HomePod

Wireless Music Player Is No iPod Clone

by Jason Snell, Macworld.com

With its white plastic design and scroll wheel, Macsense's HomePod is inspired by Apple's iPod ( ; May 2004) in more ways than its name. But the HomePod, an MP3 player that streams music over a network from your Mac, doesn't come close to matching the elegance and ease of use of the groundbreaking player it seeks to emulate.

Music without Storage

Like Slim Devices' $299 Squeezebox ( ; April 2004), the HomePod has no hard drive. Instead, it connects via AirPort or Ethernet to the computer that houses your music collection. It supports OS 9, OS X, Windows, or Unix and can access your iTunes library and playlists.

The HomePod features an array of audio-out ports: RCA jacks and digital outputs, which fit in perfectly with a home stereo system, plus a headphone jack. The HomePod also comes with two small built-in speakers, but they sound unspeakably awful. Their audio quality was no better than that of a cheap clock radio.

Design Challenges

The HomePod's scroll wheel is a sad imitation of the iPod's. It's tall and raised, and doesn't scroll fluidly. We had problems choosing from lists of artists and albums: scrolling was either painfully slow or uncontrollably fast.

The rest of the HomePod's on-screen interface is similarly poor. Pressing the Shuffle button stops the current song and reshuffles. And switching to the main menu stops the music entirely.

While playing, the HomePod displays track information on its LCD screen, but the words are largely illegible, especially at a distance. And the HomePod doesn't let you control playback options via its Web interface.

Stability and Setup Problems

Setting up the HomePod on an Ethernet network was a breeze, but to set up via AirPort, we had to turn off our computer's WEP encryption, connect to the HomePod via a Web browser, and then turn WEP back on. And when we tried to select a shuffle through large playlists, the HomePod consistently froze until we pulled the plug. Finally, while the HomePod's packaging promises forthcoming support for various file formats, at press time the device was able to play only MP3 files. But Macsense plans to make available Web-based firmware upgrades to support AAC and WMA formats by July.

Macworld's Buying Advice

We can't recommend the HomePod. For portability, you'd be better off with an iPod and a small set of speakers. For accessing your music library via your home stereo, you'd be better off with the Squeezebox or, in a pinch, an iPod.