This week: the HomePod reviews are coming out hot and heavy, and they’re surprising.  We’ll tell you what people like, love, and hate about Apple’s new speaker. Plus: something strange is happening at Apple HQ… we’ll tell you more.    This episode supported by   Casper’s American-made mattresses have just the right amount of memory foam and latex, and people everywhere love them.  Learn why and get $50 towards any mattress at Casper.com/cultcast.   Print postage from your office and take advantage of special shipping discounts at pb.com/cultcast, and beat the postage rate increase with exclusive discounts on letters.  Plans start at just $5 a month!   CultCloth will keep your iPhone X, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time use code CULTCAST at checkout to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co.   On the show this week @erfon / @bst3r / @lkahney   HomePod meta review: Superb sound, stupid Siri https://www.cultofmac.com/527523/homepod-meta-review-great-sound-shitty-siri/ Apple seeded a few review units to major outlets ahead of this Friday’s HomePod launch. The embargo lifted Tuesday morning, and the early reviews reveal a few surprising tidbits about the HomePod.   HomePod sound quality is amazing TechCrunch: “Apple’s HomePod is easily the best sounding mainstream smart speaker ever. It’s got better separation and bass response than anything else in its size and boasts a nuance and subtlety of sound that pays off the 7 years Apple has been working on it.”   HomePod sounds better than expensive speakers WSJ: “The HomePod sounds noticeably richer and fuller than almost every other speaker we’ve testedApple’s audio engineering team did something really clever and new with the HomePod, and it really works. I’m not sure there’s anything out there that sounds better for the price, or even several times the price.   HomePod sucks at music recommendations Apple frames the ability to tell Siri to play your favorite music, and immediately hear soothing tones blasted out of the speaker, as one of the HomePod’s main draws. Cupertino promises that Siri will learn your musical tastes over time, but based on The New York Times’ review, that’s not what actually happens.   HomePod only syncs with one iCloud account That sucks if you don’t live alone.   Not a very good assistant Siri is limited and doesn’t compete with Alexa or Google intelligence. TechCrunch: Siri doesn’t do a lot of “other” stuff that isn’t about audio content. Apple says this is because the vast majority of people use these speakers for basic commands like playing music and setting timers. But it does offer best-in-class voice recognition, vastly outstripping the ability of other smart speakers to hear you trying to trigger a command at a distance or while music is playing, but its overall flexibility is stymied by the limited command sets that the Siri protocol offers. Siri can’t even set more than one timer Siri can’t recognize multiple voices (someone could ask it to read your texts, or even send an iMessage)   You can use Spotify via AirPlay, but you can’t control it with your voice   The smarts are in the music tech When plugged in, HomePod goes through a series of aural exercises you first plug it in to determine how best to structure its sound. It also includes an accelerometer, so if you move the speaker, it will retune itself. Eddie Cue revealed recently that HomePod will adjust how it sounds to each song you play based on Apple’s analytics.   Redheads and superheroes included in 150+ new emojis for 2018 https://www.cultofmac.com/527963/red-heads-superheroes-included-150-new-emoji-2018/ The Unicode Consortium has approved more than 150 new emoji characters that will likely be headed to iOS and macOS later this year. The Unicode Consortium has approved more than 150 new emoji characters that will likely be headed to iOS and macOS later this year.   Apple hiring spree means something big is