Riding on the success of all the previous Apple TV’s and Homepods.
I think they’d drive that idea right into the wall like any of their home audio speakers so far.
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Apple Discontinues Full-Sized HomePod to Focus on HomePod Mini
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Riding on the success of all the previous Apple TV’s and Homepods.
I think they’d drive that idea right into the wall like any of their home audio speakers so far.
I'm sorry to tell you this, but not every business introduces a major product entry into a new market, then pulls it after selling it to so many people. This behavior is INEXCUSABLE.
OG Airplay is around. It's conceivable Apple will develop an airplay 3, but that wouldn't deprecate airplay 2 or it may be backward compatible. Look at bluetooth or wifi for an example. Even the latest wifi 6e routers still support wifi standard b.
I always thought it odd that the HomePod was announced in 2017 (released in early 2018) with the outdated A8 processor. Why not the A11 Bionic with its Neural Engine to help with machine learning so that it could have been a bit "smarter" than it was and have a long shelf life. Giving it the A10X Fusion, at least, would have allowed it to pull even with the then new Apple TV4K and longer shelf life.
I wonder if Apple is planning some sort of high end (read: high priced) Apple TV-HomePod-Apple One home entertainment device.
I wonder if Apple is planning some sort of high end (read: high priced) Apple TV-HomePod-Apple One home entertainment device.
For me the mini doesn’t cut it for room filling sound. Of course your personal usage will vary.
That's why there's about 5 dozen other good choices from other manufacturers that will give you better theater sound than a homepod anyway. Forget about Apple and their attempt at audio speakers.
Good point though. However as I’ve said before, if Apple are pushing people towards Sonos or Amazon for an audio solution (most likely Sonos due to airplay 2 support), then aren’t they also pushing people away from HomeKit to Alexa? Makes no damn sense at all.
I’m still amazed at all the comments about HomePods sounding “amazing”.
They are impressive for their size, however the bass is far too pronounced and and there’s no way to EQ them.
They are impressive for their size, however the bass is far too pronounced and and there’s no way to EQ them.
I was actually considering going the other way: selling my Sonos gear and migrating to Apple as much as I could. Not so much an option now.
We have Sonos for the in-ceiling speakers, because Apple doesn't have anything like that. In the kitchen, we also have a Mini. To make it work, you have to be precise with your language with Siri, or else it just plays music on the Mini and not on the other Airplay speakers in the room. However, once you get it down, it works pretty well.
Usually, that is. It works until the Sonos devices randomly fall off the network and need a hard restart. This is with wireless, because if I use ethernet the very, very old STP version they use creates havoc on my network.
The thing that makes me really want to dump Sonos is that this is a known problem that has been around since the beginning. If you look in the support forums, there are hundreds and hundreds of messages where people are troubleshooting this. In the worst case, Sonos takes over all your network traffic and runs it over Sonosnet, slowing everything down to a crawl. How many people have done this and have no idea why their network is slow?
Anyway, it is about 40 hours of engineering work for Sonos, but thousands of wasted hours for their customers. If they can't be bothered with something so simple, I don't really want to be a customer.
No. You couldn't pay me to put Alexa in my home. And I'd want the convenience of yelling at the device for what I want. Airplay is somewhat cumbersome once you get used to using Siri, despite it's failings as an assistant.
Hope so.. WiFi and Bluetooth are open standards. Airplay is Apple's proprietary spec and they have a strong track record of aggressively dropping older standards whenever something better comes along.
One thing the HomePod had going against it is that the folks who care about sound quality probably weren’t really buying it. And those that don’t care much about sound quality still have the mini. Someone who cares about sound quality would be stereo pairing them at $600. But you don’t even get the benefit of using them with your gaming consoles or through Bluetooth connectivity. At the end of the day the product was artificially gimped and too expensive for what you got.
What a load of tripe.
Apple TV: Should You Buy? Features, Reviews, and More
Apple's revamped 4K Apple TV features an A15 Bionic processor, 64GB or 128GB of storage, and HDR10+ support. It comes with a USB-C Siri Remote.
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There have been persistent rumors from reliable sources of what will be in the next ATV. And I’m not sure by what metric it’s App Store has failed. The fact that you believe it doesn’t do anything more than the chromecast tells me that you don’t actually know much about the ATVs feature set.
This time next year they will quietly discontinue the HomePod Mini. It would be too embarrassing to do it now.
The sad thing is that Apple could’ve easily made it more appealing a wider audience. But since they didn’t it’s now being discontinued.
ATV is a win for me. I bought a new television that had all kinds of crap built into it, including the ATV app. First thing I did is block the TV's internet access through my router, because who know what data it's sending to whom. If Roku wants to use a 72" TV as a loss leader for their advertising services, that's up to them, but that doesn't mean I have to participate. All TV media goes through my ATV box.
Given Apple's stance on privacy I don't envision the ATV going away.
Given Apple's stance on privacy I don't envision the ATV going away.
Exactly, at least for me. The price is on the high-end, not the highest though -- Bose 700 soundbar (without a subwoofer, just a bar) is $850 on Amazon (for example).... But the Bose product also has numerous connectivity options.
In other words...
If I solely used the TV 4K for all of my media consumption. No problem. However, I have an Xbox and also utilize OTA broadcasts for local channels. Neither of those would be able to be routed to the HomePod(s). Does that make it/them useless? No. Although, I don't need to make that compromise with the Samsung soundbar + subwoofer system I have now.
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Agreed. I've used a few different brands of "Smart TV" and 1) the UI is dreadful, 2) they have ads, or 3) both. On the surface (i.e., specs and offerings) the TV (device) may not look better than these other options but, in my experience and opinion, it's well worth it. In fact, I wish there were still non-Smart TV models.
I missed this news on Friday, but what a bummer! I purchased my first HomePod shortly after its initial release, and I feel like the Spike Jonze ad continues to be a really accurate representation of how enjoyable and powerful the device is. I now own three (a stereo pair in my living room and single in my bedroom) and use them a lot.
My only complaints are that the device was really buggy (at least for me) for much of its first couple of years, and as an apartment dweller, the non-adjustable bass limits me using it in the evenings.
I just ordered a fourth HomePod in Space Gray to have the option to create a second stereo pair or replace one of my older ones, if needed. The Space Gray seems largely unavailable at this point, though, so I'll be interested to see if the retailer I ordered it from comes through.
My dad has always made fun of the HomePod due to its high price, and I've never really seen one in "the wild," so I'm not entirely surprised they've been discontinued. I'm almost more surprised by how much enthusiasm I'm seeing for them in this thread.
I hope Apple finds a way to offer a best in class speaker again in the future. In the meantime, as long as my HomePods can continue to play music, make/receive phone calls, and perform other basic Siri functions (namely alarms and timers) for at least another couple of years, I'll be happy.
My only complaints are that the device was really buggy (at least for me) for much of its first couple of years, and as an apartment dweller, the non-adjustable bass limits me using it in the evenings.
I just ordered a fourth HomePod in Space Gray to have the option to create a second stereo pair or replace one of my older ones, if needed. The Space Gray seems largely unavailable at this point, though, so I'll be interested to see if the retailer I ordered it from comes through.
My dad has always made fun of the HomePod due to its high price, and I've never really seen one in "the wild," so I'm not entirely surprised they've been discontinued. I'm almost more surprised by how much enthusiasm I'm seeing for them in this thread.
I hope Apple finds a way to offer a best in class speaker again in the future. In the meantime, as long as my HomePods can continue to play music, make/receive phone calls, and perform other basic Siri functions (namely alarms and timers) for at least another couple of years, I'll be happy.
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