HomePod Mini Likely Nearing Launch in Five More Countries

[Morgenland]

How about you bring back the original homepods APPLE!

They will at the right time, I can reassure you. Apple's plans are not yet feasible with the current infrastructure in most homes. Bottlenecks already occur when you want to feed several HomePod pairs simultaneously with lossless using the usual router bandwidth.

But imagine: You have your iPhone, and a stereo pair of Minis in every room. Then you can go from room to room and use your iPhone (just hold it up to a Mini) to light music everywhere, like candles. And then just request "next track", and all the rooms join in. Great. And you couldn't afford that kind of pleasure with the more expensive big HomePods.

That was not even conceivable a short time ago.

 

[OliOliOliOli]

Don't feel bad, the Russians are our enemies and I am Ukrainian.. yet they don't give a s*** about us Ukrainians. Always Russian this that. Russia is not a good country. I know because they invade us !

I lived few years in Thaïland before the Russian tourist invasion, they have no education!

 

[Macbookprodude]

I lived few years in Thaïland before the Russian tourist invasion, they have no education!

Exactly so you know I feel Apple is up Russia’s butt constantly and monopolizes the whole thing. You don’t see anything much Ukrainian or even Belarusian with apps. What is sad when you choose Belarusian as phone platform, it’s in Russian. Yes they gave their own language which to me is similar to Russian.

 

[ams1117]

As a mandarin user, Siri is the only major voice assistant that supports the language in every region -- and I can assume Siri probably knows the most languages in the competition, and I see this as one of its strengths.

Yet Apple still can't support using multiple languages in Siri. Heck, it can't even read text that has mixed languages (can't read with correct pronunciations at least). I can imagine others wanting this feature, say if they speak Spanish or French and they want to refer to the name of a place or person in English, or vice versa.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Ukrainian is not in Siri.. so I use Russian which sucks because I don’t know Russian. In my region we speak only Ukrainian, English, German and Polish - Russian we hate in this region. Russian dominates Kyiv abd east of it.

 

[hagar]

Indeed, its quite a challenge. I've kept the mini's on the English language setting because most music titles my family plays have English titles. I've tried the new Dutch setting for about a day, awful really. Besides not understanding English song titles anymore, I found that it has a real hard time understanding almost everything, even in a quiet room. Not recognising commands or doing the wrong action and so on. In the English setting Siri can easy understand everything, loud or whispering, even with lots of noise and others talking in the background.

On-topic: I'm already waiting more than a month to place an order for the coloured Homepod minis. In France and Germany the Apple Store still reports a 2-3 week delivery time, so I'm guessing that I'll have to wait at least till next month.

Although Dutch Siri is definitely inferior to the English one, I still keep it because otherwise Siri cannot read messages in my car and I cannot ask her to navigate to a location. so there’s that trade-off.

 

[danmaldesign]

Does it play tunes from Apple Music via WiFi and accept commands via Siri? And can it be powered via a wall outlet?

Connect your phone or watch via Bluetooth and it will play ALL music and respond when you say “Hey Siri” via Bluetooth. Class is dismissed.

 

[Morgenland]

Ukrainian is not in Siri.. so I use Russian which sucks because I don’t know Russian. In my region we speak only Ukrainian, English, German and Polish - Russian we hate in this region. Russian dominates Kyiv abd east of it.

So let's hope, Apple can add Ukrainian one day!

 

[Gasu E.]

2. In fact, multi-language requirement is always a big problem. I am curious when Siri will actually be able to operate multilingually.

I think the solution will inevitably be that the human has to signal in some way to Siri that they are switching languages. Either that, or MacOS "Sea of Tranquility" will need to run on a quantum-based Mac Mini Pro Plus.

 

[Nuvi]

Apple sure is slow with expanding HomePod to other countries. I remember reading that the original was finally launched in India in May 2020 just to be discontinued 10 months later in March 2021.

In all honesty I don’t understand why Apple is so incredibly slow to expand HomePod markets. I’ve been using HomePod’s in unsupported country for years now and they are working perfectly fine especially with the stereo etc. when attached to ?tv. The somewhat interesting part is that I’ve also been in Apple HomePod closed beta for long time and it seems they are not in a hurry to expand the official reach of HomePod market.

 

[citysnaps]

Connect your phone or watch via Bluetooth and it will play ALL music and respond when you say “Hey Siri” via Bluetooth. Class is dismissed.

Nope. No thanks. The beauty of HomePod, Siri, and Apple Music is it doesn’t require a phone.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

Awesome! Five more countries that won't buy this overpriced, under-powered speaker!

 

[TimHalfCooked]

"Apple peddling oranges to five more countries" At least it has a world-class voice assistant for Apple Music.

 

[MauiPa]

Any HomePod product will suffer of operating only through Siri, which is not always the best smart Assistant.

If Apple wished to help the HomePods sell, they should enable 3rd-party Assistants on them, but we all know Siri is more important to Apple than the HomePod.


They may release a refresh, but I think they are pursuing a cheap-product policy here, since Siri doesn't simply work.

Strange, Siri works great for me and everyone I know. Wondering if people who say it doesn’t actually have Siri

 

[MauiPa]

But why would you want it then? just get a much cheaper Alexa device

Cheaper for a reason, no thanks

 

[MauiPa]

I heard these speakers cannot behave like normal bluetooth speakers. I ended up going with the Nest Audio. Way more bang for the buck.

If crappy sound is your bang. Go for it

 

[MauiPa]

Thanks but no thanks... should have offered the original Home Pod in my country, not this worse sounding thing.

They sound great - tonal qualities are almost identical. Smaller and less airflow obviously so lower volumes. But the do sound great, much better than the competition and certainly blow away Bluetooth

 

[Shirasaki]

In addition, if you set your language setting to English (as I always do), you can't request anything in other languages when selecting music locally with Siri. Siri simply can't understand that, because Apple has not yet implemented variable language recognition in Siri.

Yeah, one major reason I ditch Siri on day one of owning my iPhone 6 Plus. It’s just not acceptable.

 

[Natan15]

Ukrainian is not in Siri.. so I use Russian which sucks because I don’t know Russian. In my region we speak only Ukrainian, English, German and Polish - Russian we hate in this region. Russian dominates Kyiv abd east of it.

So, you hate Russia, Russians and even language, this is called racism I guess

 

[JustSomebody12]

Strange, Siri works great for me and everyone I know. Wondering if people who say it doesn’t actually have Siri

I use Siri regularly with my iPhone (and iPad); still my language ain't English, so maybe it's that.

 

[danmaldesign]

Nope. No thanks. The beauty of HomePod, Siri, and Apple Music is it doesn’t require a phone.

The beauty of a non-tethered speaker is that I can take it with me anywhere in the house…in the shower…in the bedroom…etc. Enjoy your wired limitations.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Awesome! Five more countries that won't buy this overpriced, under-powered speaker!

I think £89 is a fair price for the sound output.

 

[Shanghaichica]

But why would you want it then? just get a much cheaper Alexa device

Yes they are cheaper and can do things that the HomePod can't. However if you want to listen to music the HomePod sounds better than those cheaper Alexa devices. Also if you have a lot of other Apple devices the HomePod works better with them.

 

[citysnaps]

The beauty of a non-tethered speaker is that I can take it with me anywhere in the house…in the shower…in the bedroom…etc. Enjoy your wired limitations.

How nice for you!

I have no need to move speakers around the house or shower. I already have multiple HomePods in the rooms where I listen to music, and don't need to worry about having charged batteries. Most importantly, I don't need a phone/watch with me in order listen to whatever music I (or family members) want to listen to. Similarly, I don't need a phone with me to watch television or read a book.

 

[mrbarrington]

Any HomePod product will suffer of operating only through Siri, which is not always the best smart Assistant.

If Apple wished to help the HomePods sell, they should enable 3rd-party Assistants on them, but we all know Siri is more important to Apple than the HomePod.


They may release a refresh, but I think they are pursuing a cheap-product policy here, since Siri doesn't simply work.

As you say, "not always the best" - but "simply doesn't work" is harsh, I use it all the time for shopping lists, timers, dictating messages and making calls.

For me the trade-off is Apple's better privacy against Google or Alexa, who you just know are scraping every last word you say for sellable data...