Another poster said it earlier: There were many waiting for the next iteration of HomePod. Now they're scrambling to find them before they're all scooped up.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
HomePod HomePod Discontinued... Discussion.
- Thread starter Itinj24
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Another poster said it earlier: There were many waiting for the next iteration of HomePod. Now they're scrambling to find them before they're all scooped up.
I think its very simple.
Apple created a great product generating billions in revenue but it sold at a price it was not built for and lost money. I read somewhere that it has a cost of $212 to build and at $349 a 40% margin is decent for CE. But drop it to $299 or lower and it's unacceptable. This ties with brand new HomePods being sold with 2018 build dates. The original retail slowed sales below Apple's forecasts and the price to really move them along was $299 or below. Great product, just overbuilt for an audience not receptive to spending over $300 for a mono speaker. Lesson learned.
So, Apple takes a break for a few years, designs something that sits between HomePod and Mini, focus on the audiophile instead of the IoT, keep the deep bass but sacrifice microphones or the A8 processor, throw in Bluetooth, engineer it to make full margins at $199, and there's your next version.
Yeah, when you look at all the separate parts in the OG HomePod you can tell it cost MUCH more to build. What a shame it’s gone now.
7 tweeters each with an individual amplifier!
7 tweeters each with an individual amplifier!
I would never get them but my sister likes her's. I would get more HomePods if the price was lower.
I am another that luvs the HomePod, lol. True, if Apple Music stopped working with HomePod, I'd stop Apple Music the same day. Apple killed the HomePod with being lazy with the software.
My thought is that Apple should come out with a small soundbar like Sonos Beam, with built in upgraded ATV and Homekit. People buy soundbars for new TVs all the time (a derived demand in economics terms) instead of a stand alone speaker like the Homepod which relies on direct demand.
And the tv could function as the screen for requests like recipes, calendar, etc instead of a dedicated display like Google nest hub.
And the tv could function as the screen for requests like recipes, calendar, etc instead of a dedicated display like Google nest hub.
Like many HomePod owners, I'm disappointed by this. I finally got one last summer and love it - it sits on my desk and gets used almost every day. Siri is almost useless (except for saying 'pause' and 'play') but I didn't buy a 'smart speaker', I wanted something that sounded great and worked seamlessly with my other Apple devices.
I'd been thinking about getting a second HP for a stereo pair, and now I'm very much in two minds about it. I'd have to pay full retail price (I got mine for £200, which is about right 'for me') and there's no guarantee the things will work for any length of time.
I'd been thinking about getting a second HP for a stereo pair, and now I'm very much in two minds about it. I'd have to pay full retail price (I got mine for £200, which is about right 'for me') and there's no guarantee the things will work for any length of time.
I hear this all the time about devices that are being discontinued, but there is actually a world of difference between Apple not selling them any longer, and them pulling support.
For example, I have and (almost daily) use a 2003-vintage G4 iMac. Not only was that discontinued many, many years ago, but Apple don't even have links to documentation for it any longer. Yet it still works, and in fact is very heavily used. And that's just one example of Apple devices still in use well after their 'end' date.
There is no reason for Apple to pull support for anything any time soon, and plenty of reason why they would not. In the case of HomePods, given that most of them almost certainly are linked to Apple Music subscriptions, they will know pretty well that prematurely ending support to the point that HomePods no longer work or can no longer be reset and resused, would be death to a significant proportion of their subscription income.
Since the HomePod continues in the form of the Mini, there is plenty of reason to expect the original model will continue to be updated for a while, and supported in the broader sense for much longer.
Good post.
For those of us who have all the HomePods we need, this recent news is a non-event. I wasn't going to be in the market for a new HomePod for 3 years at a minimum, they are all working flawlessly, and I don't have a smart home. My son is remote learning on a 10 year old iMac, one of my spare bedrooms has a 10 year old Apple TV, I'm not worried about any lack of firmware support for a speaker whose only purpose is to play music.
So long as I can say "Hey Siri, play some smooth jazz" and have music start playing, I'm good.
Usually I agree with the “calm down, its not like the product wont work anymore” responses to a discontinued product. But, as someone in the process of moving from Amazon Echo to HomePod, this definitely has me second guessing. Should I continue to buy HomeKit accessories that cost 3-5X more than other smart gear? Should I still buy more HomePods that have no BT/Aux support making it a great $300 speaker that cant be used as a speaker?
HomePod was already a pretty closed ecosystem that was fueled on “faith that Apple wont abandon us” so to have Apple discontinue a product with no glimpse of its replacement so I fully understand why someone would worry about the future of the HomePod as the center of their Smart Home.
A good product, no doubt, but the cheaper speaker I have syncs perfectly with my TV so for once I didn't pick Apple.
The answer lies not in a question over whether the HomePod will see continuing support, but in whether the product, as it is today, is what you need to accomplish what you want done.
I don't see all that much likelihood that HomeKit stuff will disappear, because there are other devices that support it, and there's no sign Apple have any interest in adapting to Alexa-supported accessories instead. So if you have already built out, or are able to build out your HomeKit requirements, then you're really good to go with the HomePod.
If not, then now might be time to examine if Amazon or Google ecosystems might work better for you, and switch if either does.
Personally, I never thought of the HomePod as anything other than a speaker. Siri is next to useless, and is about as much fun to use as being slapped with a wet towel. As a speaker, the HomePod is superb, but really (for me) only that. For all else, I use either iPhone apps or Alexa, whichever is more convenient at any moment. And sadly, as I mentioned in a prior post, even for music, with some sources, the HomePod is hopeless too, so rather than consider it going forward, I'll use the ones I have for Apple Music, and Amazon Studios for radio and smart devices.
Well, yes and no. All the big smart home players are working on a project called CHOIP (Connected Home Over IP) including Apple, Amazon, Google, Zigbee, etc... The goal is to have the devices work cross platform with a emphasis on privacy/security.
The question is whether or not current devices will be able adapt this via firmware or if it will require new hardware.
I wish HomePod wasn't weighed down with this IoT crap.
Anyone who can afford a $350 audiophile-caliber mono streaming speaker can surely afford a $30 Alexa to manage their damn smarthome. They can be two separate devices for two separate use cases. They can sit next to each other and look quite nice, my son's Google Mini has similar design language to the HomePod, they look good together.
Forcing every great streaming speaker to also be a great smarthome controller is ludicrous. Thomas Edison wasn't forced to put a light switch into his phonographs.
The HomePod is tightly integrated with Siri for music control - everything else Siri does pretty much just comes along for the ride - so there is no real benefit to separating them. That said, one of the potential paths that Apple could be taking here is simply getting out of the home audio space other than at the entry level with the Mini and ceding the high-end to other competitors who are able to integrate AirPlay2 into their devices. You'd then have a HomePod mini in the room as the voice assistant and it would simply play music through the separate speaker as directed.
I'm not thrilled about this path because in my experience, while AirPlay has been a great protocol - prior to the HomePod we'd been using several Airport Express devices connected to high end stereos for well over a decade - it's never quite as reliable as the HomePod is - everything is just always on, ready to go (yes, I realize aspects of the HomePod experience are not always reliable - but taken as a whole, I find the integrated option the better solution). This is not to mention that I really am a fan of Apple's 'house sound' for audio tuning so will be sad if they leave the mid-high-end market.
In the Sonos world, there is the One and One SL, the first one (smart) having microphones for digital assistants (Google or Amazon) and the SL with no microphones, just a streaming speaker (dumb). Interestingly, the smart version is only $20 more!
Weighed down? What are you talking about? It’s just Siri commands, really and the ability to add them to automations and scenes. Nobody was willing to pay that much for all this integration. The HomePod would’ve failed a lot sooner if it was just a standalone speaker and nothing else, without Siri. People were already complaining that HomeKit was short on devices.
Whether you like it or not, Siri is part of the smart home. Siri in CarPlay, the Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, etc... all do pretty much the same thing with the the smart home. Just because you’re too much of a dinosaur to make a smart home doesn’t make it less valuable to others.
And, no, I don’t want or need extra third party speakers to control my home. All my HomePods are part of my scenes and automations. HomeKit is HomeKit and Alexa is Alexa, or Google, whatever. Love the integration of the HomePods into my Smart Home but I’m not knocking you for wanting a dumb speaker out of the HomePod. By the way, adding Siri automatically makes it smart, which going by your posts, you use quite often.
You intimated that there is a new IoT protocol coming that may have helped render the world's best streaming speaker obsolete. If Apple would just let the cheap Mini pander to the IoT crowd and let HomePod 2 be nothing more than the world's best streaming speaker, it will be future-proofed from those who find it a challenge to flick a light switch.
It should be apparent that a very large swath of HomePod users don't give a rats about the IoT and, if they did, would use something better suited to it, like Alexa or Google. Apple made a great streaming speaker and encumbered it with some crappy attempt to get a piece of the IoT business which mattered in 2015 and is as dead as 3D TV was in 2012.
I have 5 HomePod's and 3 cars running CarPlay and Siri works brilliantly. Starting a playlist, pausing a song, skipping back, making phone calls, navigating to a destination. Smarthome is already a saturated market with very little innovation in the past decade. There is nothing exciting about a doorbell or a lightbulb.
Again, Siri is an awesome consumer electronics remote control replacement. What it isn't, and can never be, is a great smarthome manager. Apple makes no IoT products and isn't the world's biggest retailer like Amazon. Apple owns no search engine and isn't the worlds biggest information warehouse like Google. Apple makes consumer electronics and is America's biggest streaming music provider. That's what Siri needs to optimize. Remote commands for Apple products and fantastic sound quality for Apple Music. Not to talk to a damned thermostat made by a competitor.
Understood, but there is a detriment in trying to find a place in a smarthome business Apple isn't a player in. They make consumer electronics, they are world-leaders in app stores and streaming music. Siri is near perfect for the things that are truly Apple's wheelhouse. Encumbering a great Apple product with this artificial need to be smarthome friendly may be the reason that HomePod was discontinued.
People pay $250 for AirPods Pro and $549 for AirPods Max because they sound great. They aren't smarthome anything. HomePod at $350 is a bargain by comparison. And if HomePod 2 follows the lead of AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, they'll be just about audio. As they should be. America's biggest streaming music service has the right to produce the best sounding streaming headphones, earbuds, and speakers. Enough with this lightbulb crap.
You do realize that I can control my smart home with Siri via the AirPods Pro, right? Exact same thing the HomePods do. 🤦♂️
Definitely.
But why is it then that AirPods Pro get rave reviews and nary a word about how bleak Siri is as a smarthome manager or a search engine like HomePod does?
Answer: Because Alexa and Google took the form factor of a speaker and AirPods Pro is an earbud. So the Apple speaker gets compared to these other "speakers" and suffers an unfair stigma of being second-rate when, in actuality, HomePod is a better speaker than AirPods Pro is as an earbud.
So you just made my argument that the smart home is a huge part of the speaker market. Thanks 👍
But that’s my point. Siri is just Siri and the only thing that makes the HomePod part of a smart home.
Apple got rocked by the market because of the price.
My point, in simplest terms, is that if one takes the poisonous and unfair smarthome and search engine stuff out of ones thinking and considers HomePod just as a streaming speaker, it's a fantastic product, better than AirPods Pro. And, should Apple bring it back in a new form, I would hope they leave the IoT nonsense out of it and demote that voice assistant stuff to the cheap Mini like they have just done and where it belongs.
Just because Alexa and Google decided to use the form factor of a "speaker" doesn't mean that every speaker Apple comes out with a) needs to be compared to those two products or b) needs to have the functionality of those two products. The world needs an audiophile-caliber streaming speaker for Apple Music subscribers. And so there shall be.
The market has spoken. People want a cheaper SMART HOME speaker in an inexpensive form. That’s why the Mini is crushing it right now and what it was advertised as. So I’ll go back to what you said about a large swath of people not caring about smart home integration and introduce you to HomePod Mini... I’m gonna go ahead and say a small niche wants a good sounding, stand alone dumb speaker that does nothing else but play music.