I replaced a pair of HomePod minis¹ with the new full-size model today. Returning from school, my son joked that “HomePod is growing” and he noticed the fresh scent and smelled it. With no pun intended, I think HomePod has indeed grown and I am excited about the purchase, it’s the right product for me. It’s final peace to fulfilling my long-lasting dream of building a Hi-Fi system for the entire home and also solving many little annoyances I had.

Music

The first song I played is Chemical Bond by Rezz & Deathpact. The amount of bass shocked me. I expected good bass, but knowing and experiencing are different. With volume just 30% I felt conscious about neighbours across the wall and below us. I hope that vibration reduction works and it doesn’t make my neighbours uncomfortable. We going to use Reduce Loud Noises at night time, and if someone complains I might switch on Reduce Bass during the evenings in the Home app.

Movies

I tried one of my favourite movies, the bank robbery scene from Dark Knight. When the window shattered, I jumped in my seat even though I knew what was going to happen. Honestly, it sounds as good as being in the cinema. I watched some Dolby Atmos — Doctor Sleep and Avengers the End Game Part 2. I wasn’t able to feel anything special about Dolby Atmos, possibly because my TV doesn’t support eARC, only ARC. Still, I am very satisfied with the sound.

Other questions

Some of you asked questions, answering everything except about the Plex, which I don’t use yet.

If you have an eARC-compatible TV and a console, is it a smooth experience?

My TV model is Philips 55PUS6401. Just yesterday I found that it supports ARC, I cycled to Apple Store and picked up the latest Apple TV model to replace my first generation 4K model. You need at least a second generation for ARC and eARC to work. I still was scared that it won’t work as Philips doesn’t mention ARC in the tech specs for my TV, I have found it through some other sites, which was strange. I had no problems activating it, it also works with my Nintendo Switch. I want to tell you more about the details.

I still don’t believe it, but it worked. As soon as I turned on the new Apple TV the option was there in the menu, and it activated successfully. Because Apple TV remote does not allow to switch inputs I rely on HDMI-CEC. I needed to switch to the console. I have turned off Apple TV, which also turns off the TV screen. Then I pressed Home on my Pro controller and the TV did the switch. Now Apple TV is off, so how is ARC supposed to work? I had to put my ear to the HomePod, I couldn’t believe that sound comes outside of it while Apple TV is off. It was a successful setup, and it works now. I will update the post and we will see how reliable it is in a long term.

One of the most annoying things about my TV is the Philips remote. Some of its buttons are lost, and the power buttons don’t work at all. Every time I use it, I feel sad because the HUD resolution feels like it was designed during the pre-HD era, not even talking about 4K. And still, I had to use it for volume control when using Nintendo Switch. Well, not any more. 🎉

Nintendo’s soundtrack is complex and listening to it from TV speakers was a poor experience. HomePod pair provides much more balanced and deep sound. I can’t wait to continue playing Mario Odyssey, Burnout Paradise and Hotline Miami with high-fidelity sound. The latter soundtrack was so annoying with the TV speakers that I had to stop playing the game.

I replaced speakers, Apple TV box, and my router at once, all my devices were confused and everything wanted to be rebooted. After rebooting, the problems went away.

How big is your room in m2 and how loud do you put the sound to watch a series/movie?

Our living room is small, you almost can see the left and right walls in the picture. I think we going to watch it not louder than 40%. Because even 40% is pretty loud. What surprised me was that I can play audio on very low volume and still feel a massive difference to HomePod mini. I am very happy that I can enjoy this more rich sound without cranking up the volume.

How smooth is it to control with the Apple TV remote control?

Instead of pixelated volume control from my TV, I get the native tvOS volume bar. I have tried to AirPlay music from my Mac and then control the music with Apple TV remote, which also works as long as the TV is on. Then I turned off the TV and started playing Radio Caroline on the HomePod pair, trying the remote. The stop/play button doesn’t do anything, but Mute and Volume up/down work.

Transition between AirPods to HomePod when you arrive home to podcasts apps.

My iPhone SE doesn’t have a proximity chip and I have to rely on the AirPlay UI, which works fine but is not as convenient. I tried bringing my wife’s iPhone up close to the HomePod and it transferred the sound almost instantly. Then I tried to do it while the TV was outputting sound from Nintendo Switch. HomePod started playing a podcast while still outputting sound from the TV. I also tried the same thing but when using AirPods and music stopped playing in AirPods and switched to the HomePod pair correctly

Listened to the latest Connected. I love my M1 Max MacBook Pro 16 as my only computer right now. Would it be great to have something as powerful with a removable touchscreen display? Probably yes. But at this point, it feels like a mirage. I feel like we will get there eventually, just not yet. The tech has to be great, it should not feel clunky. @viticci@macstories.net thinks way ahead of the curve.

Today I had a thought, wouldn’t be nice to play the original Half-Life on Mac again? Once a year I open Steam with the hope that Valve releases 64-bit support for their greatest titles. But no.

Turns out, some good people reverse-engineered the 32-bit engine, and then Mac Source Ports owner rewrote it for the 64-bit architecture and released the signed native build for Apple Silicon Macs! I played through the tutorial, and it still surprised me, I forgot that the game has physics-based puzzles. There’s some scaling issue which I couldn’t fix, the biggest problem is that aim is almost invisible. Hopefully, it will be ironed out as it looks like the work is still in progress.

The game runs great with no other issues. 450 MB for the game from Steam which Valve allows to download even though it is marked as incompatible and 14 MB for the notarised launcher. Amazing!

Oh yes, it even registered with Steam and counted my playtime. Although I wouldn’t put too much trust into that because it also says that I played just 2.9 hours of the Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, and I know I played more than that a long time ago.

I also learned that there was an ill-faited Half-Life Mac OS 9 port which was cancelled. Gabe didn’t want to compromise on the auto-update feature and multiplayer. The Mac port was cancelled weeks before its release, while it was in beta. It even bankrupted the developer. It was bad for Apple too, but I can understand the motivation to deliver the whole package. I find it very interesting.

Now there’s still the newest and greatest Half-Life game I never played through because it requires VR, and I keep wondering if is it going to be ported to Sony’s PlayStation VR2, or maybe even the speculative VR device from Apple? But this discussion is for another time, it’s getting late here.

Last night’s dinner was a disaster. I wanted to share this because failure is equally important to success.

• Even though this is a receipt from Waitrose, Sichuan pepper and sriracha for the sauce couldn’t be found.
• Tofu was cut too small.
• Tofu was kept in the oven which made them dry, even though the oven was switched off.
• Tofu bites needed to be turned half-through.
• The receipt has 250g brown sugar, which is a lot, it’s not for everyone.
• Added all the sauce at once, it was too much, basically a soup. Be careful with the sauce!
• The calories value are small.

A lesson for me is not to be seduced by a beautiful picture, but to evaluate the ingredients and value of the dish. I won’t be cooking this again.

When someone at Netflix with good taste realised that Knives Out is a great film, they purchased the rights and paid for the sequel. Glass Onion remains entertaining but lesser than the original. I recommend you start with the sequel, you won’t miss a thing plot-wise. The original is better, you will finish watching on a high note with greater satisfaction.

There are many things in Glass Onion I find annoying, boring and uninspiring. The plot leaves many questions. Mind the spoilers ahead.

• Glass Onion is all about tech and disruption but it gets so many things wrong, while the original is not about tech but it manages to pay much greater attention to detail, like destroying VHS tape with a magnet or one of the characters using Proton Mail when sending an incriminating letter.
• Everyone is hating rich tech billionaires, right? Let’s make them a villain.
• Why would you, as co-founder, leave a company to stop a dangerous project instead of leaking it to the press which would be much more effective and will leave you with all control to make sure what happened in the film is prevented?
• An why would you email the next step you going to take to your enemies, giving them a chance to stop you?
• What a great joke with a prop knife, I haven’t seen it before, and a trick with a bullet stopped by something in the victim’s pocket, how many times we have seen this cliche?
• The final explosion just seems lazy, and I am sorry, I don’t find destroying the greatest piece of art in history to be satisfying, even if it’s done for the greater good.

Both films are about class issues but the original does a much better job talking about racism, greed and unequally. Knives Out have a great character cast and are bolder and more interesting, it’s a little bit more complex. We have a nazi boy and his racist father, great. But we also see his “liberal snowflake” daughter who is not ashamed of risking Marta’s mother to being deported, worrying about the safety of her education and betraying her friend. The core message of the film is about kindness, hard work, selflessness, and sacrifice. What about Glass Onion? I only see fury and hate caused by the victim being treated unfairly.

I would like Netflix to take more risks, and instead, it seems they are going in the direction of maximising public appeal with safe sequels and black-and-white characters.

My first attempt to try something from Waitrose Food magazine (free with their membership card). This dish is healthy and easy to make. I got 4 portions which covered 2 dinners. It’s on a side of light dinner.

As you can see I should’ve chosen a larger wok and forgotten about the sesame seeds, which I had. I also forgot to add seasoning, which is mentioned in the receipt.