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Apple Now Selling Refurbished HomePod for $299
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You might be right. But consumers have spoken with their wallets and have decided on alternative options. Apples trying to get into a space that’s already saturated, and they are charging an obscene premium. The average consumer doesn’t care about the A8 processor, ip69 fabric or an LCD on their speaker. They want something that’s integrated well with home automation and something that sounds good at a value price point.
I seem to recall most reviewers comparing it closer to two Sonos One's. Some were even comparing the sound to the Sonos Play:5. When Apple showed it off they compared it to a Sonos Play:3.
https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-homepod-review/
Scroll down the HomePod page. That stuff isn't until the last 1/10th of the entire page, way at the bottom. Any mention of Siri before that is about using it to select music on the HomePod. They purposely buried the personal assistant stuff at the bottom because it's not a focus for the device.
This is really about different devices having different focuses. While a Porsche, a Landrover, and a Camry all are automobiles, we don't group them all into the same category as they all serve different purposes. I'm not sure why people can't see that with the HomePod and similar devices. Heck, we do it with computers. We understand that there are different purposes to a laptop, a gaming rig, and a commercial desktop.
If you want the best assistant get the Google Home, if you want the best shopping assistant get the Amazon Alexa, and if you want the best music device get the HomePod. They all offer features that overlap in some ways but each by far excels at their key purpose and is the best at what it's meant to do.
No it's not?
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Where are you seeing this? They are listed at $349.
It’s a premium lux product, it’s not for “average” consumers. Smart home, smart assistant, and smart speakers are not for most people, and the price reflects that.
Not true. It’s “supposedly” a premium product with a broken assistant, and you’re 100% wrong if you think a smart home and smart assistant aren’t for the masses. My parents have smart home products and I never thought I’d see that day.
Yeah, as with all of their products these days, Apple is milking price point for all it can with their current customers. As long as people keep buying the stuff, why not? For the price, I'm happy with my Alexa Echo, and I can play Amazon music with aplomb. You can get a 2nd gen. Echo for $99 now.
If they are, how much time did it take them to get there?
You are the type of customer that allows Apple to continue their high price point. As long as you don't care what they cost, they don't care what they charge.
I was just this week looking for a decent speaker for my kitchen. My only criteria were: 1) good sound, 2) AirPlay because Bluetooth is trash and 3) something that blends in and doesn't look stupid. HomePod fit all 3 criteria but even at $300 it's a bit pricy, and I also don't care much about Siri or any of its other features*. Besides, there's usually an iPad with Siri sitting a few feet away for voice commands if I really need them.
Anyway, after a surprisingly long search, I was happy to find this great little Yamaha unit for less than 1/3 the price of even a refurbished HomePod. The sound quality is quite good. It doesn't have the fancy "beam forming" stuff the HomePod has, but it's a quality speaker. Yamaha generally makes nice stuff, and this particular Amazon listing is WAY below the original MSRP.
* If/when there comes to be a HomePod App Store, that would be a different story. Right now for all its great hardware features, HomePod feels like the first iPhones: what you see is what you get with no real possibility of expansion. Once there are third-party apps, that's when it would get interesting.
Anyway, after a surprisingly long search, I was happy to find this great little Yamaha unit for less than 1/3 the price of even a refurbished HomePod. The sound quality is quite good. It doesn't have the fancy "beam forming" stuff the HomePod has, but it's a quality speaker. Yamaha generally makes nice stuff, and this particular Amazon listing is WAY below the original MSRP.
* If/when there comes to be a HomePod App Store, that would be a different story. Right now for all its great hardware features, HomePod feels like the first iPhones: what you see is what you get with no real possibility of expansion. Once there are third-party apps, that's when it would get interesting.
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lol, people using Google smart speakers, do they not realize what sort of company they are? I wouldn't trust google with anything these days. Especially with a smart speaker that collects your data and now your voice. When it comes to privacy I trust Apple a lot more than with Google. And yes my I can agree that the HomePod sounds amazing. My friends have them and now that there's deals on them. I'm definitely going to be purchasing 1 or even maybe 2. I'm mainly going to be using it for listening to music and watching TV with. That's what the main purpose is and a damn awesome one at that.
I'm slowly ditching Google out of my life, I don't trust them with anything anymore and it feels good to get away. I'm sure Google & Facebook know more about you then you do yourself. Don't be surprised.
I'm slowly ditching Google out of my life, I don't trust them with anything anymore and it feels good to get away. I'm sure Google & Facebook know more about you then you do yourself. Don't be surprised.
As someone who loves Apple products, and tried to build a HomePod based home system, I would strongly advise AGAINST buying one unless you are a very specific person: live alone, no pets.
First the good: the sound is awesome. Siri can hear you summon here everywhere in the house. They look good.
Now the bad: they dont do TV audio/voice very well, nor do they do surround. So, they are basically ONLY for music. And they don't take any inputs except apple TV or your phone. Even airplay receivers can't cast to them. So its VERY limited in what it can play. If you use Siri, and have more than one person in the house, you can't use siri on HomePod.
Why? well, if you leave Siri on for the HomePod, it associates with one persons iCloud account. That means every time anyone asks Siri to do something ,it does it through that persons phone, or to they calendar, and gives them access to all Siri functions on that account/phone. And because HomePod always hears "Hey Siri", no matter where you are, its really hard to use your own devices...unless you activate siri manually on the phone, defeating the purpose. Of course, you could turn off iCloud personal information and leave Siri on...but then anytime you say "Hey siri" in your house, you get a full volume, 5-10 second sentence from the HomePod about what it can't do. So to retain your sanity, you have to turn Siri on the home pod off if you live with more than one person. And if you do that, it limits the HomePod even more.
Its also unrepairable, so if anything happens to it, its 280 bucks to repair it...like easy, a cat/dog nibbles on the mesh covering. At that price, you might as well just buy a new one.
I own two (three before), I probably will never buy one again. You are far better off buying into a Sonos system. I avoided that as hard as I could, but thousands of dollars, multiple returns, and months of research shopping have shown its probably the best for most people...its far more versatile. Your other option is a "real" home system with an airplay receiver, but that's more work.
First the good: the sound is awesome. Siri can hear you summon here everywhere in the house. They look good.
Now the bad: they dont do TV audio/voice very well, nor do they do surround. So, they are basically ONLY for music. And they don't take any inputs except apple TV or your phone. Even airplay receivers can't cast to them. So its VERY limited in what it can play. If you use Siri, and have more than one person in the house, you can't use siri on HomePod.
Why? well, if you leave Siri on for the HomePod, it associates with one persons iCloud account. That means every time anyone asks Siri to do something ,it does it through that persons phone, or to they calendar, and gives them access to all Siri functions on that account/phone. And because HomePod always hears "Hey Siri", no matter where you are, its really hard to use your own devices...unless you activate siri manually on the phone, defeating the purpose. Of course, you could turn off iCloud personal information and leave Siri on...but then anytime you say "Hey siri" in your house, you get a full volume, 5-10 second sentence from the HomePod about what it can't do. So to retain your sanity, you have to turn Siri on the home pod off if you live with more than one person. And if you do that, it limits the HomePod even more.
Its also unrepairable, so if anything happens to it, its 280 bucks to repair it...like easy, a cat/dog nibbles on the mesh covering. At that price, you might as well just buy a new one.
I own two (three before), I probably will never buy one again. You are far better off buying into a Sonos system. I avoided that as hard as I could, but thousands of dollars, multiple returns, and months of research shopping have shown its probably the best for most people...its far more versatile. Your other option is a "real" home system with an airplay receiver, but that's more work.
So many haters on the Macrumors forums about anything Apple. I love my HomePod gonna get another one soon
Whilst there are, most post disliking the Homepod are based on pretty logical reasons
- It runs Siri, which even the most die hard Apple fan can't deny is an absolute failure of a product, now fragmented with multiple variations running on different hardware, and no OTA upgrades, meaning a whole new iOS update has to be done to add even the most basic of responses.
- The actual speaker itself is good quality, however it's no better than any of the $150-$250 range high end standalone speakers, many of which support Apple Music, Spotify, bluetooth streaming, etc.
- As a product, it's not got a lot to offer other than a gateway to an Apple Music subscription, a service which if you are outside of the US still has significant network latency issues (simple test, someone in the EU can open Spotify, hammer the skip button 50 times and that 50th track will play instantly. You do that on Apple music and you've got a ~10 second buffer). This is down to Apples insistence on keeping everything in their west coast DC (and a few west coast EC2 instances), which is an archaic practice in this day and age.
Homepod could be a phenomenal product if they did more than the bare minimum. A decent Siri API, support for Spotify Connect, Soundcloud, Deezer, etc even if it is via 3rd party 'apps'.
Whilst Amazon doesn't have a speaker of that calibre, their integrations and software side of it walk all over Homepod, which still feels like a half arsed implementation of a smart speaker.
I get it, people won't agree with everything I've said, and thats absolutely fine, we're all entitled to out thoughts and opinions, I'm just sharing a common opinion that even popular mac blogs have brought up. Another way to look at it - if the product was so flawless, why on earth are there an abnormally large number of long time Apple users avoiding it.
I want to like Homepod. But Apples lackluster attempt to provide a Smart Speaker is preventing that right now.
That's changing since the SCOTUS ruled that states can require out of state retailers to collect sales tax. For example B&H has no presence whatsoever in WA state, but they collect WA state sales tax now.
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