Poll: ** The Official Apple HomePod/HomePod mini thread **

Are you going to buy an Apple HomePod

  • Yes

    Votes: 28 13.8%

  • No

    Votes: 115 56.7%

  • Possibly, I'll wait and see what the reviews are like first

    Votes: 44 21.7%

  • HomePod mini - Yes

    Votes: 18 8.9%

  • HomePod mini - No

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • HomePod mini - Possibly, I'll wait and see what the reviews are like first

    Votes: 3 1.5%
  • Total voters
    203
Feek said:
Whichever hears your voice the loudest. I can stand in our hallway and be in range of a stereo pair of full size HomePods and two HomePod minis. Depending on which way I project my voice, I can predict which one will respond.
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Good to know, look forward to comparing the mini to the full size, might get another if I’m pleased with it.
 
Okay, this thing is absolutely rubbish.

It will not play virgin radio UK at all.

hey Siri, play virgin radio

*plays some nonsense*

play virgin radio uk

*plays some nonsense*

play 97.5 virgin radio

*can’t find it on apple music*

So I have to search for it on Apple Music then airplay it across.

Pretty disappointing.
 
Reuben klang said:
Okay, this thing is absolutely rubbish.
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I like my (big) Homepod stereo pair for music, though I'd be disappointed if I'd paid full whack for them. There are lots of redditors making outlandish posts about how a single Homepod pressurises their warehouse-sized apartment and anything above 15% volume makes their bones crumble with the depth of the bass, but really, they're a £200 speaker and always should have been. My Naim Mu-So is a quality streaming speaker, Homepods are glossy sound that's listenable but isn't really convincing and I'm definitely no audiophile.

Siri, however, is appalling.
"Hey Siri, play music" (plays music on my iphone instead of Homepod)
"Hey Siri, play something different" (maybe it'll start playing separately on my phone when it was already playing on the Homepod).
"Hey Siri, stop!" (maybe it'll stop, maybe it won't. Maybe the music volume will drop and maybe resume a moment later)
Then there's the issue with the music controls appearing on my iPhone lock screen for a while, before magically disappearing so I have to revert to voice control.

Siri is really terrible and it's making me half-wish I'd just gone with Sonos from the outset. The only thing holding me back is always-on listening services from Google and Amazon which I don't want to bring into my house, but Google Assistant is worlds better than Siri and I can't understand why Apple think they have a viable product.
 
Feek said:
Yes it will.

"Hey Siri play virgin radio from tunein please" works.


It's not, really. It's just like any woman, you need to know how to speak to her ;)
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Thanks that seems to work.


Squink said:
I like my (big) Homepod stereo pair for music, though I'd be disappointed if I'd paid full whack for them. There are lots of redditors making outlandish posts about how a single Homepod pressurises their warehouse-sized apartment and anything above 15% volume makes their bones crumble with the depth of the bass, but really, they're a £200 speaker and always should have been. My Naim Mu-So is a quality streaming speaker, Homepods are glossy sound that's listenable but isn't really convincing and I'm definitely no audiophile.

Siri, however, is appalling.
"Hey Siri, play music" (plays music on my iphone instead of Homepod)
"Hey Siri, play something different" (maybe it'll start playing separately on my phone when it was already playing on the Homepod).
"Hey Siri, stop!" (maybe it'll stop, maybe it won't. Maybe the music volume will drop and maybe resume a moment later)
Then there's the issue with the music controls appearing on my iPhone lock screen for a while, before magically disappearing so I have to revert to voice control.

Siri is really terrible and it's making me half-wish I'd just gone with Sonos from the outset. The only thing holding me back is always-on listening services from Google and Amazon which I don't want to bring into my house, but Google Assistant is worlds better than Siri and I can't understand why Apple think they have a viable product.
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agree completely. My brothers got the google one and you just say hey google do x and it does it. My other brother has the Amazon one that works better too.

kind of feel I should return it and get one of them instead.
 
I bought a couple of homepod minis, thinking they might be okay for the kitchen I’m getting fitted. I paid £75 each with an ebay offer and first impressions are that they’re a decent £75 speaker. I’m not sure where all the love comes from when they’re at the £100 price point. The full sized Homepod at £200 seems easily twice as good in terms of both quality and punch.
 
I find the original HomePod fascinating. Apparently if you order one now, you're still getting one that was manufactured the same year it was released, 3(?) years ago. So if you would normally expect 5 years use out of a device, does that mean that in this case you get 2 years? But the wider question is *why* wasn't the HomePod popular? By all accounts the reviews were overwhelmingly positive in terms of sound quality. But what I was never able to get over is how locked in Apple wanted this device to be. An expensive speaker with no line in. An expensive speaker that could only play from Apple Music (I think with a recent update you can now say "hey Siri, play the Beatles" and it will prompt you to see if you want to use Spotify). AirPlay2 is fantastic, but relies on the phone to perform the streaming, and puts the user of that phone at risk of interrupting/switching the music when browsing something else on their phone. Whereas Sonos speakers (which I own and mostly love) are fully independent and offer a tonne of streaming options (basically zero lock-in).

Without having owned one (so I'm sure someone will correct me), it just felt like Apple was being far too greedy and wanted to use the HomePod as a means of trapping you into the Apple Music ecosystem rather than as a way of "making the best possible speaker on the market".
 
rotor said:
felt like Apple was being far too greedy
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I've got a bunch of Sonos devices around the house, and picked up a 2nd hand HomePod for my office as a bit of an impulse purchase. I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem and have the Apple One subscription so its fine for me, wouldn't have gotten one if I was still on Spotify.

I think they failed to sell because they were too expensive, Siri isn't great, and its tied to Apple Music outside of Airplay. Its why I didn't buy them when they first came out.

All that said, I love the sound quality and I'd get another to form a stereo pair if I could get it cheap enough.
 
rotor said:
I find the original HomePod fascinating.
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It is a strange product in many ways, just like you said. On the one hand, Apple is a company that can charge vastly exorbitant prices for stuff (Mac Pro wheels, magsafe charging mat, iPad keyboards), some of it being average in quality at best, because there are plenty of people who will pay the prices and don't care about lock-in, because they see themselves as Apple users. Yet the Homepod which is a decent product didn't sell. Even at £279 it's not terrible value and I'm surprised that "Apple people" didn't buy plenty of them. However, Apple should have dropped the price to £199 long ago, at which point it is more attractive than a Sonos One speaker. I know they have "famous margins" to maintain, but the Homepod is a both a gateway and a lock-in to other Apple products, so maybe they could have taken the hit of lower margins.
 
Feek said:
Easy.

It was £80 too expensive.
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It was certainly too expensive for getting locked in. I would be tempted to buy one of the minis for eg the kitchen to fulfil a basic need of wanting hey Siri and maybe so my wife can tap her phone or iPad to transfer the sound across, but even that I’ve read plenty of reports of being extremely unreliable (so she just won’t use it).
 
They never seemed to sell them refurbished (maybe they only do that if they are at risk of running out of new ones?) so I also always wondered how many “Apple people” ordered one and sent it back after a couple of weeks of being baffled by all the limitations.

Even the accidental tech podcast guys (hard to find people more committed to the Apple ecosystem) are pretty scathing. Marco Arment only went all in once the minis came along and that was to replace echo dots which in his experience had become less and less reliable.

It’s fascinating to think of a group of Apple executives thinking “Apple Music is as good as Spotify, we will sell millions of these”.

If they had made HomePod fully open, with line in, Bluetooth in and open to all streaming comers with a published and supported API they would’ve absolutely destroyed Sonos.

And this in a nutshell is where Apple seems to be. No longer making “the best product”, but “how do we make it harder for our customers to stop paying a subscription fee”. I don’t blame them, business gotta business, but the quality of the product really suffers!
 
rotor said:
quality of the product really suffers
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I don’t completely agree with this. In my opinion, Apple offers the best smartphone, easily the best tablet on the market and now the best laptops with the M1 devices.

Yes the HomePod could be considered a bit of a miss for many reasons, but you can’t really say that for the majority of their product line.
 
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