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That’s what Apple support is for if you’re having problems you just give me a quick call and I’ll help you fix it they’re not hard to set up if you read the instructions or you can YouTube how to set up your HomePod I got seven of them and I don’t have any problems hooked up to TVs and also throughout the house. Happy to help if you need it.
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Retail price makes no sense in Australia paid $499 bought seven of them though still paying them off but love having the sound going throughout the house.
I have a HomePod and I can connect it as an audio source for my Apple TV. Only thing is the HomePod audio is delayed to my sound bar. Now I did something before that fixed it but I don’t know what I did. And now it’s delayed again. Do you know how to fix this?
 
I've considered the HomePod a few times. My main hesitation, and why I went with the competition is really not wanting to be locked into the Apple ecosystem. I like Apple, but the way I use products today compared to say 20 years ago, or even longer. is I don't want to be locked into one company's services and products. I also don't want a lot of physical different products around the apartment to do the variety of stuff, and work with the variety of third party products that just one or two third party products can do.

I do use Siri occasionally on my phone, or iPad. Never on the Mac. I've been trying the free trial of Apple Music. I would consider a HomePod for that, but Alexa has an official Apple Music Skill from Apple, and I haven't had any problems integrating that into the rest of the skills and services I use through the Amazon platform. I also have a couple of Google Homes, and I still prefer amazon even over those. So, I'd probably buy the HomePod, play with it for about a week, and then not use it again after that. At least not enough to make the cost worth it, whatever it may be.

It comes down to, do you like quality? And HomePod vs Echo, the HP will always win.
 
As long as the Homepods are restricted to streaming only they're pretty useless from my perspective. Absolutely need a line input.

Give up the wires, you can stream any audio from your phone.
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It’s a good speaker, it’s a trash device.
It’s the inverse of the echo dot, which is a great device but a trash speaker.

I control my whole house with HPs, they work great with homekit.
 
Apple is removing competing products from it's stores? Don't they have to allow competing products to have prominent floorspace, window advertising, and Apple Genius recommendations all at a 0% fee to the competitor?

I’ll admit; it took far longer for the first person to take the bait and make the comparison everyone is thinking 😂
 
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The main thing I have noticed in recent Homepod updates is now when I say "Hey Siri, can you play Giant Steps by John Coltrane," instead of beginning at the beginning of track 1, Siri says "Okay, let's hear Giant Steps by John Coltrane," and then there is a ten-second pause and it starts about ten seconds in. When you say "Siri, can you play this track from the start," it no longer begins at the beginning. So ... Apple Music has a bit of regression testing backlog to catch up with, or whatever you call it when they break something that used to work perfectly. Oooo! The other speaker just came in! Fuhhhhhhhhh.
This is the most frustrating part as sometimes commands that worked suddenly stop working. No idea if this is something Siri has in common with Google and amazon.
This breaks daily routines and I consider this quite poor.
Also, same command works on one day, stops working the next.
 
I hope they do come out with some new HomePods - I have 4 in my house and love them. Never had much of a problem with Siri. Even use them to turn the lights out (Philips Hue are all round the house) when I leave the room. Siri is smart enough to know which HomePod I am close too and will turn out the lights in that room.
 
Hoping they do not sacrifice sound quality for a smaller footprint.

It's hard to believe Apple would be capable of both reducing size, reduce cost and not reduce overall audio fidelity and quality. The HomePod is punching way above its size and price in-terms of fidelity and audio quality already.

I'd bet the smaller one will do the same. It will be great considering its size and price but it will be slightly inferior to it's bigger brother. It's only so much you can do when physics is involved and considering how well the HomePod is already doing considering its size it's only realistic to expect especially the lower frequencies to not be as capable on the smaller device.

We also have to consider that producing the same quality in a smaller package tends to add cost not reduce it. So if rumours are true that the smaller one will aim for a lower price point it's hard to think that this is coming at no cost of quality to the device itself unless the SoC's Apple is using inside the HomePod has become more efficient to produce or something making them able to reduce cost in the hardware which doesn't directly affect its performance and capabilities.

But this cost-reductions would most likely find itself into a rev.2 of the regular HomePod as well.
 
This is such a tired, clichéd argument. I have 7 HomePods between two homes and using them with Siri is typically a seamless experience.
If you're an American using US American Siri on American soil, I'm sure Siri is an absolute dream - but for the majority of the world's population, "Siri sucks" isn't so much a clichéd argument but a daily reality. As for myself, I'm Swedish but I speak US English with no discernible accent. Here are my options:

iOS+MacOS: Swedish or English. If I set it to Swedish, I can get Siri to do some basic things like triggering shortcuts or taking calendar appointments, provided I remember that Siri doesn't understand 24hr time properly, e.g. if I say that the event is "from 16 to 19" (4 PM-7 PM) it'll be written to the calendar as 4:19 PM to 5:19 PM. If I tell it to play music, which typically involves English song titles and artist/band names, I have to do it in a really thick Swedish accent (aka 'Swenglish') because it's using an algorithm that Apple created while training Apple TV to understand Swedes saying stuff like "Taylor Swift" or "The Avengers". Pronouncing the names/titles with a US English accent will confuse the hell out of 'Swenglish' Siri - the better your English, the less she'll understand. If I set it to US English, I can do everything you do as far as dealing with Apple Music / TV+ etc, but it breaks everything else; Every Swedish push notification or text message I receive will be read to me like they were written in English (which is great for comedic effect but 99.8% unintelligible), and obviously Siri won't understand a word I say with regards to Swedish map locations, local establishments etc.

tvOS: Swedish/'Swenglish' only. The system refuses to allow me to select English Siri (or any other language except Swedish) for no apparent reason. I posted (polite) questions about this absurd restriction on Apple's support forum and both posts were deleted in under 5 minutes like I exposed the world's most sensitive military secret or something.

Google Assistant: I can set it to Swedish, English or both simultaneously. If I set it to Swedish only I can still address it in English or Swedish and switch mid-sentence, and the assistant will still understand me and respond in Swedish. If I enable both languages, the assistant will respond in whichever language I addressed it. The bilingual option is supposedly in beta, but it never failed me so far. That's why I as an avid Apple devotee have a house full of Google gadgetry. Well, that plus the fact that Apple adamantly refuses to sell HomePod in my country nearly 3 years after its original launch.

In case you didn't know or care, this is a long-standing issue with Apple - they love taking your money no matter where you're from, but they're as US-centric as Trump when it comes to their software and services, and only at gunpoint will they make anything work properly for people outside the native English speaking realm.
 
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I’m curious why someone would buy these products from an Apple store. I’d just get them from Best Buy, Amazon or directly from the brands website.

Never underestimate the spontaneous purchase.

In addition if the price is the same as online and you are test driving one of the products in the Apple store, there's no reason to buy online when you can walk out with it in hand.
 
This is an interesting development that might actually point to an updated or new model HomePod. None of the supply chain based rumors have changed since early 2018. If true, I’m looking for a sub $120 price point. As someone earlier in the thread showed, it’s possible to consistently get deals on the original HomePod for as low as $180-$200.

While I really want a HomePod mini, with the latest Nest Home at $100, I’m unsure as to how much of an Apple tax on these Apple could really get. I could see it going the other way too: I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a similar form factor to the original at a $250 price point and updated internals, not actually a smaller one for less money.

I think Apple will be elevating HomePod to a major product category, similar to iPhone/iPad/Mac. And will have multiple audio products incorporating their proprietary underlying beamforming and signal processing technology found in the original HomePod. That tech is so excellent that it needs to be further leveraged into new products.
 
100% interested in a HomePod mini.

I have Google minis in each room, but subscribe to Apple Music for the HomePod. So we have to have YouTube music for the minis.

It’s far out of budget to put a HomePod in each room at ~$200, when google literally gives their minis away, but I’d be willing to pay $100 or so for each HomePod mini.
Kinda depends on how mini.
 
The mini HomePod will also work with wifi and many people use them in each room of the house, so a build-in wifi mesh network would be great. And it could also extend the wireless AirPod range.

Just some free advice Apple, I need both so hey, I can dream. :cool:
 
Great, so now they have a headphone and speaker monopoly in the Apple Stores too. How can this be allowed? It’s just like the App Store. It’s like they own the store or something

Someone one should set up a booth in the stores to sell Bose headphones with no money going to Apple. /s
 
Consumers still have choice, just not at the Apple Store. It's a store for Apple's products...why would they sell products that compete with theirs? Should they also sell Microsoft and Dell PCs? Google phones? Samsung tablets?
Mostly because they normally do. Your question is fair if Apple never sells other brands, but we all know they have and they do now.
 
Great, so now they have a headphone and speaker monopoly in the Apple Stores too. How can this be allowed? It’s just like the App Store. It’s like they own the store or something

Someone one should set up a booth in the stores to sell Bose headphones with no money going to Apple. /s
Fortunately, Bose is allowed to sell it's headphones at any other store they want. They can negotiate with those stores to display and sell it's product. Apple doesn't get a penny of that. Users looking for Bose can actually purchase directly from Bose (bypassing Apple's Stores), and Apple doesn't get a penny of that! So your cute little analogy falls far short of the actual issue with Epic and in fact highlights the issue Epic faces -- a person with an iPhone can get a Bose Product without ever going to Apple, and Bose doesn't have to pay Apple a penny for that sale. Epic doesn't have that luxury.
 
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Logic would dictate that if you want "choice" you wouldn't limit yourself to only shopping in an Apple store.
What kind of logic? The Apple store is a store for Apple products + accessories that work well together for an Apple-worthy setup. For example: Philips home automation. Shouldn't mean that if Apple makes one bulp Philips should be delisted. And neither should they remove other great audio products.
 
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Mostly because they normally do. Your question is fair if Apple never sells other brands, but we all know they have and they do now.

And those other brands have mostly consisted of accessories (cables, cases, speakers, etc) that could be used with major products such as iPhone/iPad/Mac. That's why you don't see Samsung phones and Dell computers in Apple stores.

Now that Apple is likely elevating HomePod to a major product category, it makes no sense to have competing audio products in their stores.

The good news is Apple can do whatever they want as to how they choose to carry products in their stores. And don't need approval from others.
 
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