{"id":31896,"date":"2021-03-16T14:28:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T18:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31896"},"modified":"2021-03-19T17:21:41","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T21:21:41","slug":"goodbye-original-homepod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/16\/goodbye-original-homepod\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Original HomePod"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Panzarino<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>, tweet<\/a>, Slashdot<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Apple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year. The larger HomePod offered a beefier sound space but the mini has been very well received and clearly accomplishes many of the duties that the larger version was tasked with. The sound is super solid (especially for the size) and it offers access to Siri, Apple’s assistant feature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

I love my HomePods, but clearly the market deemed them too expensive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Joe Rosensteel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I know there are some people that really like the HomePod so I don’t want to harp on how it was an overpriced, over-engineered, fiddly, gimmicky, rudderless, Siri-hampered, mono speaker, and hurt the feelings of dozens of people. R.I.P. 🙏<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jason Snell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Don’t forget its lack of an aux-in jack. My iPod Hi-Fi is going to outlast it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I wish I had good things to say on the eve of the HomePod’s death, but it was just never a great product. I was never happy with the audio quality of a standalone unit, and Siri+HomeKit is incredibly inconsistent, and nowhere near as fun as a voice assistant as Google’s\/Amazon’s<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I expect the original HomePod to be dropped like a stone from future OS updates — it’s saddled with a CPU no longer supported by mainline iOS (they moved it to a tvOS core recently, just to stay afloat), and the HomePod mini is built on Apple Watch chips<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Paul Haddad<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

For < $100 Google gives you an entire screen, which is pretty cool at doing things like showing the weather and providing more info on searches. Does a passable job at showing doorbell camera video too.<\/p>\n

Don’t even get me started comparing Siri vs Google Assistant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Federico Viticci<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Also, HomePod mini discontinued ~2023? I’m afraid Apple is simply too late to the market here – cheaper, more diverse options from the competition, available everywhere<\/em>, in multiple languages, with smarter assistants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Myke Hurley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I try<\/em> to use a HomePod pair with my Apple TV. When it works, it sounds fantastic. However most days it doesn’t. I get all kinds of failures — with content pausing, or one of the HomePods failing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Kirk McElhearn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think Apple fell into the trap of people who care about audio, thinking that everyone feels like they do. The vast majority of people are fine listening to music on cheap Bluetooth speakers, or ever from their phones, and paying that much for what might be better audio just doesn’t make sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Jack Wellborn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You may still think four HomePods is a bit ridiculous, but trust me when I say that they really<\/em> work well for our needs in this space. We can watch TV, or play music in one or both areas and it all sounds good. You might think “sounds good” would be table stakes, but so much consumer audio, especially wireless speakers, simply don’t sound good. Even my wife, who doesn’t typically care about this sort of thing, asked if we should by another pair when I told her that HomePods were being discontinued.<\/p>\n

Am I a little sad that the original HomePod is going away? Sure, but do I have regrets owning four discontinued wireless speakers? Not at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Benjamin Mayo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Honestly, the decision to cancel it feels like a misstep. The HomePod was overpriced but it was differentiated. The HomePod mini doesn’t really excel at anything. The mediocrity of the Mini’s sound quality means it leans much more heavily on the ‘smart’ component of being a smart speaker, and we know that Siri lags behind Alexa and Google Assistant in many ways. By focusing on the HomePod mini, Apple is implicitly focusing on Siri.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

See also: TidBITS<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n