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Apple Explains Why HomePod Was Released Again, Wi-Fi 4 Limitation, and More
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Unlikely to ever happen. The sound signature of the mini is very, very different to that of the full-size HomePod.
You really do not get it. You are suggesting that a $300 HomePod designed to be part of a stereo pair in acoustically very difficult scenarios is flawed because it does not do what any of scores of $50 speakers do is some kind of flaw in the HomePods. That is absurd. Like claiming 18-wheelers are flawed because they do not do a good job when driving to the market for a loaf of bread.
Have you ever seen a surround sound setup? The rear speakers are almost always smaller than the front. It would be fine. They only need to play sounds behind you to simulate the sounds being around you. If you’re made of cash then you could have 4 full size HomePods but it would be nice to be able to use minis for the rear, especially because they’re smaller and more discrete.
The point is that a surround sound setup is a surround sound setup. Totally different from what HomePods are engineered to do. Folks who have an acoustically appropriate space and want a surround sound setup should buy a surround sound setup.
I agree with everything you said.
My point is: a few years ago, not enough people were willing to spend $300 for a terrific sounding Apple speaker to make the product viable. I don't see why that would be any different now.
Only $249 (or less) would justify the existence of this "new" Homepod.
You still fail to get it. The point is that non-pairs will not properly stereo pair. Some consumer, no matter how ignorant, does not get to change that reality. No, Apple should not allow consumers to force Apple's $600 stereo speaker sets to sound lousy.
Classic Apple damage control corpo-garble is always comedic gold
One of my friends worked for IBM in the nineties fixing personal computers as a student job. They had a list of reasons they could use when they had managed to fix a computer and didn't exactly know what had been the problem, but now it worked. One of them was "A bit had been halved". Admittedly the other fake reasons were more plausible, maybe it was only on the list as a joke...
Anyway, it's not classic Apple, it's classic any company marketing droid garble. Apple in many ways is a very typical NA company when it comes to business practices, just more successful than most.
No, it does not. No matter what some silly spam UTube link may claim.
Cool, it’s clearly not for you then. It’s for people that want ease of use, ease of setup, and aren’t AV tech enthusiasts.
I have several surround sound setups, actually, in my own home, including a dedicated home theater room. You need acoustically matching speakers. You can’t just dump any 2+ matching speakers in the rear and expect a consistent experience. This is nothing to do with the size of the speakers.
Feels underpowered as a home hub.
For HKSV, the HomePod has to receive up to five live video streams from security cameras and then do object, motion and face recognition on all five concurrently. It then has to encrypt and send event recordings to the cloud. Never mind playing music.
My 2021 Apple TV 4K struggles to do it with just two HKSV cameras. And it’s on Ethernet.
Okay, it’s also on the new (but withdrawn) HomeKit architecture - but don’t get me started on that!
For HKSV, the HomePod has to receive up to five live video streams from security cameras and then do object, motion and face recognition on all five concurrently. It then has to encrypt and send event recordings to the cloud. Never mind playing music.
My 2021 Apple TV 4K struggles to do it with just two HKSV cameras. And it’s on Ethernet.
Okay, it’s also on the new (but withdrawn) HomeKit architecture - but don’t get me started on that!
The wifi limitation is due to the Apple Watch chip and stereo pair should only work with 2 identical speakers or else it will sound off. Simple as that.
I think that long-term quality was an issue with the original version - I've had two original home pods that died after 2-3 years and there is quite a bit on the forums about that. Frustrating to say the least for an expensive item. I have a couple of newer ones - one that Apple "gave" me as a replacement for one that died (for $200) and other one I bought when I heard they were being discontinued. I have 6 minis that so far have been problem free.
It‘s based on a watch processor, the S7, so that package may only support 802.11n anyways. So long as it’s completely reliable, it should be just fine for any airplay need, plus the Thread radio helps to pickup the slack as well.
You could buy 2 HomePods and 2 HomePod minis for much less than a surround sound setup. And some people already have 1 or 2 so it’s even less to upgrade. It would just need Apple to enable the software to have left, right, left rear and right rear. Just because you don’t like the idea doesn’t mean others can’t like it.
I'm fine with the stereo pairing answer, but the WiFi 4 response was a non-answer.
The clarification is they wanted to maintain a very healthy margin on each unit sold.