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HomePod Mini Helps Apple Nearly Double Its Market Share of Smart Speakers and Screens
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From the mini's I have heard, I was impressed - much more so than the Echos and Dots I have heard. Less than a week from today, I will have an exact understanding of how a mini fits within our specific needs. On that topic...
What many blanket mini opinions/reviews fail to take into consideration is "intended use case." For me, I'm looking to add Siri functionality [check] and better Music fidelity than an iPad [check] to an Apple ecosystem [check] for south of $100 [check] for a room that is about 12 x 12'. I've not yet found a better option that checks all of those boxes.
That's a shame - you should either enunciate more clearly or use a different digital assistant that has superior AI designed to understand human speech patterns better.
Except for the fact that people buy smart speakers for them to be.... smart. Google >>> Alexa >>>>>>>>>>> Siri.
The HomePod mini is a very nice speaker for the price. I hope Apple adds Dolby Atmos to the mini with the next hardware update.
They suck as HomeKit products though. Siri takes ages to set scenes since iOS 15. A lot of things just fail too, without explanation. I’m growing very tired of HomeKit not working properly and regretting investing heavily in the system.
I’ve used echo dots, an echo show 8, an echo, a google nest mini and a google nest hub. The HomePod mini sounds better than all of them to me.
I feel the same, but if I ever change my mind, I would trust Apple far more than Google or Amazon.
Homebridge can fix that. It would be nice if you didn't have to fix this yourself, but a cheap Raspberry Pi running some form of Homebridge (I run Hoobs on mine) will interface with third party stuff including Hue, Nest, etc.
I have 2 mini’s. They sound ok. Better than the TVs speaker. But not much better.
Now the original hp sounded pretty good
Does anyone here think or hope Apple might learn a lesson from the full size HomePod? The mass market is price sensitive these days and is only willing to pay a steep premium for things that really matter. I'm hoping Apple's AR / VR headset is truly revolutionary, but will have to wait and see what it can do and how much it is.
Amazon and Google have strong profit motives to collect data about you. Apple has a strong profit motive to not collect data about you (if they were to get caught doing so, it’d hurt their reputation - and profits - quite a bit, since they focus on privacy so much). As well, Amazon in particular has a habit of selling these devices at suspiciously low prices - or giving them away. As is often said, if you aren’t paying, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Not clear how well that holds in this case.
Given all this, I’m willing to let a HomePod listen to my living room, but not an Amazon or Google device. HomePod makes it just over the fence into the comfort zone, while the other two miss by quite a bit.
There is a difference between spying on you and collecting data according to the terms you agreed. The former implies they are doing something without your knowledge. The latter is about individual choice as to whether you are comfortable with what they collect.
The point here is that neither Apple nor Amazon are 'spying' on anyone. Both passively listen at all times, neither is collecting, storing, using or selling what you say at this time. Amazon is clear on what happens in terms of data collection when you drop the keyword to activate it, as is Apple. They both collect data.
Apple collects as much data as Amazon, they just claim to encrypt what is sent to prevent identification.
Again, the point here is not about data collection, I was responding to the claim of 'spying' which is not the case.
After years of using Echo for my Home Automation I decide to get HomePod mini so I don't have to duplicate spokens for each system - Homekit and Echo.
I have an ISY994i controller (which supports Amazon Echo using its portal) and use Homebridge and Homebridge Isy Njs to interface running on a Raspberry pi using official image. I also have my Chamberlain MyQ garage opener working along with UniFi Protect.
As an iPhone user, I have found nothing as slick as Homekit interface on my phone etc. for controlling my home automation - it is built in and always connected!
However, the logic is still done with my ISY994i in where I have many Insteon and Z-Wave devices that I run programs/timers on etc.
I have an ISY994i controller (which supports Amazon Echo using its portal) and use Homebridge and Homebridge Isy Njs to interface running on a Raspberry pi using official image. I also have my Chamberlain MyQ garage opener working along with UniFi Protect.
As an iPhone user, I have found nothing as slick as Homekit interface on my phone etc. for controlling my home automation - it is built in and always connected!
However, the logic is still done with my ISY994i in where I have many Insteon and Z-Wave devices that I run programs/timers on etc.
I wish we could set up 2 stereo pairs for the Apple TV, instead of just 1 pair. I really would like to have 2 minis in the front of the room and two in the back all paired together.
Apple's competitors do it all the time, dropping prices so temptingly low that it's almost giving away a product for the sake of being dominant in market share.
Apple itself never uses the tactic.
So you’re proposing a race to the bottom? I believe that Amazon sells their speakers so cheaply because all they really want is the data from the requests made so they can monetize it. Apple isn’t in this business.
Also, I believe the term “long tail” has to do with selling small amounts of a wide variety of obscure products versus large amounts of comparatively fewer popular products (the “big head”).
First and I’ve said it before, I didn’t go to college so I don’t know any of these big words but what I meant by my statement was that over time, Apple sells way more in Apple Music voice subscriptions than the margin on $350 HomePods.
I’m challenging Apple to put their money where their mouth is. HomePod seems to be A hardware strategy a “Hardware —- Other“ item in their revenue sitting alongside AirPods and Apple Watch…yet Apple wants us every quarter to look for two things, iPhone revenue and Services revenue. My challenge to Apple is to make HomePod feed Services revenue, not hardware other. In the hardware category Apple makes $1 on every HomePod sold all in (R&D, manufacturing, channel Discounts, warranty, returns, marketing, etc) but over time, they convert more people to Apple Music and Siri users and drive services revenue.
We cannot, as outsiders, know what apple made on margin on their pricy HomePod but it was a lot more than $1. They love their 50% profit margins. I want them to not race to the bottom but compete in the market or get out of it. They are charging Sonos / Bose prices for smart speakers And the market reacted by not buying the original HomePod. I have 4 of them and love them but most households didn’t want to spend $1200+ on smart speakers for a few of their rooms. The $99 price point shows that consumers see these as smart speakers, not whole home audio systems with the best fidelity and accuracy. So, in closing, Apple needs to compete in the smart speaker market or get out of it. That was my post.