I stumbled upon a video on YouTube which starts with the host blaming Ukranian soldiers for using chemical weapons (cyanide). 2 people are speaking for a long time, the host and an ex-military adviser who is likely not aware that he is been fooled or purposefully lying. The video shows brief footage stitched together with sounds removed. They conveniently don’t link to the original source. There’s nothing in the source video which suggests the use of chemicals, it shows some explosive charges and a powered-off fridge. You can say that fridge is not on because there’s no frost or ice inside the freezer compartments. There are multiple comments in Telegram which mention that this material has been used by Russian propaganda. That’s what they do, they use real footage, then add a bunch of lies on top. Russians produce controversial materials regularly on a massive scale and it works well on domestic audiences. I’m concerned this is been used to mislead English-speaking audiences.

The video has only pro-Russian comments, my comments were deleted immediately. I encourage you to report the video as disinformation. If you still have concerns about drone footage, I found a good explainer article which analyses footage and has lots of information about the real use of chemical weapons in historic context. Chemical weapons are used very rarely in modern warfare. But there’s evidence of some chemical weapons used in Mariupol by Russia.

Generally, you need labs and protective gear when producing chemical weapons, it would require state support and can’t be just produced in a basement and stored in a turned-off fridge. Ukraine depends on western support, bragging about breaking the Geneva convention would be dumb. Donate to help Ukrainian efforts. 🇺🇦

I’ve been always interested in home audio equipment, tinkering with sound since high school, and pursuing the best possible quality while staying on budget. Usually, I just used whatever we had at home.

My first home theatre is a 5.1 Sven audio system combined with an external TV tuner and SoundBlaster audio card. The amount of time I spent connecting the wires, and playing with the drivers and DVD player apps was tremendous. I never could get 5.1 sound in games to work properly and I think eventually one of the smallest speakers died. I ended up using the subwoofer and 2 speakers because it was the most reliable setup. I remember playing Half-Life 2 and the motorboat level — the strong soundtrack made these memories special. The sounds of the Citadel and the energy gun are still alive in my memory, somewhere at that time I realised that at some moments I enjoy virtual worlds more than real life.

My second system was from Technics. It didn’t have a subwoofer, but I had a stock receiver/amp with manual input switching. They sounded much cleaner and sharper than my old system, although the bass was not so powerful. Because these are traditional speakers they blast sound from one direction, and to enjoy them properly you have to be in front of them. I also needed to switch input manually whenever going from Mac to TV.

I tried various setups with used speakers when we moved to the UK. Nothing satisfied me. Kids kept messing with the knobs, putting toys into the subwoofer and so on. When I heard how Marco Arment praised OG HomePod privacy and quality, I was intrigued, the OG model was discontinued likely because of hardware failures. I was very happy to order the HomePod 2 and I think it’s the best setup I had so far. If you like me and maintain a personal music library with songs not available on any streaming services, by signing up to iTunes Match (£21.99 per year) you can keep your library available to any of the HomePod speakers through Siri. AirPlay 2 works well and allows me to stream music to every room in my house with no issues or lag. I can control playback from any device in the same network, inclding, Apple Watch. A circular shape allows sound to fill the room, no matter where you are.

HomePod 2 in stereo pair (£598) working with Apple TV (£169) should be interesting for people who are not happy with the sound from their TV and want higher sound quality than what any soundbar can offer. HomePod has good stereo separation and stronger bass than soundbars and the quality of the speakers outperforms any smart speaker out there and is comparable or even better than Sonos. Achieving even higher quality and adding more speakers would increase the cost substantially. You would want to add a subwoofer, central channel and rear speakers. You most likely need a dedicated amplifier. AirPlay 2 amps cost more (Sonos UK) or much more (Sony) than 2 HomePods. Some amps work best after calibration and room measuring.

HomePod to home audio could become is what iPhone became to the professional cameras world. I believe most families don’t have any connected speakers at all. It’s a big opportunity for Apple. They always have been good with democratising technology and bringing to a mass market something which is used only by enthusiasts or professionals. iPhone eventually replaced DSLR cameras for most of us. HomePod is trying to achieve the same with home audio. More affordable, easier to handle and with surprisingly good sound. There are no audio wires, setup is quick, and with ARC, you can use it for your game consoles. HomePod is small and elegant and can match any interior design, they take up very little space. There’s nothing quite like it. I don’t believe that Apple cancelled the OG model because of poor sales, I think it was the hardware flaw which require more time to fix, Apple did the right thing by pulling the flawed model with an outdated chip.

And yet HomePod 2 is misunderstood by MKHD and other vloggers and even by Myke at Connected. To appreciate it you have to live with it, and I sincerely hope that by the word of mouth, it ends up in more homes than the flawed OG. Or at least there will be enough HomePod users for Apple to keep this product alive.

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.