More voice coils in speakers were burnt from too little power than too much. People would turn up their 25 watt receivers until the amplifiers clipped, producing DC voltages, since the voice coils don't move with DC, they just heated up. I built a live system in a night club and used a 300 watt per channel Mac to drive 2 JBL mid-range compression drivers on each channel, and never replaced a diaphragm.
Yep, common misconception that providing "too much power" would hurt a speaker, when usually the problem is too little, with the amplifier horribly misbehaving when called upon to provide something it can't. Vaguely related, I have a friend who, back in the day, borrowed a well-regarded test CD from me so he could test out his fancy new speakers (M&K satellites and subwoofer). Among other things, he went through the series of test tones... he ended up cranking the volume ever higher trying to hear the topmost
20 kHz tone... until he heard a click and experienced a funny smell in his room. Had to get the tweeter replaced in one of his new speakers.
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HomePod isn't a mono speaker. It splits the sound into left/center/right channels. 7 tweeters means that the mid/high range is stereo. One woofer means that the low end technically isn't stereo, but in terms of how people perceive sound at the low end and how most music is mixed for stereo...it's not going to be a significant issue when using a single unit.
The important point is that Apple has always focused on "what is the user experience of using this" rather than which boxes does it tick on the specification buzzword chart. What they are going for is something that sounds really nice when you listen to it. This is a mark they may or may not have hit with the HomePod (and the perception of their level of success may differ considerably from user to user, depending on how demanding the user is, and how much experience the user has with high-end audio).
The MP3 format was based on the idea of throwing out large parts of the musical information to which users are less sensitive, in order to make files small enough to store and transmit on 90's era computers and networks. Despite the obvious compromises in this,
many people have enjoyed MP3-encoded music, many not caring about the technology itself.
Rather than worrying about whether the HomePod is stereo, or quasi-stereo, or full(-enough)-range or not, the real answer is to wait until it's released, and go listen to it/them, preferably in an environment that is
not "one corner of a 100ft-by-100ft Apple Store" (cavernous, noisy, and probably quite unlike your living room). Decide
then if
you like the sound it produces, rather than trying to argue about how it
sounds based entirely on things you've
read.