Music handoff has also been pushed back to the fall
There was no mention of the HomePod at Apple’s September event, but that doesn’t mean the smart speaker is getting ignored entirely. Apple has confirmed its speaker will soon be able to support live streaming radio.
An update to the HomePod product page (spotted by 9to5Mac) now announces the update will arrive on 30 September. With it, you’ll be able to have Siri stream from 100,000 different radio stations including iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Radio.com.
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That’s great, but some users may be disappointed to know that multi-user support and music handoff – both promised for this month – have been pushed back, with the site showing them as “coming later this fall”.
They’ll be joined by an Ambient Sounds feature, which will play soothing sounds of waves, birds or many other relaxing background soundscapes.
The music handoff feature is the one we’re really looking forward to, as it will let you transfer a playing song or podcast from your phone just by holding it near the HomePod. A message will pop up on the lock screen asking if you want to hand it off to the speaker instead.
Multi-user support, meanwhile, will recognize up to six different voices in the home, and will let each individual access their personal song library, messages, calendar schedules and more.
All of the above are catch-up features as Google and Amazon offers similar on their own smart speakers. But it means that, by the end of 2019, the HomePod should be a much more capable product – just a shame it’s taken so long to get there.
