Anunciado na semana passada, o HomePod mini 2 traz algumas novidades bastante interessantes, como o suporte à Siri AI e um processador atualizado. Ainda assim, como ele se parece bastante com o seu antecessor (principalmente em termos de design), é possível que algumas pessoas ainda estejam confusas quanto às melhorias promovidas pela Apple.

Se você é uma delas, saiba que está no artigo certo! A seguir, vamos passar por todas as diferenças entre o HomePod mini de primeira geração e o HomePod mini 2 — assim, você poderá decidir qual dos dois modelos comprar ou se vale a pena trocar o seu.

Design e dimensões

Aqui você vai encontrar mais semelhanças do que diferenças entre as duas gerações da caixa de som inteligente, que contam com o mesmo visual geral, introduzido em 2020, com novas cores adicionadas em 2021 e posteriormente em 2024.

Com um corpo esférico envolto por uma malha colorida, ambos os modelos têm 84,33mm de altura e 97,9mm de largura, com diferença apenas no peso, menor no HomePod mini 2: 335g (ante os 345g do modelo de primeira geração).

Como dito, as cores do HomePod mini de primeira geração já foram atualizadas algumas vezes, e o modelo chegou a ser vendido nas opções branca, amarela, laranja, azul e meia-noite. O HomePod mini 2, por sua vez, pode ser adquirido nas cores branca, rosa, verde, azul e meia-noite.

Ambos os modelos seguem vindo com uma superfície circular retroiluminada com botões de “+” e “-” para ajuste rápido de volume.

A Apple disponibilizará o recurso Brilho do Som (Sound Glow), que faz essa superfície pulsar e brilhar em tempo real de acordo com a música que está tocando, para todos os modelos do HomePod mini e para o HomePod de segunda geração.

Tecnologia de áudio

Nesse quesito temos algumas mudanças bem curiosas de uma geração para a outra, embora pouco tenha mudado do ponto de vista de hardware.

O que ambos os modelos têm:

• Driver de alcance completo e dois radiadores passivos para graves profundos e frequências altas nítidas;
• Guia de onda acústica personalizada para um campo sonoro de 360º;
• Tecido acusticamente transparente;
• Áudio computacional para ajustes em tempo real;
• Reconhecimento de Som para alarmes de fumaça e monóxido de carbono;
• Áudio multiambiente com AirPlay;
• Compatibilidade com setups de áudio estéreo.

O que apenas o HomePod mini 2 tem:

• Compatibilidade com som surround quando emparelhado a uma Apple TV 4K;
• Pode ser usado como caixa de som para Macs;
• Chip S10.

Em termos de hardware de áudio, o HomePod mini de primeira geração leva vantagem em apenas um item: o número de microfones. Enquanto o modelo mais antigo vem com quatro microfones embutidos “para Siri em distâncias grandes”, o HomePod mini 2 vem com “apenas” três.

É possível, no entanto, que a Apple esteja compensando a ausência de um microfone no novo modelo com as novas capacidades de software viabilizadas pelo chip S10, bem mais moderno do que o S5 do HomePod mini de primeira geração.

Fontes e controles de áudio

Aqui, nada mudou. Ambos os modelos podem reproduzir áudio das seguintes fontes:

• Apple Music;
• Compras do iTunes;
• Biblioteca de Música do iCloud com uma assinatura do Apple Music ou do iTunes Match;
• Serviços de música de terceiros;
• Estações do Apple Music Radio ou episódios sob demanda;
• Estações de rádio do TuneIn, do iHeartRadio ou do Audacy;
• Apple Podcasts;
• Resumos de notícias;
• AirPlay (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV 4K ou Mac).

Também é possível controlar a reprodução ao:

• Tocar uma vez na parte superior para reproduzir/pausar;
• Tocar duas vezes seguidas para pular;
• Tocar três vezes seguidas para voltar;
• Tocar e segurar para invocar a Siri;
• Tocar nos botões de “+” e “-” para aumentar ou diminuir o volume.

Siri

O HomePod mini 2 vence com facilidade nesse quesito: é o único compatível com a versão “turbinada” da assistente virtual da Apple, a Siri AI.

De acordo com a Apple, além de ajudar em tarefas mais simples como enviar mensagens, controlar a reprodução e configurar lembretes, a Siri AI também pode conversar mais naturalmente, responder dúvidas sobre o mundo real com base em buscas na web e recomendar músicas de maneira mais precisa. Ela ainda leva mais o contexto em conta e processa a maioria das solicitações no próprio dispositivo.

O HomePod mini de primeira geração segue com a versão antiga da Siri, capaz de lidar com comandos mais básicos.

Conectividade e sensores

Tanto o HomePod mini de primeira geração quanto o HomePod mini 2 são compatíveis com descoberta ponto a ponto, para acesso fácil de convidados, e com redes Thread, além de contarem com um chip de banda ultralarga para recursos que dependem da proximidade de outros aparelhos, como iPhones.

Já o modelo mais antigo tem Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) e Bluetooth 5, enquanto a nova versão conta com Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) e Bluetooth 6. Ambos os modelos vêm com sensores de temperatura e umidade.

Preço e disponibilidade

Já disponível em pré-venda, o HomePod mini 2 será lançado em 30 de outubro por US$150 (US$20 a mais do que o modelo anterior) nos Estados Unidos e em outros países selecionados.

Assim como seu antecessor, o novo HomePod mini também segue sem uma previsão de lançamento no Brasil ou em Portugal — quem sabe isso mude com o lançamento dos sistemas 27.2 e com a chegada da Siri AI em português.

Ambos os HomePods mini vêm com um cabo USB-C e um adaptador bivolt de 20W na caixa, além da documentação regulamentar, é claro.

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NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada a mais pelos produtos/serviços ao usar os nossos links de afiliado.

Apple is bundling a free streaming trial with each of its new home devices on its U.S. store. The $299 Apple TV 4K comes with 3 months of Apple TV free, while the $149 HomePod mini 2 and the $299 Apple HomeView each come with 3 months of Apple Music free, according to Apple’s buy […]

The post Apple TV 4K comes with 3 months of Apple TV, HomePod mini 2 with Apple Music appeared first on The Mac Observer.

Maintenance update that’s heaving with improvements and bug fixes. ($199.99 new, free update, 3.22 GB, macOS 15.4+)

A Amazon lançou no Brasil uma oferta de quatro meses grátis para novos usuários do Amazon Music Unlimited, seu serviço de streaming musical completo que oferece acesso a mais de 100 milhões de músicas em alta qualidade, offline e sem anúncios.

Com o Music Unlimited, você tem acesso a milhões de faixas em qualidade Ultra HD e em Áudio Espacial com Dolby Atmos, além de poder desfrutar de uma integração perfeita com dispositivos e plataformas da Amazon (como a Alexa, os alto-falantes Echo e o Fire TV).

Mas ele também se integra a dispositivos e plataformas de terceiros (inclusive com os da Apple), como tablets, computadores, smart TVs e alto-falantes inteligentes (para além dos da Amazon), com direito a sincronização entre dispositivos e opção para ouvir offline.

Com algoritmos avançados que aprendem o gosto musical do usuário para sugerir playlists, artistas, músicas e estações de rádio temáticas, o serviço conta ainda com um catálogo enorme de podcasts sem custo adicional — ideal para quem não quer usar dois apps!

O Unlimited também tem letras sincronizadas em tempo real, além de conteúdos e experiências especiais para assinantes (como acesso a lançamentos antecipados, conteúdos exclusivos de artistas parceiros e shows/eventos transmitidos ao vivo pela plataforma).

O Amazon Music Unlimited não requer uma assinatura Prime (embora assinantes tenham desconto) e pode ser contratado com opções de assinaturas Individual (R$25,90/mês), Familiar (até seis contas, por R$44,90/mês) e para um dispositivo Echo ou Fire TV (R$13,90/mês).

O valor da assinatura, é claro, só passará a ser cobrado após o período de teste gratuito de quatro meses que a Amazon está oferecendo. Então, caso você se interesse, corra, pois a oferta é por tempo limitado!

NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: Este é um artigo fruto de um acordo comercial com um anunciante, que não influenciou a nossa opinião. O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada mais pelos produtos comprando pelos nossos links de afiliado.

Southbank Centre, London
Wang’s avatar performs music from Ravel and Debussy to Prokofiev and Liszt while dizzying virtual worlds take shape around her in this virtual reality installation

It might be the first time that a soloist at the Last Night of the Proms is simultaneously giving another performance in another London venue. Playing With Fire is an installation that lets the pianist Yuja Wang be in two places at once – or perhaps in two universes. Nine pieces of music conjure nine luminous dreamworlds for an audience wearing VR headsets: Disney’s Fantasia on steroids.

A collaboration between the pianist, the director Pierre-Alain Giraud and artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, produced by Vive Arts and Atlas V, it has already been seen in Cannes, Paris and Shanghai, and now has a home in London until new year.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Vive Arts and Atlas V

© Photograph: Vive Arts and Atlas V

© Photograph: Vive Arts and Atlas V

As audiences demand perfection from live performances, pitch correction technology has become an increasingly common way for singers to deliver.

Universal Music Group is launching a new AI-powered platform that will allow users to draw from its catalog of licensed music to create song remixes, mashups, and new takes on tracks, according to an announcement on Thursday. The record label is developing the platform through a multiyear licensing agreement with ElevenLabs, a company that specializes in AI voice and music generation.

Artists can choose whether to participate in UMG and ElevenLabs' upcoming platform, which marks yet another AI deal for the record label. UMG is currently developing an AI music platform with Udio and has struck AI licensing deals with Spotify, Nvidia, and Kla …

Read the full story at The Verge.

As it grapples with a bevy of lawsuits, Suno said its new model, Suno v6, is not trained using music it used to train previous versions of the AI model.

A zero-emission compact hydrogen power plant will drive the two stages at Clifton Down in Bristol

When Lorde, Little Simz and Wet Leg stride on to stages in Bristol this weekend, they will not only be entertaining tens of thousands of festivalgoers but taking part in what is being billed as a world-first clean power project.

The two stages at Forwards festival on Clifton Down are being driven almost entirely by green power – a combination of hydrogen and mobile batteries charged with sustainable energy.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Kristian Buus/In Pictures/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kristian Buus/In Pictures/Getty Images

© Photograph: Kristian Buus/In Pictures/Getty Images

For more than a century, visitors to America’s beloved Yellowstone National Park have reported odd, fleeting sounds that seem to center on the famous park’s largest lakes.

With descriptions that range from a noise resembling the steady humming of bees to distant “music” or bells, or even the vibration of metal cables, the park has a surprisingly deep history involving these odd sounds—one that extends all the way back to before the massive tract of land officially became America’s first national park.

Over time, several natural explanations have been proposed for the phenomenon, although the exact cause behind Yellowstone’s ethereal lake music has never been established.

Strange Sounds Over Yellowstone’s Lakes

Historical accounts describing this sonic mystery generally focus on reports from near Yellowstone Lake and Shoshone Lake. According to Lee Whittlesey, now a retired Professional Historian who worked at Yellowstone National Park for 16 years, written descriptions of the park’s strange sounds extend back at least to the late 19th century.

Among the earliest and most detailed accounts appeared in engineer Hiram M. Chittenden’s 1895 book The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive. “A most singular and interesting acoustic phenomenon of this region, although rarely noticed by tourists, is the occurrence of strange and indefinable overhead sounds,” Chittenden wrote at the time. “They have long been noted by explorers, but only in the vicinity of Shoshone and Yellowstone Lakes.”

Often occurring most often in the mornings, Chittenden noted that the sounds were usually fleeting, and compared them to “the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a swarm of bees.”

An even earlier account was documented in 1892 by Edwin Linton, who reportedly heard a combination of sounds resembling wind moving through treetops, distant bells, and the buzzing of insects. A description provided by one member of his party described the phenomenon as “a twisting sort of yow-yow vibration,” while Elwood Hofer, the party’s guide on this occasion, reportedly called it “the most mysterious sound heard among the mountains.”

The following year, a similar account was logged by scientist S.A. Forbes, who described hearing a vibrating, harp-like “clang” that, not unlike Linton’s account, seemed to originate from around the nearby treetops. At times, the sound also seemed to resemble the murmuring of “faintly heard voices answering each other overhead.”

“It begins softly in the remote distance,” Forbes wrote, adding that the sound increased gradually as it drew nearer, producing increasingly pronounced pulses as it approached, then gradually faded away just as it appeared.

Chittenden was sufficiently impressed by the reports to speculate that in another place and era, such sounds might have inspired “superstitious reverence or dread.”

“No rational explanation has ever been advanced for this remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote.

A Mystery Older Than Yellowstone National Park

One of the oldest known accounts of unusual sounds in the area predates Yellowstone’s formal establishment as a U.S. national park.

In 1871, Geologist Frank H. Bradley participated in the Hayden Geological Survey, a federally funded expedition which played a crucial role in the park’s history, as its findings helped persuade Congress to formally decide on protecting Yellowstone the following year.

While conducting fieldwork with the expedition, Bradley recalled hearing “a curious sound” that he characterized as being “between a whistle and a horse whine” one morning as his party prepared breakfast.

“The sound increased in force,” Bradley wrote, “and it now became evident that gusts of wind were passing through the air above us, though the pines did not as yet indicate the least motion in the lower atmosphere.”

What Causes Yellowstone’s Mysterious Sounds?

By the early decades of the 20th century, potential explanations for the phenomenon were being put forward by researchers.

In 1930, one brief account that appeared in Popular Science entertained the possibility that seismic activity could be the driving force behind the noises. In 1937, Yellowstone Ranger and Naturalist Neil Miner offered a different theory: an atmospheric explanation, which resulted from “horizontally moving whirlpools of air” that he said descended from some of the park’s nearby mountain peaks.

The unusual sounds long associated with Yellowstone may not be entirely unique to the park, however. For at least as long as visitors to the park have reported strange sonic experiences, reports of mysterious booming, rumblings, unusual humming or buzzing, whistling, and sounds compared to music have been reported at locations around the world, sometimes inspiring colorful names such as New York’s “Seneca Guns” and other similar variants.

While Yellowstone’s own brand of peculiar sounds seems to belong somewhere in this broader family of natural acoustic phenomena, their specific cause remains elusive, even more than 150 years after Bradley first recorded them.

In a landscape already famous for geysers, earthquakes, hot springs, and a vast volcanic system that may someday erupt again, it is easy to see how the unexplained, music-like sounds associated with Yellowstone’s lakes add a unique and mysterious footnote to the natural history of America’s oldest national park.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Learn how to adjust AirPods’ equalizer when listening to music or watching videos on iPhone, iPad, or Mac for a fine-tuned audio experience.

Ethan Millman, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:

Apple Music will soon launch labels on songs created with artificial intelligence, the company said in an email sent out to industry partners on Thursday.

In the email, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming service said that AI music labels will come “later this year,” though Apple Music didn’t disclose a specific launch date.

The new labels come months after Apple Music launched transparency tags back in March, available for record labels and music distributors to disclose when content uploaded was “materially generated using AI.”

Good. As much as I enjoy working and tinkering with AI, AI “music” falls squarely in the category of AI implementations I do not understand and cannot even be remotely interested in. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but what’s the point of listening to “music” performed by something you can’t see live on a stage, or that you know has never lived a real life? (Obviously we can’t see The Beatles or Beethoven perform live today, but we know they were real humans with real motivations behind their work.)

If you ask me, AI music shouldn’t even be allowed on streaming services, but I suppose it’s too late to fix that problem by now. Hopefully Apple will also include a system-level toggle to permanently hide AI “music” from Apple Music’s UI, too.

Maintenance release for the professional audio app. ($199.99 new or $129.99 annually with Apple Creator Studio subscription, free update, 3.22 GB, macOS 15.6+)

Today, Jungle released their fifth studio album, Sunshine. Alongside the release, Apple published a look at how the band used Apple Creator Studio to film 11 music videos in just four days, an impressive feat no matter the technology used.

The band’s toolbox included Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Pixelmator Pro to capture the series of signature one-shot take videos. According to the App Store feature on the band’s process, Logic Pro was where the entire album was produced. The app’s Varispeed feature was also used to shift the tempo of songs while maintaining pitch as they shot the videos.

Final Cut Pro’s Magnetic Mask was used to composite footage quickly. Jungle’s Tom McFarland told Apple:

Final Cut Pro is like a magic sword. There’s one shot for the track ‘Romeo II,’ where the camera accidentally caught some of the lighting rig. With five clicks, the editor was able to paint it out. It just automatically knows.

Pixelmator Pro on the iPad with an Apple Pencil and Mac enabled the band’s team to add artwork and posters to the final product, too.

But of all the quotes from the band, J Lloyd’s comment really struck a chord with me:

We didn’t have to worry about the tech. We could just focus on getting the design right. I could pick up the iPad between takes and keep sketching on Pixelmator Pro, and it all just worked.

I love apps, or I wouldn’t write about them every day, but what I love even more is the creativity they enable. Getting a glimpse of how one of my favorite bands uses some of the same tools I do was a treat.

The panel explores Samsung’s entry into the credit card market, why iPhone owners continue to resist switching to Android, and the growing influence of AI across technology and society. Discussion ranges from AI escaping coding sandboxes and solving long-standing mathematical problems to AI-generated music and the impact of European Union regulations on innovation, competition, consumer […]

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At Macstock 2026, Max Mellman showed off his his iPhone app, I Love a Piano. Max explains how the app stands out through realistic haptic feedback, intuitive navigation, portrait and landscape support, and a design that encourages exploration instead of intimidation. Chuck and Max also discuss his inspiration, teaching carrer, future iPad support, and broader […]

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The launch of a new MacVoices merch store kicks off this session, including product choices, embroidery options, and listener-requested items. Chuck Joiner, David Ginsburg, Eric Bolden, Ben Roethig, Marty Jencius, Jim Rea, Jeff Gamet, and Guy Serle discussion then turn to Apple’s lawsuit involving Jon Prosser, the default judgment being set aside, and what Apple may hope to gain through discovery. The group closes by reacting to Apple Music’s most-streamed artists list and how streaming reflects changing musical demographics.

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At NAB in Las Vegas, Alex Mavlios of Epidemic Sound explains how the company licenses music by acquiring full rights from artists, then offering secure usage across podcasts, video, social media, broadcast, and film. He addresses copyright risks, monetized content, artist royalties, pricing from creator plans to enterprise licenses, and why perpetual licensing helps creators avoid future rights disputes. 

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