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Deals: HomePod Returns to Its Low Price of $199.99 in Best Buy's New Sale
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How many updates does your keep-for-ten-years speaker get after five years? Or ever?
Not OP, but many of us have our super cheap smart speakers plugged into real audio system for the sound output. I have my echo dot plugged into a great stereo system that's from the 90's that I got from my folks when they stopped using it. It sounds way better than any single mono speaker could. And if in 5 years the echo dot stops getting updates with new features then I'll just drop another 25 bucks on a new one and plug it right back into my same great stereo system.
I'm tempted to get a pair based on sound quality and connectivity via Airplay 2 alone. USB Audio seems to be having another one of its rough patches for Apple under Catalina, and I'm eager to get off that bus once and for all.
I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at as the typical wireless speaker doesn't get updates, but it might just be to my question on purchasing a speaker or purchasing a smart speaker. If you just hardwire or bluetooth to a speaker with another device, like your phone, the speaker will (or should) enjoy a much longer life as it only needs to maintain bluetooth compatibility. In the case of a smart assistant speaker you are at the mercy of the manufacturer wanting to maintain updates on older hardware.
So take a HomePod, no hardwire option, the second Apple decides that it no longer wants to support Siri on the G1 it is then reduced to Airplay only, then when does Apple stop supporting AirplayX on the G1 device.
Its all hypothetical, I was simply interested in what everyone thinks/feels about the end of life cycle for these devices. As @motulist mentioned, replacing a cheap smart speaker is nothing but if you spent real money on one you want some assurances it will have a useful lifetime.
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This is a good price on a product that I've been going back and forth on for a while. I'd like to pick up one of these before the only version we can get has reduced sound quality. But, current HomePod owners, please answer this question: Can the HomePod play live radio stations without the involvement of one's iPhone - as in, all by itself while connected to your home wifi network with your iPhone turned off? I've read about such functionality being added late last year, but details since then have been very murky - with the subject mentioned only in passing.
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Awesome. It’s not that you’re even a ‘fan boy’ (<— Which is a juvenile term) because it’s a ‘HomePod or Apple product‘, you obviously value sound and realize the compatibility among each unit in your household in terms of not just the quality sound that it produces, but the convenience.
Insurance for a speaker? And you feel happy? Wow. Anyway, even $190 if far too much for a speaker where you can't set the most basic functions like EQ or L/R balance.
[automerge]1591991472[/automerge]
Ah, you didn't see what Sonos did to its first loyal customers. They bricked the first gen devices on purpose. Sonos destroyed their brand reputation and the trust in the whole smart speaker market in one day. LOL!
I got one a couple weeks ago from Best Buy and it still had 11.2.5 software on it. So that's how long ago it had been manufactured.
Because.... you don't value the smarts, you don't value the speaker, little help here. General consensus is that the sound quality punches up for the price at $199 so why do you undervalue it? Have you heard one?
THIS IS AN EDIT OF MY PREVIOUS REPLY: It's a three-day sale... only through Sunday the 14th.
Best Buy just kicked off a huge 3-day sale – here are the 10 best deals on Apple gear and more
Best Buy launched a big 3-day sale on Friday that runs all weekend long, packing tons of great deals aimed at “dads and grads.” Shoppers will find deep discounts on popular products fro…
bgr.com
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I doubt Apple is making 50% of the profits in this category - yet. Apple is very much an also-ran, and there are some serious established high-end rivals in addition to those operating at the lower end of the market.
I think it's unfortunate Apple is not seeing more success with HomePod. They sound amazing, better than anything from Amazon, Google, and most of the Sonos range too. HomePod should be a compelling option for anyone invested in the Apple ecosystem especially.
I wouldn't swap my HomePod setup for anything else in the market. It's that good.
HomePod is certainly not a failure, and I don't think Apple entered this market expecting it to be an overnight runaway success either. I think with the addition of one or two new products options in a slightly bigger HomePod range, some further fine-tuning of the HomePod experience, and Apple will begin to carve itself a much greater share of the market.
Well this is going to be my second of these devices. Getting this one for my kitchen. I know that Apple put an overkill processor in these things (an A8, if I recall correctly) and so they have far more processing capability than they need to just contact the internet, pull down sound files and send simple orders to other devices (e.g. turn on lights). I'm not expecting this to do anything else. I think Apple will support that level of functionality for at least five years. If I can't use it at that point and it is still a good set of speakers, it will be sad and somewhat of a waste to retire it (likely mean putting it on Craigslist and selling for a few bucks). Maybe it will become not much more than a clock radio. We shall see. But I will have gotten lots of use out of it at that point, so I won't be upset.
That said, your concern is exactly why I don't want a smart TV and I bought a Mac mini over an iMac recently. I don't want too many unified smart devices. I'd rather have the smarts separate from output (both audio or screen). This is one that I will make an exception for because it saves space.
Also, do I have a choice? I'm sure neither Google or Amazon is going to produce something that will be supported longer than Apple. Sonos has recently stopped supporting some of its speakers and those were much larger investments, often semi-permanently installed into homes. I'm done with wiring speakers through my home. I want voice control to a massive library of recorded music. Those are table stakes now as far as I am concerned. I'm willing to pay a month subscription for that and buy hardware updates periodically (provided the hardware is plug and play).
I love my HomePods, but Siri sucks on it. However, a bigger issue to me is the fact it doesn't support standards such as Zigbee. I'm really hoping when this comes to fruition: https://www.iotforall.com/connected-home-over-ip/
that we will start to see homepods/echos/google nest speakers ship with them by default. I don't like using a hub for every smart home platform, and would love to be able to use the HomePods and Apple TV's as a sort of mesh network for this stuff, and I know this is possible via bluetooth or Wifi, but bluetooth is too slow and unreliable, and wifi has it's own issues (if you change SSID you have to update it on every single device, more wifi devices means more overhead on the network).
that we will start to see homepods/echos/google nest speakers ship with them by default. I don't like using a hub for every smart home platform, and would love to be able to use the HomePods and Apple TV's as a sort of mesh network for this stuff, and I know this is possible via bluetooth or Wifi, but bluetooth is too slow and unreliable, and wifi has it's own issues (if you change SSID you have to update it on every single device, more wifi devices means more overhead on the network).