Apple’s costly toilet rolls… ahem, home speakers are on the way to stores and now we know more of what we can expect from these big marshmallow music players.

Apple revealed their HomePod earlier this year, an AI powered home speaker to take on Amazon Echo, Google Home and others. When it was revealed the speaker was ripped into for its round, square-ish shape that looks like a big marshmallow. With a price of $349 on top, responses have been mixed.

In a market that is already led confidently by Amazon with their Alexa powered Echo speakers, Apple will have to do something impressive to stand out in the market, especially at over double the price of an Echo. It is capable of all of the typical home speaker functions like streaming music, telling you weather forecasts, keeping your planner and so on. In fact despite it’s price mark the only unique thing it seemed capable of was Apple Connect functions.

It’s now been revealed, unsurprisingly, that the Apple HomePod speakers will run using Apple’s iOS operating software. It seems to have its own variants of the usual iOS apps, with the home screen called SoundBoard instead of SpringBoard. The app’s will be prefixed with Air rather than Apple, for example AirMusic and AirPodcasts.

It’s also assumed that the small LED screen on the top might actually be an LED matrix allowing it to display shapes and symbols for example perhaps it can show the time or a picture of a sun for sunny weather. This however hasn’t been confirmed and is currently just a prediction made on first impressions and current details.

https://twitter.com/rosewoodat5th/status/890994373466484736

Other than that there isn’t really anything new to say about the Apple HomePod, which is a shame considering it currently lacks any real appeal beyond its brand name. At over double the cost of its primary competitors in home speakers Apple are going to have to pull off something special with the HomePod to draw me in.