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Just. lower. the. MSRP.

Same. With. iPhones.

Enough marketing savings (w/ Apple music sub slash trade in an older iPhone)

If Steve was willing to do it (first gen), Tim should be too. Give a credit to early adopters so they aren't pissed.

See sales flourish and loyalty increase and be done with it already.. its not difficult its just greed and incompetence. Its painful to watch them be at a standstill when there's obvious non detrimental things they can do to fix that.

Margin buffer is thicc anyways.
 
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$250+tax is too much IMO. Should be priced at $200 (which is what I got mine for lightly used)
 
Exactly. I laugh at people who buy “quality” sound equipment. I use knock-off earbuds from the dollar store and it’s just as good as those ugly over-the-ear headphones. Guess people love to waste money.
Your knockoff earbuds have sound reproduction that is literally nothing even close to my Sennheiser Momentum’s.

Your statement is objectively wrong and it’s hilarious that you’d ever think it wasn’t.
 
Some people like high quality speakers.
With no I/O so when apple stop supporting it (or planned obsolescence somehow) it becomes a brick. Good quality speakers last a really long time "decades" but HomePod will last exactly how long Apple wants it to last. Sure google home mini is also the same deal. But it does more, and costs a fraction of this so I don't mind if it's disposable.

Rather than a measly discount off a hyper inflated product. They could learn from Amazon and google and make a piece of hardware that is almost sold at a loss when people also subscribe to iTunes. "Sign up for a year with iTunes, get a HomePod for $50". Its not as if +70% margins are not built into this monstrosity as it is. That might make using either of those products justifiable.

Apple is just so far behind the 8 ball.
 
I want to like this product but I just feel it's not smart enough to warrant its existence.
If you're buying it to do Alexa things, you're right. The two I have sound better than my Sonos system though, it's a VERY music first device, with smart stuff tacked on afterwards.
 
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With no I/O so when apple stop supporting it (or planned obsolescence somehow) it becomes a brick. Good quality speakers last a really long time "decades" but HomePod will last exactly how long Apple wants it to last. Sure google home mini is also the same deal. But it does more, and costs a fraction of this so I don't mind if it's disposable.

Rather than a measly discount off a hyper inflated product. They could learn from Amazon and google and make a piece of hardware that is almost sold at a loss when people also subscribe to iTunes. "Sign up for a year with iTunes, get a HomePod for $50". Its not as if +70% margins are not built into this monstrosity as it is. That might make using either of those products justifiable.

Apple is just so far behind the 8 ball.
Yeah the smart home sector is dominated by Amazon and Google. Apple is nowhere to be found.
 
If you're buying it to do Alexa things, you're right. The two I have sound better than my Sonos system though, it's a VERY music first device, with smart stuff tacked on afterwards.

haha , nice try ... such a pod can never be music first and even the music functions are less to alexa what i read here in the forum
 
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For my house with my layout Sonos is just a far superior option. I've got 4 Sonos One's, a set of tower speakers hooked up to a connect and outside in the garage I've got an old set of book shelf speakers connected to an amp and an airport express. Music everywhere.
 
1) Siri is almost useless. All these "AI" voice companions are little better than animatronics and kitsch robot toys of the past and present. I had high hopes for Siri (and the others) when it came out, but it hasn't become a helping hand--it's a hampering hand.

Siri isn't perfect, but for what I need it's fine. When I run out of something in the kitchen, I can tell HomePod in the living room to add the item to my grocery list. HomePod hears me across 2 rooms and Siri understands the command and adds the correct item to my grocery list. I can ask Siri to read unread messages and send a reply when my hands are full as well. The same goes for setting timers or asking Siri to remind me of something on a specific date and time. If I get a phone call, I can ask Siri on the HomePod to answer the call, or ask her to make a phone call. The HomePod itself is a lot less expensive than an actual personal assistant would be, but does almost everything a real one would do aside from dropping off my dry-cleaning.

2) Apple Music. Unless you are just into the corporate propaganda rock, Apple's curation is complete CRAP. And crap is a very nice word for it, because crap doesn't do justice for how abysmal Apple's curation of all music happens to be. They center around music, in PR, but in actuality they center around pop-aganda and astro-turf nonsense ONLY. It's impossible to set up a satisfying playlist in most genres of music without a major waste of time. The USER must curate their own and Apple offers nothing, only directions back to U2 or Ed Sheehan or Adele or Minaj, etc.

This is one of the most uninformed comments I have read in a long time. If you think it's a waste of time to listen to your favorite songs and rate them, or create a station based on your favorite song/artist, you just don't like music.

I am a fan of Afro Cuban Jazz, which is a very specific niche of jazz, and Apple Music continuously surprises me with new artists and new recordings from some of my favorite artists. I'm also a fan of musicians like Jaco Pastorius and Herbie Hancock, and Apple Music has done a great job of learning the type of funk-based jazz I like without trying to play Louis Armstrong or another artist that isn't from the same genre.


3) Why would I listen to music on that speaker when I already have a ton of worthy bluetooth speakers I can link into and port my own collection of music? FOR FREE.

I don't think there are a ton of bluetooth speakers whose audio quality compares to HomePod, and I don't think they're free unless you count Amazon's stuff. If you're talking about paying for music, I am not sure if you are advocating piracy or if you steal CDs and rip them. Our Apple Music family subscription works out to $3.75 per person, which would mean we could each only buy about 4 CDs a year.

4) What is this going to b come in the future? A: nothing more than it is. There is nothing more that it can become until they fix the first two problems described above.

It's clear you don't own a HomePod, and from your strange comments probably haven't even tried the 3 month AppleMusic trial. It sounds like you don't like music and wouldn't appreciate HomePod's audio quality anyway...
 
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Tim Cook always prides how Apple says no to so many products. This should have been one of those. I’ve got one. Very nice speaker. That’s about it, the most underwhelming Apple product I’ve ever owned. Screams that Tim felt pressure to expand somewhere new and market data drove him to smart speakers.

tim has no vision - thats all. amazon was kicking their ass, so they needed to come with something
 
I know lots of people who just use their smartphone speakers at home.
I’m sure there are lots of people who do that, but I’ve got two points:

  1. We don’t have any idea if that’s “most people”.
  2. The sound quality is poor, even if lots of people accept it.
I’m not an audiophile or an audio snob or anything like that. It doesn’t take a trained ear to recognize that a HomePod is a higher quality speaker than an Echo, and that a decent receiver paired to some decent speakers will outdo both. All it takes is a quick listen.

If people are happy listening to music on an Echo, good for them, and maybe it’s better they not know what they’re missing.
 
I want to like this product but I just feel it's not smart enough to warrant its existence.
Funny, my biggest problem with the HomePod is that it's too smart. I would love a high-quality AirPlay capable speaker like the HomePod but I have no use for Siri. If they made a cheaper, 'dumb' version of the HomePod I would be all over that.
 
Siri is ABSOLUTE TRASH on this thing. I have to say Hey Siri, twice, to get it to respond at least 50% of the time.

I would like to get a HomePod for my 'exercise room', so I could control music without having to leave my rowing machine. But this Siri performance is something that worries me. I do use Siri on the phone for music selection in the car, and I would guess it picks the correct song about two out of three times, which is a bit annoying but acceptable to me given the situation. The Hey-Siri-activation is close to useless, though, which I have been blaming on the noisy environment, so I stick to the button. It is sad to read that the 'stationary' Siri is no better, in particular given that the HomePod relies more on this than the phone does.

Something that also irks me a bit is that I often find myself limiting my music choices only to 'safe' titles that I know Siri can handle, rather than picking something I would actually like to hear but which involves a big risk of Siri going wrong, with the subsequent hassle of me having to correct this, retrying, rephrasing etc. I was hoping the supposedly music-optimized HomePod-Siri is better at this, but I have my doubts. If I have to keep the phone nearby to use the screen for 'complicated' selections, I might as well always use the phone to cast to some non-HomePod speaker.
 
To be clear, you can just use your phone to play music on a HomePod correct? Like I don’t have to say ‘hey Siri’?
 
Still too high. For most people listening to music on an Echo is more than acceptable..


Spoken from someone who obviously hasn't listened to music on a Homepod.
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Still too high. For most people listening to music on an Echo is more than acceptable..


Spoken from someone who obviously hasn't listened to music on a Homepod.
 
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Same here. Apple Music subscriber and HomePod owner. The sound coming out of it the HomePod is fantastic for its size. I would love to get a second one, but the prices are too high for what it is. Siri is ABSOLUTE TRASH on this thing. I have to say Hey Siri, twice, to get it to respond at least 50% of the time. Then, at random times, it will blurt "mm hmm" or "I'm sorry, I didn't get that" when no one said anything even remotely close to sounding like "Hey Siri." I keep waiting for Siri to get better, but I have been waiting years and looks like I will continue to wait.

Sounds like you need to schedule a visit to the Genius Bar for some help.

I've had mine close to a year and use it 3-4 hours a day. I can't say it has never not responded to "Hey Siri." But can say for sure the response rate is at least 99%.
 
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