about getting a new one anyway, for other reasons. This pushed me over the edge. After weeks of internal debate, I settled on a Yamaha YAS-706. It comes with Yamaha’s MusicCast — which provides Bluetooth, AirPlay, Wi-Fi and Internet audio options — all with access via an iOS app. The soundbar also supports every physical connection I might want (multiple HDMI ports, optical audio and coaxial audio). Quite impressive!

It took a day or two to get the new soundbar comfortably connected to all my other devices. It mostly went smoothly except for a glitch with the Harmony Remote: the remote would not reliably turn off the soundbar when doing so as part of a auto-sequence of turning off multiple devices. Consulting with Logitech, we eventually determined that the cause was the HDMI-CEC feature on the Yamaha. Disabling the option got things working pretty much as I wanted. I was now ready to make the Bluetooth connection from the Echo Dot to the new soundbar.

Initial tests of the setup were promising. The Dot was capable of turning the Yamaha on and connecting to it via a voice command — even if the speaker was presently off. And, unlike with the wired connection, there was no Input selection switching to worry about. It all just worked. And, if the Bluetooth connection was lost, the Dot would default back to its internal speaker. This was all great.

Unfortunately, a few problems persisted. First and foremost, although the setup usually worked as just described, it would fail on occasion. The causes were typically obscure — usually involving a failure to make the correct Dot-to-Yamaha Bluetooth connection. There were also occasional temporary sound dropouts. And, a couple of times, the Echo started playing music through its own speaker while I was watching TV, for no apparent reason! Without near 100% reliability, I was reluctant to commit to the Echo setup.

Second, the sound quality of the Bluetooth connection (although obviously a big improvement over any Echo speakers) was noticeably inferior to what the new soundbar was otherwise capable of producing (which I assumed was due to the sound compression used when sending music over Bluetooth). Third, the volume control on the Echo does not affect the volume setting on the Yamaha; they are separate and independent. This can require making manual adjustments to both devices to achieve a desired volume level. Ultimately, for all of these reasons, I began to consider other possible ways to use the soundbar for music.

The AirPlay and Wi-Fi alternatives

For selecting and playing music in a way similar to using Alexa, an obvious second choice is the iPhone. I could connect to the Yamaha from my iPhone via Bluetooth (which I ignored, deciding that this method belonged to the Echo), via AirPlay or via app-specific options (notably Spotify Connect — which employs a high-audio quality Wi-Fi connection). I soon settled on Spotify Connect as my preferred choice. With this, after a one time setup, I could launch the Spotify app on my iPhone and almost instantly select and play music through the soundbar. The sound quality was also superior to the Bluetooth connection.

The biggest disadvantage to Spotify Connect (and it’s a huge one) is that I can’t use voice commands to make requests. Not only can’t I request a song selection via voice, but I can’t request to pause or skip songs — as I can easily do with Alexa. An app called Melody claims to solve these issues, but it really doesn’t. As an alternative, I experimented with using Siri to control Apple Music/iTunes over AirPlay — but couldn’t get this to work to my satisfaction. The foremost problem here is that Siri sucks at this task. Too often, I had to tap an option on the iPhone screen to complete a voice request, defeating the hands-free ideal. And Siri was far worse than Alexa at correctly interpreting my requests.

However, both of these iPhone options are more convenient than my “old” method of going from my Mac to the Apple TV, as they connect directly to the soundbar, avoiding the need to turn on the television and the Apple TV. [I also like that I can set iTunes on my Mac to simultaneously play music on my Mac and directly on the Yamaha — mimicking a multi-room audio system.]

Bottom line

As of now, when listening to music, I most often use the iPhone-Spotify-Yamaha connection. It results in high quality sound with very good convenience. Or, if I want to listen to playlists in my iTunes Library, I’ll make an AirPlay connection directly from my iPhone to the Yamaha. Still, they are both a bit disappointing. My initial goal was to combine the Alexa voice interface with the Yamaha soundbar. No iPhone option is a 100% substitute for Alexa.

That’s why I continue to experiment with using the Dot-Yamaha Bluetooth connection. Most recently, by making the Yamaha the only device to which the Echo Dot is paired, I have improved the setup’s reliability. So I have begun to use it more often. As a bonus, I recently discovered that, after starting to play music from Spotify over the Echo, I can launch the Spotify app on my iPhone and modify what will play from the Echo.

[As a side note, Yamaha has announced that, sometime this fall, “MusicCast products will receive a free firmware update enabling control using Amazon’s Alexa voice service.” While I’m not exactly certain what this means, I am guessing it will permit things such as modifying the Yamaha’s volume, inputs and sound modes. But if that’s all it does, it will not significantly alter the capabilities covered here.]

All of this remains a work in progress. A final decision on a “permanent” setup may be weeks or months away. The simple truth is that the original Amazon Echo remains unmatched for its ability to instantly and reliably play music via a voice command — with decent (although not exceptional) sound quality. Nothing else I’ve tried entirely duplicates that magic. But I’m getting close.

Why AppleCare+ is still not worth it

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Thinking of getting AppleCare+ for your next iPhone? Think again.

Back in 2014, I strongly recommended against AppleCare+. Following my own advice, I skipped getting it when I upgraded to an iPhone 6s this past fall.

Last month, my decision collided with a worst-case-scenario accident to my phone. This gave me a “real-life” opportunity to assess the financial wisdom of my choice. As it turned out, the accident, while unfortunate, only served to reinforce that I had chosen wisely.

At the time, I had no protective case on my iPhone (a decision I made for aesthetic reasons). While the wisdom of “going naked” can be debated, that’s a separate matter from the AppleCare+ one.

On the fateful day, while taking the iPhone out of my pocket, it slipped through my hand and dropped to a concrete sidewalk. Upon examining the phone, I was relieved to see that the screen was still intact and all functions were working. I had dodged a bullet. Or so I thought.

I was wrong. A day later, I noticed that the protruding sapphire cover over the camera lens, that little piece that annoyingly sticks out from the back of the phone, had cracked. I could still take photos but, under many lighting conditions, the crack resulted in significant flaring visible in photos. Not good. I immediately made an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store to see what could be done.

As I had anticipated, the news was bad. The Apple Genius informed me that, despite what might seem minimal damage, there was no way to repair it. My only option was to get a replacement phone. As accidental damage is not covered by the standard warranty (which was still in effect, as my iPhone was less than a year old), the replacement would cost me $300.

Ugh! Feeling that I didn’t have much choice, I handed over the cash and walked out with a new iPhone. As a bonus, the employee threw in a case for free.

At this point, I can hear at least some readers chiding: “Hah! Now I bet you wish you had purchased AppleCare+.”

Nope. While I wasn’t happy to shell out $300, I did so knowing that I was still ahead of the game. How so? Here’s how:

AppleCare+ for the iPhone 6s costs $129. Even had I paid for this coverage, I would still have to pay an additional $99 (accident coverage service fee) to get a replacement phone. That adds up to $228. In other words, ignoring any sales tax issues, not having AppleCare+ cost me only $72.

“Okay,” you may counter, “You didn’t lose $300. But you still lost $72. That’s still a loss. Doesn’t that make AppleCare+ worth getting in the end?”

The answer remains no. That’s because assessing my true cost involves more than simply looking at this incident in isolation. The question is not: “Would AppleCare+ have saved me money this one time?” Rather it is: “Does getting AppleCare+ save me money in the long run?” This requires estimating how often I expect to to damage my iPhone over the course of several years. This can be tricky to determine, as it involves making probability judgments. Just as with predicting election results, there is a margin of error involved. Still, reasonable judgments can be made.

For the sake of argument, let’s say I get a new iPhone every two years. Let’s also say that I expect to damage my phone once every 4 years on average. [In reality, I’m more careful than that. In fact, prior to this incident, I’d never had any accidental damage to any of my iPhones — going back to 2007. So I’m actually stacking the numbers against me here.] Assuming I get AppleCare+ during this four year period, I will have paid $129 x 2 (for AppleCare+ for each phone) and $99 for the damage replacement phone — for a total of $357. That’s $57 more than if I had skipped AppleCare+ and just paid the $300 for a lone replacement. [Note: If all you need is a screen repair, rather than a replacement phone, the downside of AppleCare+ is even greater.]

In my particular case, given that I had never purchased AppleCare for any of my iPhones and that this was the first time I ever paid for a replacement iPhone, I was clearly way ahead of the game — by much more than $57.

Moving beyond the cost of damage replacement…

AppleCare+ does add a second year of standard warranty coverage (the first year is included with your iPhone, even without AppleCare+). However, I contend that this is almost worthless — as iPhones very rarely need non-accident-related repairs in the second year. Further, if you’re the type of person that gets a new iPhone every year, the second year of standard coverage is entirely irrelevant.

AppleCare+ also extends the period for free telephone support. However, I again contend this is not of great consequence for most people, given the availability of free online and Genius Bar support.

Finally, there’s Apple’s new iPhone Upgrade Program. This is designed especially for people who want to get a new iPhone every year, trading in their old one. The cost of the program includes paying $129 for AppleCare+, spread over installments. Solely in terms of the standard warranty, the iPhone Upgrade Program is a terrible idea. As you’re getting a new iPhone every year, you never get the benefit of the extended second year of coverage. With this program, the only rationale for AppleCare+ is for its accident protection. Here’s where it gets interesting: Unique to this program, Apple doesn’t charge $129 for AppleCare+ each year — even though you’re getting a new iPhone annually. You only pay once every two years. In contrast, if you instead purchased a new iPhone with AppleCare+ every year from a carrier (such as AT&T or Verizon), you’d pay $129 each year.

Regardless, under the Upgrade Program, the calculations regarding accident damage remain exactly as described above. Over 4 years, you will have paid $64.50 x 4, or $258, for AppleCare+. If you only damage your iPhone once during this 4 year period (for a cost of another $99 to replace the phone), you still lose $57 by getting AppleCare+. If you get AppleCare+ from a carrier, and thus pay $129 each year, the disadvantage of AppleCare+ becomes much worse. So the best I can say here is that, if you plan to get a new iPhone every year and insist on getting AppleCare+, get it via Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program.

Bottom line

The above calculations were based on my personal history. Given my track record, assuming that I would need to replace an accidentally damaged iPhone no more than once every 4 years was a reasonable one. And it meant that getting AppleCare+ was a poor financial decision.

Your mileage may vary. What if your personal history suggests that you are likely to need to replace a damaged iPhone about once a year? In this case, AppleCare+ will work out to your advantage. However, you might instead work on out how to take better care of your iPhone so it doesn’t get damaged as often.

At a minimum, all of this means you should not automatically assume that AppleCare+ is worthwhile. Before making a decision, consider your track record. Unless you are accident-prone, AppleCare+ is a bad deal. You’ll wind up paying more for the insurance than you would spend on non-insured repairs. And the more years you go without any accident, the more you save by skipping AppleCare+.

Of course, in the end, you’re taking a gamble no matter what you do. You place a bet based on what you expect to happen in the future. If you guess wrong, you lose. For some, the peace of mind obtained by getting AppleCare+ may be worth it, even if you are more likely to lose money by doing so. However, if you are willing to take a small risk, I contend that the long-run odds most often favor a win if you skip AppleCare+. It has certainly worked that way for me. Having to shell out $300 for a replacement phone last month did not change that.

Secure your data before selling your iOS device or Mac

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Before I listed my iPad for sale on craigslist.com last month, I thought I knew what to do. My number one concern was security. More specifically, ensuring that all personal data had been removed from the device and all links between the device and any cloud services had been severed.

To that end, I restored the iPad to its factory settings. I decided not to use the “Erase All Content and Settings” option (from the Settings>General>Reset screen on the iPad). Instead, I elected to use “Restore iPad…” from iTunes on my Mac. Somehow, it seemed superior, although both methods are supposedly sufficient to do the job. And that was basically it. I didn’t think there was anything else I needed to do.

In the end, I was probably right; a Restore (or Erase all) was all I needed to do. None of my data was ever at risk. However, subsequent to selling my iPad, I stumbled across several Apple support articles that made me a bit nervous on this count. It seemed there were recommended actions that I did not take. How critical were they? Did I need to do anything about this now? Could I do anything about this now? Or was I stuck trying to close the proverbial barn door after the horses have left?

Let’s find out…

The iPad

Apple’s key article is “What to do before selling or giving away your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.” In general, the article confirmed my faith that restoring the iPad was all I needed to do. Major hassles only involved cases where you sell your device without erasing. In such cases, you can find yourself forced into taking progressively more and more desperate measures as you attempt to protect your data. In one worst case scenario, you may need to change your Apple ID password — to at least protect your cloud-based data, if not data on the device itself. But this was not my situation.

However, the article did list some things to consider doing before erasing/restoring the device.

First, turn off Find My iPhone, if enabled. Fortunately, at least in my experience, you can’t erase/restore an iOS device until this is done. So it’s hard to skip this step. I certainly didn’t.

Second, if you are selling an iPhone and you have an Apple Watch, unpair the Watch before erasing the iPhone. This ensures that Activation Lock has been disabled for the Apple Watch. As I had sold an iPad, not an iPhone, this didn’t concern me.

Third, sign out of iCloud and delete the iCloud account from your device before erasing it. This was the most worrisome for me, as I had not done this. Unfortunately, the article did not make clear the consequences of omitting this step or whether my restore was sufficient to make it OK that I had bypassed it (I think it was).

This led me to delve further into the status of my iCloud account. I logged in to icloud.com on my Mac and checked Find iPhone. I was mildly dismayed to see that my iPad was still listed in the All Devices list. Without the new owner having access to my Apple ID, I didn’t think I was in any danger. Regardless, I selected “Remove from Account” for the device — and was pleased to see the item vanish from the list. I next went to iCloud’s Settings>My Devices. Happily, the device was not listed here.

I was beginning to feel a lot more comfortable. And I made a mental note for the future: check these items prior to selling my next Mac or iOS device.

iTunes

As it turned out, I was not yet at the end of the road. Another Apple support article, titled “View and remove associated devices in iTunes,” warned that, before selling my iPad, I should go to my Account settings in iTunes and click “Manage Devices” from the iTunes in the Cloud section. From here, check to see if my iPad is listed. If it is, click its Remove button. I hadn’t done this beforehand. So I checked it now.

Uh-oh. My now-sold iPad remained on the list. Worse, its Remove button was grayed out…so I could not delete it. [Note: this is not just a matter of not waiting the 30 days mentioned in the article; there were devices in list that I had not accessed for way more than 30 days and their Remove button was still gray.] From what I subsequently read elsewhere, the only way to get the device off the list now was either (a) sign out of iCloud on the iPad itself (too late, given that the iPad was already erased and sold) or (b) wait and hope for Apple’s servers to automatically remove the item from the list after some unspecified period of time. Otherwise, the item may stay on the list forever.

Once again, I doubt I am in any real danger here. Without my iTunes account password, the new owner should have no access to my data. But it’s still irritating to have the iPad stuck on the list — especially because there is a maximum of 10 devices that you can maintain here. If devices continue to accumulate and remain stuck, I might eventually reach that maximum. There should be some escape hatch here.

By the way, if you’re selling a Mac (rather than an iOS device), also remember to “Deauthorize This Computer…” from the Store menu in iTunes of the computer before you erase the device and part ways with the computer. Even erasing the Mac’s hard drive is not sufficient to break this link. If you forget to do this, there is no way you can individually deauthorize it from any of your remaining devices — not even after logging into your iTunes account. Your only option is to go your iTunes account settings and select the “Deauthorize All…” button (which you can do only once a year, for reasons I do not entirely get).

I made another mental note for the future: definitely check these items prior to selling my next Mac or iOS device.

My request to Apple…

I’m an experienced Apple user…very experienced. Yet I still wound up a bit dazed and confused here, anxious that I had failed to do something critical before I sold my iPad. Apple can and should do better at keeping users calm. Here are two suggestions:

• Revise the Apple Support articles so there is one clearly written article that goes over all the matters I’ve covered here. If erasing a device eliminates the need to do most (or all) of the other actions, make that especially clear. Users should not have to guess or go hunting to find the relevant information.

• Even better, provide software that assists users in preparing a device for sale. I can think of two ways to go here:

First, when you select to Restore/Erase a device to its factory settings, the software should inquire if you are doing this in preparation for selling the device. If you answer yes, it walks you through all needed steps.

Second, Apple could develop a utility (akin to Migration Assistant on a Mac, maybe call it Sell My Device Assistant) that performs all the needed actions “automatically,” prompting for your permission as appropriate.

Either way, you can then be confident that you have taken all necessary steps to secure your data before you part with your device.