I suppose this is a subject we’ll get beyond, but it’s early the game for the HomePod, and there are still things left to be discovered. So as more and more reviewers and owners begin to try out their new HomePods, you can bet problems will be discovered. Some might relate to the early adopter phenomenon, where the initial shipments of a new gadget might have glitches of one sort or another.

There are reports, for example, of early setup issues. Apple has already addressed some of the problems in support documents, and as the product spreads around the world, no doubt there will be more. But Apple can certainly release updates to address these and other issues. There will be an update in the future, for example, to allow you to set up a pair of HomePods for a more realistic stereo image and, I suppose, to convey the feel of surround sound.

The audio quality may either be exceptional or pretty good with distinct flaws that may vary from musical track to musical track. By using the word “amazing,” Apple may have established unrealistic expectations for what it can do.

After it, it only cost $349. That may seem costly compared to an Amazon Echo, but it’s very inexpensive for a quality home speaker system, very inexpensive. Bob Carver, a legendary audio designer I’ve known for years, is currently selling a modern version of his Amazing ribbon loudspeaker for $18,500 the pair. The 1990’s version that I once owned cost a fraction of that, and there are even more expensive speaker systems out there. My late brother Wally purchased a gigantic tower system, the Duntech Sovereign, in the 1980s for $20,000. In 2018 dollars, it would cost $41,904! Other models carry six-figure price tags.

Obviously those systems are positively huge, whereas the HomePod is just 6.8 inches high. That it does what it does reasonably well has to be — to use that word again — an amazing achievement. Again, it’s very likely it’ll get better over time as Apple finds better ways to improve its auto-configure algorithms. Of course, buyers may not want to consider whether they are being used and abused as paid beta testers.

At this point, the best advice I’d offer, and I’d give it even I spent weeks with one, is that your mileage may vary. Give it a listen if you can, and don’t be disappointed if you buy one, but decide to return it because it doesn’t meet your needs. Nobody should condemn you for expressing your personal preferences.

There may even be a scandal in making that one might call “white ring gate,” because of a curious phenomenon discovered by some users, and at least one product reviewer, where it deposits a white ring on certain wood surfaces. Apple has already posted a support document on the issue. that it results from placing the unit on some oiled wood services, which sometimes interact with the speaker’s silicone base.

Apple claims it’s not unusual and quite a normal effect for gadgets with a silicone base, and they list ways to clean it. It’s apparently not permanent.

What’s more, it is evidently not unique to the HomePod. One reviewer, from Tom’s Guide, reported a similar effect with the Sonos One, which sports silicone feet. Some basic problem in a different shape, same solution, so why must it all be blamed on Apple?

You can ask a legitimate question, though. Was it necessary for Apple to use silicone? Knowing of this problem, would it have not been better to use a different substance, or does silicone do a better job of isolating the speaker from a surface? I’ll let the engineers in our audience ponder that one, but if you put it on a mat, that already changes the equation.

In the meantime, several manufacturers are already developing solutions. Pad & Quill, a company that makes cases for iPhones and iPads, will offer the Leather HomePod Coaster, sporting an ultra soft leather backing, for $19.95. Other entrants into this nascent market include six-packs of leather coasters for less than $14, serving the needs of people who have several oiled wood surfaces around the home to protect.

I don’t know the percentage of HomePod users afflicted by this phenomenon, but it seems clear there are solutions. I would only wonder if these solutions could possibly alter the isolation of the unit from a surface to the extent that audio quality suffers, but I can’t see where that should matter, since Apple is evidently not restricting the HomePod’s setup on any normal surface aside no doubt from those containing an abrasive material, or are wet.

Besides, if an entrepreneur can cash in on helping HomePod users escape the alleged ravages of “white ring gate,” why not?

Does that mean Apple will see the need to redesign the unit to escape the problem with the HomePod 2? I wouldn’t know, but the apparent ease with which this problem can be fixed — other than some cleaning solution or a soft cloth — make it quite clear that this is no scandal or even a serious problem. And if you are going to blame Apple for its design priorities, what about Sonos, which has far more experience building smart speakers?

Long long ago, when I had a lot more money than I do now, I owned a fairly expensive stereo system. The centerpiece was the Carver Amazing Platinum Mark IV speakers. In polished black, they were truly imposing, with a 60-inch tall ribbon driver and four 12-inch subwoofers in each unit.

I placed the electronics, which included a preamplifier equipped with tubes no less, in a black cabinet situated  between the speakers. Despite my feeling that they were extremely delicate, they came in a secure box and I moved three times during the years I owned them, but they never sustained damage from those long trips. I did have to replace the ribbon assembly on one of the units early on, however, due a manufacturing defect. But I also had help direct from the designer, my old friend Bob Carver. Yes, I got them at a discount.

To be sure, they sounded great, but my listening habits changed over the years. As I explained in an earlier post, I sold the entire system, sans cabinet, more than a decade ago to raise funds for a relative suffering from deep financial stress.

In any case, when I first read about Apple’s HomePod I could only compare them in a perverse way to the Amazings. Apple’s smart speaker is a mere 6.8 inches high, and weighs 5.5 pounds. Unlike Carver’s giant old fashioned system that required careful manual placement in a listening area, the HomePod is meant to be set and forget.

The Amazings worked best positioned at least two or three feet from a rear wall, although your mileage might vary. The HomePod is meant to be positioned most anywhere in your home, with an elaborate automatic fine-tuning system to adapt itself. It sports a calibration setup with six mics and the promise of “transparent studio-level dynamic processing.”

Aside from the obvious limitations of a small woofer compared to four large ones, Apple’s marketing plan implies it can do almost anything, play almost anything and deliver something approaching audiophile quality sound.

Apple boasts of “amazing sound from every angle.” But the use of that word is nowhere related to the name of Carver’s classic speaker system. Carver just has a thing for elaborate branding.

In the real world, the HomePod has gotten mostly positive reviews, but Apple hasn’t discovered a way to violate the laws of physics. A tiny speaker can only play so loud despite all the signal processing. It doesn’t appear to be altogether sensitive to positioning, and audio quality can be really good, or perhaps not so good depending on the reviewer and perhaps the choice of musical material.

The Mac Observer’s John Martellaro took a pretty realistic point of view about the HomePod during a recording session for the February 17th episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE. He suggested that it is meant more for background listening than a replacement for a dedicated stereo system used for focused listening of your favorite music. A $350 system can only do so much, and it’s only the first product with the original software. No doubt Apple will improve its auto-tuning capability to deal with edge cases. John cited one I hadn’t thought about, such as the impact to audio quality when a salt shaker was placed close to the unit, and thus interfered with its ability to correctly detect room reflections.

Consumer Reports magazine has generated lots of coverage of its preliminary test results concluding that the audio quality of the HomePod was very good, but not perfect, and somewhat inferior to the Google Home Max and Sonos One. None of them, CR claims, can match a regular Bluetooth wireless speaker, though I’m not sure why that should matter.

But when John talks about the toxic impact of an idly paced salt shaker, I thought about CR’s dedicated listening room and whether there was any placement situation there that might hurt the HomePod’s auto-configure capabilities.

What if, for example, the HomePod was placed in a row with other speaker systems nearby rather than all by itself? Well, CR’s video of their test setup confirmed that it was placed between the Google and Sonos speakers, with others in shelves behind it. It also appeared that it was treated with sound deadening material, similar to what you might find in a recording studio. Is that the ideal placement for a HomePod or any home speaker system? How does such a setup duplicate a typical home, unless you moonlight as an audio dealer or run a home studio?

Yes, I realize audio showrooms often contain rows and rows of speakers situated almost adjacent to one another. But most of those speakers are not equipped with six mics and a powerful computer to tune themselves to a listening area by sensing such characteristics as wall reflections and such sound deadlining features as thick carpeting. Would such a setup be capable of compensating for banks of speakers around it? The accidental salt shaker test from a Mac Observer reporter raises some suspicions.

The CR video appears to confirm such suspicions. It wouldn’t be the first time CR was caught using questionable test methods. Don’t forget the way notebook PCs are tested for battery life. Sites are repeatedly downloaded from a server, which seems reasonable, but the default browser’s cache is turned off, which is not reasonable.

None of that explains the problems columnist and podcaster Kirk McElhearn encountered with his first test of an HomePod, however. A misplaced salt shaker perhaps? Or just someone else’s opinion?

Even though the Mac-oriented blogs are still dealing with the implications of the less-favorable review of the HomePod from Consumer Reports, I thought I’d take a breather. But CR has clearly learned that putting Apple in the headlines generates lots of coverage, especially if it’s negative.

Now then: There have been published reports that, beginning with macOS 10.14 and iOS 12, you’ll be able to run an iPhone or iPad app on a Mac. And vice versa, although I can see some complexities that are being overlooked in the simplistic coverage about so-called Universal apps.

But remember that none of this has been confirmed by Apple.

Now this wouldn’t be the first time that Apple made it possible to develop apps running on two different processors. Besides, the Unix core of iOS and macOS were designed to be portable, capable of running on multiple processors. There was even an Intel version of NeXTSTEP, precursor to the original Mac OS X. So when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel CPUs beginning in 2006, it wasn’t such a big deal. There was already a version of the OS running on Intel in the test labs just in case such a change became necessary.

In the early days, it was possible to build apps that would run on Intel and PowerPC, which surely eased the transition. And iOS is basically a slimmed down version of macOS designed to run efficiently on mobile gear.

So it makes perfect sense that Apple would allow developers to build a new variation of Universal apps to cover it’s current line of computing devices.

One article I read, however, suggests this might be a way to begin a wide scale transition from Mac to iPhone and iPad. Remember when Steve Jobs referred to Macs as trucks? So are they planning on building crossovers?

It’s certainly true that there has been some level of cross-pollination across iOS and macOS. Some of this is very much done to provide a more consistent user experience among all of Apple’s computers. This practice resulted, for a time, in complaints about the iOSification of the Mac, that more and more elements of the mobile platform would replace or supplant the traditional macOS interface.

For the most part, however, the changes were minor. Also don’t forget that iOS 11 brought some Mac multitasking elements, such as a Dock, to the iPad. A Files app, a sort of simplified Finder, allows direct access to some of your files on iPhones and iPads.

But don’t assume a merger is imminent or in the cards. It may very well be that Apple wanted to improve the ability to use productivity apps on the iPad, and taking some cues from the Mac was simply the logical thing to do. There may be more of that in future iOS updates, but that, again, doesn’t mean the Mac is due to be supplanted. It may simply be a matter of providing the best tools for the tasks at hand.

So what sort of iOS apps would you expect to run best on a Mac? Probably those designed for the iPad, which is closer to a personal computer than an iPhone. The possibilities would be far more limited the other way around, because those sprawling Mac apps, such as Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXPress, aren’t optimized to work with touchscreens, and their resource requirements are immense. As it stands, Adobe already has iOS apps, but they offer limited functionality and, again, they are optimized for touch rather than a mouse or a trackpad.

Such significant interface differences would require adjustments and devising easy conversion schemes to make it possible for apps to run on both platforms without serious modification. Remember, too, that iPhones and iPads are designed as limited resource gadgets, with less RAM and less storage space than a Mac.

That situation is improving, however. Apple is already offering up to 256GB storage on iOS gear. The iPhone X, however, maxes out at 3GB RAM. How long will it be before it hits 8GB to higher, something more capable of handling a resource heavy Mac app? Or will the new Universal app development scheme help programmers to slim down their software and remove bloat?

Another possibility is that Apple is considering yet another Mac CPU change. There are already ARM coprocessors with limited functionality on the MacBook Pro and the iMac Pro. Don’t be surprised to see this approach on the promised Mac Pro and other Macs beginning this year.

Does that mean Apple might go all the way, ditch Intel, and go all in for its own CPU designs? With fewer resource limitations, it may be possible to scale up the A-series processor to run much faster on a Mac. So it would certainly be possible for Apple to make the switch.

As with its previous processor switches, there would be a way to run Intel apps on ARM, and the conversion process would be simplified. Perhaps the ability to build Universal apps will ease such a switchover.

But what about the ability to run Windows at full tilt on a Mac with Boot Camp, and with decent performance with a virtual machine? Could Apple provide an efficient level of Intel emulation on ARM, so you won’t lose much performance from the switchover?

I do not pretend to know the actual reasons for these developments. As I said, there is no confirmation that Universal apps are really coming. No doubt Apple has tested such possibilities, however, even a potential ARM switchover. But that doesn’t mean any of it is going to happen anytime soon.

Let me put this in perspective. Consumer Reports magazine, supposedly an incorruptible source of product reviews and advice, is often at odds with other product reviewers. CR more or less implies that they have the advantage over other publications by dint of the fact that they buy all the products they test, usually anonymously. That way they cannot get a “ringer,” a product that may be specially modified by the manufacturer and thus is not a true example of what customers will get when purchasing the product via the usual channels.

That said, having reviewed consumer products for over 25 years, I never encountered any evidence that I received anything that was different from what a regular customer would buy.

I will also grant that CR will, when publishing reviews that have a subjective factor, such as the sound quality of an audio system or the picture quality of a TV set, may not reach the same conclusions as others.

Take my  VIZIO SB3621 sound bar, the 2017 version. It comes with a wireless Bluetooth subwoofer. According to CNET, it’s a game-changer, matching or exceeding gear costing twice its average $150 purchase price. CR tested similar sound bars from VIZIO, but none of them rose beyond a “good” rating, though they still ended up among the top ten. The description of the sound quality of a similar sound bar, the SB3821, revealed many flaws. But I’ll grant that the two models are different, models with a “38” designation are 38 inches wide, whereas the one I have is 36 inches wide. While they ought to be similar, they appear to come from different years, and that could also account for some of the differences beyond the subjective factors.

CR’s review of the TV I own, a 55-inch M-Series, afforded it a lower rating than was awarded by CNET, which considered it one of the best they’ve tested at its price point and when compared to gear costing a lot more.

Long and short, is CNET simply less critical, or are their priorities different? But slightly different models and/or different firmware versions may also account for changes in performance.

Now when it comes to Apple’s HomePod, CR has published its preliminary review, which includes listening tests from a panel in a dedicated listening room with unspecified size and design.

But for Apple’s smart speaker, it shouldn’t matter. Most reviews gave it high marks, with amazing sound quality for its size in different listening areas. One review compared it to a KEF studio monitor costing almost three times as much. Another reviewer, as quoted in AppleInsider, made detailed measurements, and come up with results that were about as flat as any speaker gets across the frequency range. The reviewer who conducted those tests characterized highs as “exceptionally crisp” and bass as “incredibly impressive,” meaning tight and natural. Take note of this.

Now columnist Kirk McElhearn is very much into a variety of musical styles, from classical, to jazz to rock. He listens carefully, and he’s someone I take very seriously. His experience with a brand new HomePod was very different from the crowd. Sometimes it didn’t sound so good, muddy and bassy. He tried it with a TV set and it failed on all counts.

CR’s first look was more measured. Pitted against the $400 Google Home Max, and a $200 Sonos One, the HomePod also received a “very good” rating. But the other two were still judged superior. To CR, the HomePod’s bass was “boomy and overemphasized,” the midrange was “somewhat hazy,” and treble was “underemphasized,” the equivalent of being distant or less clear. Doesn’t sound very good to me. But the magazine also concluded that these smart speakers were all “reasonably short” of regular wireless speakers.

Again, we know nothing of the design of CR’s listening room, or the abilities of its listening panel, but I would hope they are skilled at such tasks. In large part, CR’s results weren’t far off from Kirk’s. But the reviewer quoted from AppleInsider, as indicated above, came up with decidedly different conclusions.

I’d normally be skeptical of CR’s results, since it wouldn’t be the first time they differed from the consensus, but since the listening results were similar to what Kirk reported on some musical material and TV shows, I take it seriously too.

It’s quite possible much of the disparity is just due to the fact that different people just hear things differently and they are entitled to their preferences. I suppose it’s possible that the HomePods that CR and Kirk tested were defective in some fashion, or that the software needs to be adjusted to better configure the system to deliver similar sonic qualities in a wider variety of listening environments.

And don’t forget the problems CR had when testing the 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Battery life tests were all over the place, until Apple got involved, and an obscure bug was discovered with caching when using Safari in the Develop mode to turn off that feature. It was fixed, the MacBook Pro passed the retests and garnered high ratings from CR.

Since Apple claims that the HomePod can adapt itself for a variety of listening areas, maybe they’ll enter the fray to see what’s up. Or maybe all this is due to the fact that no active speaker system can be the perfect solution for every listening area. It’s a reason why I suggest you listen to one before you buy it if you can. Either way, if it doesn’t work the way you want, don’t assume it’ll be fixed eventually. Nothing wrong with returning a product that doesn’t satisfy you, even if it’s from Apple.