At CES 2019, Samsung announced something that nobody quite expected, Apple's Siri, AirPlay 2, and iTunes movies will be available on Samsung's Smart TVs.

[Samsung] will offer iTunes Movies and TV Shows and Apple AirPlay 2 support on 2019 Samsung Smart TV models beginning this spring. Support on 2018 Samsung Smart TVs will be made available via firmware update.

With Samsung Smart TVs getting support for AirPlay 2, users will be able to play their videos, movies, music, podcasts, and show photos on their Samsung Smart TVs without needing any additional hardware.

Also from the Samsung press release

iTunes Movies and TV Shows app will debut only on Samsung Smart TVs in more than 100 countries. AirPlay 2 support will be available on Samsung Smart TVs in 190 countries worldwide.

Apple has also updated their ≤a href="https://www.apple.com/airplay">AirPlay page with some additional information.

AirPlay 2–enabled TVs. Now that’s smart.

Leading TV manufacturers are integrating AirPlay 2 directly into their TVs, so now you can effortlessly share or mirror almost anything from your iOS device or Mac directly to your AirPlay 2–enabled smart TV. You can even play music on the TV and sync it with other AirPlay 2–compatible speakers anywhere in your home.

Control it all with a tap.

Use the remote that’s always with you — your iPhone. Convenient built-in controls appear in apps, on the Lock screen, and in Control Center. So you can easily play, pause, fast-forward, rewind, and adjust the volume on your TV.

Put Siri in charge of your TV.

With AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, you can use Siri on your iPhone to send a video to your TV.1 Better yet, ask Siri to play a specific show in a specific room.

It should be no surprise that Apple's Remote app will work with Smart TVs for controlling the software. It should be noted that the Samsung TVs will be apps on the TV. If users already have an existing iTunes library, they will be able to browse their collection, rent, and purchase iTunes movies right from the iTunes Movies and TV Shows app on their Samsung TV.

All of these features are coming soon. The fact that Apple is partnering with a television manufacturer does support that Apple is trying to become a services company. Along with this, it may also indicate that the video strategy for Apple will be shifting to offering video on more than just its own hardware. We do not know this for sure, but time will tell.

If you are in the market for a new television and you want to be able to integrate your existing AirPlay 2 items with your TV, the new Samsung TVs may be worth looking at.

Sources Apple and Samsung.

If you were to ask someone back in 2001, what type of products "Apple" made, they would likely say computers. Apple still makes computes, but today they are not primarily known for their computers. That is not to say that their computers are not iconic, and often sought after, but it is not their defining product. Instead, they are known for their consumer electronics, primarily the iPhone. Apple's latest product is also a consumer electronic, but it is not portable. The new product is called the HomePod.

The HomePod is first, and foremost, a music speaker. The HomePod is not just any music speaker, it has smarts. The smarts that is within the HomePod are two-fold. The first bit of smarts within the HomePod is computational in nature. The HomePod has an A8 processor to do its calculations. This is the same processor that is in the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and sixth-generation iPod Touch. This is a ton of processing power, particularly just for within a Music Speaker. The A8 is capable of handling all of the processing necessary to be able to create the best sound possible. The second bit of smarts, is Apple's assistant, Siri. The latter will be covered in a bit. First let us look at how the HomePod sounds.

The Sound

I am no audio engineer, nor do I ever espouse to being one. The only qualifications I have for being a sound engineer is adjusting the volume on my headphones or my HomePod. Along with not being an audio engineer, it is not easy to describe how a speaker sounds using text. I could do an audio clip, but the fidelity that I would be able to provide is nothing like hearing it in person. Even with all of those caveats, I will attempt to describe, as best as I can via text, how the HomePod sounds.

One of the areas in which the HomePod differs from traditional speakers is when it comes to the way the output sounds. With traditional speakers, depending on where you place them, you will not get sound all throughout the room. This is because most speakers are directional in nature, and while you can hear some sound from the sides, or behind, the speaker, it will likely be distorted. This is not the case with the HomePod.

The HomePod is capable of producing sound that can be clearly heard from nearly all parts of a room. This is possible through the computational audio mechanisms as well as the arrangement of the tweeters, since they go all around the HomePod. The ability to have clear sound throughout an entire room means that if you are having a party, everyone should be able to hear the music without any issue, which is always a good thing.

To me the HomePod produces great sound. It is by no means perfect, but it is the best speaker that I have heard. The sound is generated the one woofer, which points up from the top of the HomePod. The woofer works with the seven tweeters, which are located towards the bottom of the HomePod. The tweeters point outwards, which allows the sound to fill a room.

The HomePod is not your typical speaker. This is because the A8 Processor uses "computational audio". Computational audio is best used with the faster than real-time streaming to analyze the audio to create a better sound. Along with analyzing the sound, the HomePod also listens to the reverberation from the current audio to adjust the output with the feedback that it hears. The HomePod uses the response time to determine how close objects are to the HomePod. The HomePod will do its best to fill the entire room with sound. With control over the tweeters, the HomePod can reduce the echo that other speakers may produce by tuning the sound coming out of each of the tweeters to be able to reduce the echo, which only adds to better sound.

Siri

While the HomePod is primarily a speaker, there are some smarts within it. The smarts are provided by Apple's voice assistant, Siri. While Siri is available on all of Apple's iOS devices, as well as macOS, Siri on the HomePod has a smaller subset of functions of all of Siri's capabilities. In particular, you can ask the HomePod to play music, add items to notes, and you can even send messages to individuals, if you opt to do so.

When you ask Siri to do something on an iOS device, you have to be in close proximity of the device for Siri to hear you. This is definitely not the case with the HomePod. The HomePod has six far-field microphones that are designed to hear you no matter how loud the audio that is playing out of the HomePod actually is. During my testing, I was actually two rooms away and HomePod heard me without any difficulty and I did not have to raise my voice too much to get it to hear me. This is absolutely crucial for any smart speaker to be useful.

When you do use the trigger phrase, "Hey Siri" all of your iOS devices, and the HomePod, will have a very quick conversation to determine which one of your devices will handle your request. One thing that must be done for this to occur, as anticipated, is to have Bluetooth enabled on all of your iOS devices. For those with an Apple Watch, it is likely that Bluetooth would already be enabled on your iPhone. However, if you have another iOS device, like an iPod or iPod Touch, it is possible that you do not need Bluetooth so it will be off.

Siri Commands

There are a lot of things you can do with Siri on the HomePod, but a new one has been added. You can say "Hey Siri, play some news". The HomePod will then begin to play NPR News. There are a few other options for news. You can get news from CNN, the Washington Post, or even Fox News; depending on your preference.

Siri can perform many of the same queries as other iOS-based devices, but there are some that the HomePod cannot do. One of these is ride booking, or identifying the currently playing movie.

HomePod and HomeKit

The HomePod is a HomeKit Hub, which allows anyone within your home to control any of your HomeKit-enabled accessories that are configured in the Home app. and due to its stationary nature may actually be the ideal HomeKit Hub. This is because the HomePod can provide auditory feedback to any request that you give.

There are a couple of limitations to using Siri to adjust your HomeKit accessories. If you have things like a garage door opener or smart lock configured, you can use the HomePod to close or engage the locking mechanism. However, you cannot do the opposite, at least not without confirmation on an iPhone. This is a security mechanism because Apple does not think it should be possible for anyone to come up to your door and say "Hey Siri and have the garage door open.

I only have a couple of lights configured within HomeKit, so my testing on this is limited. However, during my testing it does seem as though the HomePod responds much faster than when the Apple TV was the primary Home Hub, and when I would request Siri turn off my lights from my iPhone or Apple Watch.

HomeKit Hubs

There is a simple way to find all of the HomeKit Hubs that are in your home. Although the steps are simple, it can be somewhat hidden. To find all of your HomeKit hubs, perform the following:

1. Open the Home app on your iOS device
2. Tap on the arrow icon in the upper left corner. You should see a list of Home Hubs

There are only two steps, but finding it is not super easy. Once you do click on the arrow, it should list all of your HomeKit Hubs. The photo below shows the three that I have, my HomePod, which is the "connected" one and the two standby hubs, which are both Apple TVs. One is my Apple TV 4K and the other is my development Apple TV.

The HomePod will automatically be the primary HomeKit hub, if there are more than one hubs in a home. I cannot say for certain, but my guess as to why this is the case is because the HomePod can provide audio feedback and is constantly powered. Any other home hubs you have can still be used, but will say "Standby".

While using Siri on the HomePod is very helpful and useful, the best thing to play on the HomePod is music. Let us look at that now.

Playing Music

One of the most common functions on the HomePod, and what the HomePod is designed for, is to play music. The HomePod works best if you subscribe to Apple Music. If you do subscribe to Apple Music, you can play any of the 45 million songs available on Apple Music. You can specify an artist, an album, or even a playlist. Playlists are not limited to just those provided by Apple. Playlists can be from your own music library. Your playlists are available because by subscribing to Apple Music the music from your iTunes Library is automatically matched or, if it is not in the Apple Music catalog, it is uploaded to Apple's servers so it is available from any of your devices.

While third-party audio services are not natively supported on the HomePod, you can use Apple's AirPlay protocol to send any audio from your iOS devices, or Mac, to the HomePod. There will be more on that in a bit.

I tested the ability to play anything from your library. I have a playlist titled "Elton John". I asked the HomePod to play this and it was able to find this without any issues and it played the songs on that playlist. I also tested playing something that it is not in the Apple Music Library. I have a recording of a The Ted Talk $8 Billion iPod, by Rob Reid. I attempted to play it by saying "Hey Sir, Play $8 Billion iPod". It did not play initially. This is because the actual title in my library is "$8 Billion iPod (Copyright Math)". Once I gave the entire title, it worked as I initially expected. Despite these successes, there were a couple of times when things did not work as expected.

Specifically, I asked the HomePod to play "Golden Hour" by Kacey Musgraves. The HomePod replied, "I couldn't find 'Golden Hour' on Apple Music or in your library". This is a bit odd, considering that I have been playing a couple of the songs from the album on repeat for the last few days, so I knew it was available.

During my testing the album "Golden Hour" was only available for pre-order, and there is a song by the name of "Golden Hour" on the album. I tried the same thing on my iPhone and got the following response:

I suspect that this is what Siri on the HomePod was also transcribing it to. Since there is no way to see what the HomePod is interpreting requests as, it make it heard to determine. If I said "Hey Siri, play the Golden Hour album by Kacey Musgraves", it got it without a problem. I am thinking that the reason it was able to get it was because I specified "Kacey Musgraves" and it was able to translate "gold an hour" to "Golden Hour". But this is simply a guess. Now, let us move on to other ways you can control music on the HomePod.

Controlling Music

The primary interaction method for the HomePod is your voice. You can use the trigger phrase "Hey Siri" to adjust the volume, amongst other things. While asking Siri to do things from time to time is fine. But, if you are really enjoying the music using Siri might not be the best experience. Luckily, there is an option for using your iOS device to control the HomePod. There are two locations that you can control the HomePod. The first is in Control Center, and the second is in the Music app.

In order to control a HomePod using Control Center, perform the following:

1. Bring up Control Center
2. Tap and hold on the "Now Playing" section
3. Scroll down to the HomePod you want to control
4. Tap on the HomePod you want to control.

Here you can adjust the volume, play and pause, and jump forward or backwards. In order to control the HomePod via the Music app perform the following:

1. Open the Music app
2. Tap on the "AirPlay" icon
3. Scroll to the HomePod
4. Tap on the HomePod to connect it
5. Tap in the background to close the AirPlay selection window

With the Music app, you can control using the same functions as within Control Center, but you can also choose any song from your music library and you can play any of the songs that you want. Additionally, you can also put any songs in the "up next" queue, so you can create the perfect playlist for your HomePod. This is perfect for parties, or in any situation where you want to play a list of music without having to constantly adjust it.

Once you have performed the steps above, you can now play just about anything to the HomePod. When you do this, you are not using AirPlay to send the music over, instead the HomePod is playing the music directly, and the Music app is acting just like a remote.

There is one specific thing to remember when trying to control music via your iOS device, you cannot connect to the Ho,prod without being on the same wireless network. Having Bluetooth enabled is not enough. You can control who is able to connect to you HomrPod. This is done via the home app. To set limitations on the HomePod perform the following steps:

1. Open the home app.
2. Tap on the arrow in the upper left corner.
3. Under speakers, select "Allow Speaker Access".

Here you can choose what type of access to allow. The options are, "Everyone", "Anyone On The Same Network" or "Only People Sharing This Home". You can also require a password to be able to connect to the HomePod. Enabling a password provides a second layer of authentication. Enabling a password will allow anyone to see the speaker, but they would need the password to connect to it. The password option is only available with the first two options, "Everyone" and "Anyone On The Same Network".

Even though the Music app is controlling music, you can play any other audio on your iOS device. When you do this, the new audio will take over for the music that was previously playing on the HomePod.

Stay Tuned

This concludes the first half of my HomePod review. Keep your eye out for the second half, which will cover the HomePod and Apple TV, upcoming features, updating the HomePod, and feature requests.

Apple's World Wide Developer Conference kicks off one week from today, on Monday June 13th. The keynote for the event is at 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific time. Back in April I posted my wish list for iOS and OS X. Here are my predictions for what we will see next week.

Hardware

WWDC has seen its share of new hardware being released. However, last year as well as in 2014, WWDC did not see any new hardware released. Even though the past couple of years have been hardware free, I think this year's WWDC will see some new hardware. This will include things that developers will love; a new Mac Pro and a new Thunderbolt display. If Apple were to announce high-end hardware like this, WWDC would be the best place to do so. Besides this, developers are one of the target audiences for the Mac Pro, and there is no where better to announce new hardware for developers.

Emoji

Language is a fluid and dynamic entity. New words are being created, and other words are being re-appropriated for other uses. There are times though that words do not always accurately evoke the sentiment that we are looking to express. This is where Emoji come in handy. Emoji are handled by the Unicode consortium. The latest release of Emoji are to be included with Unicode 9.0, which will be released on June 21st. It is almost a foregone conclusion that we will see the Emoji of Unicode 9.0 in iOS 10. It may not be in the first beta, but it will likely be in the 2nd or 3rd beta, and most definitely by the first public beta.

Swift

I am thinking that Swift will be a giant portion of the conference. There are a couple of indications that this is the case. The first is that the WWDC site is full of Swift code. This is the first indication. The second is that Apple is preparing Swift 3 for release. Swift 3 is set to bring many new features to the language, including it being the last one to do any major code-breaking changes.

iOS

Apple's biggest selling product, the iPhone, is supported by iOS. There haven't been any rumors leaked as to what we will see with iOS, but here is what I think.

Naming

With this year's WWDC, it will be the 10th release of iOS. If tradition were to continue, Apple may just name the release iOS 10. Alternatively, Apple could name it iOS X and start changing the numbering she me. However, the 10th release is a good time to change tact. Instead of continuing to use the same numbering scheme, it may be time to change to a code name instead. Apple could start using the same code name as OS X. Given that there are times that the feature of iOS work best with the corresponding release of OS X. This approach may just work best in the long run. Yes, it would require users to know the name of the OS installed on their iPhone, yet the version of the OS could still appear under Settings.

Audio

The audio on the iPad Pro is excellent. One of the areas where iOS lacks is in the audio arena. Currently on iOS you can only record audio, but not listen at the same time. This limitation makes it difficult to be able to do a podcast entirely on an iPad, or even an iPhone. I predict that Apple will announce the ability to not only listen, but also record simultaneously. If Apple does indeed add this, there will be many happy podcasters. Additionally, this would make it even easier for non-techies to create and edit their own podcasts.

tvOS

tvOS is Apple's latest operating system, based on iOS. There are many features that could be added to tvOS. One that users have been asking about is the ability to allow developers to be able require a controller for their game. Currently, Apple does not allow this to occur. If Apple really does want to make the Apple TV viable as a gaming platform, the ability to require a controller is key. I think this will be an increase in the number of podcasts, with decent audio, being released; beyond what is happening now.

watchOS

watchOS has been around for just about 18 months. It was originally released in November of 2014 with the first release of Xcode with WatchKit. Last year at WWDC 2015, Apple unveiled watchOS, which allows developers to create applications that run natively on the watch.

I think there will be a slight improvement with watchOS. I think the biggest improvement will come with applications becoming faster. Some of the current speed issues is due to limitations in the hardware, but the applications do need to become faster.

The only other feature that I think we will see is the ability to create and use custom watch faces. Imagine that any company, or developer, could release a custom watch face that was able to look how one wants. It could allow for even more customization for the Apple Watch.

OS X

Along with the developer betas of iOS 10, tvOS 10, and watchOS 4, comes the oldest Apple operating system, OS X.

Naming

One of the rumors for OS X is that the name of the operating system will be changed from OS X to macOS. I did not originate this idea, but as I stated in my OS X post then:

On Episode 123 of The Talk Show with John Gruber Apple’s Vice President of Marketing, Phil Schiller, was asked about the casing of the various operating systems of Apple (iOS, tvOS, watchOS). Gruber asked why OS X was different. Schiller responded “give us time”. As Jason Snell of Six Colors has postulated “OS X will be renamed to macOS”. This is entirely possible and given the hints, it is likely to occur.

I think we will see this. Instead of being macOS 10.12, it will just be called macOS, without any numbering. If Apple is going for a cleaner look, this will definitely assist in that coming to fruition. During the 3D Touch demo at the September 2015 event, "...Apple showed an email with three place names within it. These names are Manteca, Tehachapi, and Arroyo Grande".

As mentioned above, iOS could utilize a codename instead of continuing the numbering that has been prevalent since its initial release. I think macOS and iOS codename will be "Arroyo Grande".

Siri

There have been rumors that Siri will make its way onto the Mac. The rumors also state that Siri will replace spotlight. Siri will be able to do everything that is possible on iOS. In addition, Siri will be able to search users files, much like Spotlight can do now, except it can be done via voice.

With having a large battery, power conversation is less of a concern for the Mac, but it is still important. I think Siri will gain the ability to perform tasks via voice. For instance, you will be able to say "Siri, turn off the screen", and the screen will turn off. Or something similar, like "Siri, open Tweetbot", and the Tweetbot application will open.

Recap

Here is what I think we will see, in order of likelihood.

• Some news about Swift 3.0.
• New Emoji that are included in Unicode 9.0.
• OS X will be renamed to macOS.
• Siri will appear on the Mac, replacing Spotlight
• Siri on the Mac will gain the ability to open applications.
• iOS will get enhanced audio abilities that podcasters will like.
• iOS and macOS will both use code names; that name will be Arroyo Grande.
• Apple will allow developers to require controllers for tvOS games.
• watchOS will get faster applications and customizable Watch faces.
• New Hardware with the Mac Pro and Display

Regardless of what Apple does end up unveiling next week, I know I will be watching the keynote live. I will also be installed the iOS on my iPhone and my iPad, macOS on my iMac and my MacBook Pro, tvOS on my 4th Generation Apple TV. I will also be posting a recap of the event as well as how well my predictions did. So be sure to check in again next week.

This Siri outtake is from Lance (@lagilliland1 on Twitter). Thanks Lance! Keep them coming

Siri Outtake #49, Siri wants to take Halloween off and will not comment on its costume nor whether it's going to go trick or treating.

Happy Halloween.

Siri Outtake #47. Man, these just keep coming...