HomePod Mini Helps Apple Nearly Double Its Market Share of Smart Speakers and Screens

[kingtj1971]

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 mentioned this in another post, indirectly ... but yes! When I was trying to use HomeKit to automate everything, I could *never* really prevent random devices from "greying out" in the "Home" app on my iPhone and becoming unresponsive. Usually, just ignoring it for a while and checking back later would show them back up and running in the app.

I know there were a lot of reasons this could happen (including the Netgear Orbi routers having buggy firmware for a while which would block HomeKit communications). But I worked through all sorts of issues with that stuff for a good year's time, and concluded the reliability just wasn't there. (EG. If I shared the Home control with my wife's phone and iCloud login, her phone wouldn't consistently mirror all of the devices I'd see in mine.) HomeKit really didn't play well with any devices that had their own IP addresses on your local network, obtained via DHCP, if those were subject to change, too. Belkin Wemo plugs and switches worked that way, and I had to "pin" fixed IP addresses for each based on its MAC address in my router to get them to work better.

 

[LotusLord]

Picked up 2 minis from Best Buy yesterday. We'll see.

 

[I7guy]

Can we make it use Alexa instead of Siri? is that an option?

No thanks.

 

[Black Belt]

I prefer my original Homepods, the sound is spectacular. And I don’t understand all the bitching about Siri. I find it as reliable as Alexa

 

[44267547]

the big one had problems with Mozart's 36th symphony at that apple store in 2018 were most instruments could net be heard, compared to Bose or the Marshall systems.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of sound dynamics in a room with acoustics. If you’re listening to a HomePod and judging it based on a store level, it’s totally different, based on ceiling height, other ambient noises, etc. Having a HomePod in your own living room based on the dimensions and layout, can make a massive difference -versus- listening to it in a store level.