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B&H Lists HomePod Mini as Discontinued Amid Refresh Rumors
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I wanted to like the HomePod mini, but the sound would cut out when paired with another HomePod mini when connected to an AppleTV4K. I have been impressed with the Beat Bluetooth Pill speaker as a replacement. The battery last 24 hours, and I can take it to work, and all my devices connect to it without restriction. If I buy a 2nd Pill, I can create a stereo pair, like the HomePod mini. I am waiting for them to back on sale for $50, like during Amazon Prime week.
HomePod Air, you won't believe how thin it sounds!
Apple won’t go into the holiday season with limited stock of the HomePod Mini. And if a new HomePod Mini is coming, then the Apple TV as well.
when is Apple recalling the current HomePod mini due to the touch screen delaminating and causing phantom touch issues?
overall i like the mini. with a robust wireless network and a good mdns setup it works mostly fine.
but i was pretty let down testing some things when i had to power down my network UPS. the damn thing cant tell you the time without the internet! i presume because it does the audio transcription in the cloud, but wow.
I have two HomePod minis - one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen. The kitchen one suffered a lot with these phantom touches - where Siri would react as if it was asked something and start playing music randomly etc. This started around two or theee years after purchase. It drove me nuts and I eventually junked it. The bedroom one was (and still is) fine. I do wonder if the heat/oils in the air in the kitchen caused some sort of issue with the touch sensor…
I’m still using my old iPad Air 2 as a hub. Its really annoying that apple has halted hub support with these devices. It’s the main reason I feel forced to get the new Apple TV. Just wish they’d hurry up and release it.
Probably a bad wifi basestation (or worse a bad mesh system). The issue I found with the older HomePod mini is its use of single channel wifi 4 (fixed to 20MHz only). When using AirPlay (or in stereo pair) a lot, it can be problematic on a very busy wifi network and/or when there's a lot of RF interference.
I hope that Apple hasn't made the same mistake again with the new HomePod. They should support at least 802.11ax with full MU-MIMO capability on every frequency band. Only that way it won't hog the maximum bandwidth so much when using AirPlay as the HomePod 2 and HomePod mini do.
Oddly enough the first HomePod did use 802.11ac MIMO. Why Apple "downgraded" the newer models? The explanation Matthew Costello gave a while back is just BS. I think they just wanted to use left over SOC's from older iWatch series (S7).
Just for reference, I have 8 HomePod mini's in our house, four if them are setup as stereo pairs and the others mono in other rooms. They all work fine as long as we do not AirPlay to more than 4 destinations with one iPhone or Mac. I do have to say that I also have forced all HomePod's to the 5GHz band, because the lower band is just too overcrowded by neighbouring misconfigured wifi and other RF crap.
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If it's going to release any time soon then my guess is that it's going to be announced today (Tuesday 11th) and not Wednesday.
There is what I think is a quite well-confirmed rumour that Apple stores are getting some sort of refresh tonight. With Apple being a global company working across many time zones though it just doesn't make sense to me that Apple would have signage in stores worldwide on the day of the announcement because that way anyone making a morning visit to an Apple store in a time zone significantly ahead of California would get to see that new signage and presumably new devices on display hours in advance of California putting out the press release.
There is also considerable speculation that tonight's store refreshes are simply for new signage and displays for the upcoming holiday season but if they are related to any new product launches then I would expect Apple HQ to put out the press release this afternoon, the rebranding of stores to happen after closing time tonight to put up new signage and update the demo units, with availability starting sometime later this week, maybe as soon as tomorrow.
Then again, my hunch is that tonight is just a holiday season refresh for the stores but I'd love to be wrong on that.
That's the problem with them. They need $500 worth of networking equipment in order to work.
I also had problems with mine, and upgrading from my decade-old Verizon router to an Ubiquiti setup also fixed the issue. But it shouldn't have been, as every other device in my house was rock solid with the Verizon router.
I wonder if the rumored new one can be stereo paired with the old one. I'd like to buy a new one, but I don't have a need for two separate HomePod minis.
My bedroom ones do this and they’re in the most climate controlled area of the house. It looks to be a manufacturing defect but Apple is refusing to admit it.