My dream Apple home product is an AppleTV integrated into a sound bar that can work with multiple homepods (including a mix of full sized and minis simultaneously) to set up customizable wireless surround sound; maybe use the iphone mic to adjust balance during setup so you get the best possible mix for your space and equipment, with as many as you want to get on your network (including rear and elevated speakers for full spatial immersion)
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 Turns 8: Here's When to Expect New Models
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I love my HomePods, don’t get me wrong. I have 9 of them between our house and office. BUT, this has to be among the most ignored Apple products ever. Can’t believe we’re heading rapidly towards a decade and the product has devolved more than it’s evolved.
Agreed I’m using homebridge for my nest protect and thermostats ( tho not for long),. I’m using homebridge for my UniFi cameras and am super pleased after ditching almost every other hksv camera most recently Arlo was by far the worst of all.
At this point compatibility with homekit is Acceptable for me, now that matter has come along. Siri is now my pain point with over 100 devices home control using Siri is always hit or miss. Most of the time I don’t even bother asking Siri and just use the home app.
Same here. I don’t know any good reason for swapping my babies for the new ones.
I have 10 Homepods, all in Stereo Pairs in 5 different rooms, 6 x G1 & 4 x G2. They all worked well until about 3 months ago, when 2 of the G2 Homepods failed with touchscreen issues, like they keep starting to play music by them selves, after resetting them, one started working again but the other one went into an endless loop of restarting like the touchpad is constanly signaling it is touched. After some research I managed to get it reset & updated it using the "Cover the complete Screen with Tape trick". They worked for about 5 days & started to open music in the middle of the night again. Now I isolated it to one Homepod that is doing that so it is currently turned off, but the second still has a flaky touch panel.
I took the worst one to Apple & they said they don't repair them, but would give me an exchange uint for about 7% less than buying a brand new one, which is not a very good deal as far as I am concerned. I showed them my Apple account on the phone where I have 33 Apple devices all active, but they didn't seem to care. So the G1's are rock solid, but now im waiting for the other 2 G2's to bite the dust. Won't be buying any more.
I took the worst one to Apple & they said they don't repair them, but would give me an exchange uint for about 7% less than buying a brand new one, which is not a very good deal as far as I am concerned. I showed them my Apple account on the phone where I have 33 Apple devices all active, but they didn't seem to care. So the G1's are rock solid, but now im waiting for the other 2 G2's to bite the dust. Won't be buying any more.
I think they're best thought of as really good AirPlay speakers that happen to have a very basic voice assistant.
I do use Siri a little for things I know it won't mess up (like "play WFMU radio" or "turn off the living room lights" or "stop playback") but other than that all the controlling is done by other devices -- mine are in a stereo pair as output for my Apple TV, and for music I play from my phone via AirPlay.
All new smart Home Hub. I'll believe it when I see it. I often ask my HomePod to turn the lights on and it freezes. So I ask Google or Alexa to do it. They turn them on instantly and then the HomePod chirps in with "this is taking some time". I call it an idiot and it tells me "that's not nice". Great relationship we have.
Last edited:
Yes it does, however it is doesn't operate the way you would expect it from a bluetooth in the wireless speaker (HP is not a portable speaker by any means tho).
I should hope so. My living room speakers are almost 50 years old and they still sound amazing.
If the home pods sound good to you then there is no reason that should ever change.
They're speakers. I don't know what other features you're looking for, but they continue to work extremely well to do their core function of playing back audio at high quality. Siri could obviously use a ton of improvement, but that's across all Apple devices.
I have two pairs of paired HomePods (one pair of v1s and one pair of minis) in the same room and while the sound coming at you from 4 speakers is a revelation I can't understand why Apple won't let me use them as part of a surround sound setup with my Apple TV. It took them a year before they let me AirPlay to a stereo pair from my computer, which just screams 'half-cooked' to me. Such a wasted opportunity – and so inexplicable when they had obviously ploughed resources into them to get the audio quality so good :-(
just two words : Software Updates.
If they were "just" speakers, they shouldn't have been priced as they were. When Apple proudly puts an iPhone inside of the speaker, it is natural to expect from Apple to deliver and evolve extra features that complement the "core functions".
As for Siri, I can really notice that it is degrading on my OG HP (doesn't not react, doesn't not hear while playing music, doesn't not understand, replying some nonsence...) while working as used to be on other devices.
Last edited:
I'll direct you to a thread I created on this topic:
There is no doubt they sound phenomenal, but I can't express how frustrating they are to use. Apple needs to focus on support and making them work well...
There is no doubt they sound phenomenal, but I can't express how frustrating they are to use. Apple needs to focus on support and making them work well...
I have 10 also. One of them started to do that on its own after having it for almost a year. 1st gen. It would play on its own. Support couldn't figure it out and exchanged it. New one started to do it. I keep thinking what changed and why only this stupid room. I moved the HP on the other end of the room for a week or so. It stopped happening. I moved it back the same place and it started again. I'm like it's been there before for almost a year and no issues before.... then I realized that I had changed the Cable for the Cable TV with a longer one that was super cheap from Amazon recently. It didn't have the super duper RF insulation of the mid price or good ones. I removed it and replaced with a quad shielded cable... the issue stopped. It was the minimal insulation of the crappy cable throwing all sorts of interference that caused the HomePod to freak out...I changed every cable we used in the house for TV back then just in case... Now I stream everything no more COX cable, but the HomePods are still doing stupid stuff I've posted many times over. NOT caused by cheap Coaxial Cables.
It seems to be fine for what I do with it. Change volume, play, pause, rewind/fast forward N minutes, turn tv and lights on/off, and play music by yada yada. I've never tried using my HomePods for anything else so I'm happy with what it does.
I don't need them to order two boxes of cat food from Amazon. 🤣
Ok wireless speaker then.
I’d say by that means it is portable.
I guess I’ve never understood what this thing is supposed to be…
We have 2 original homepods paired and several minis throughout our house. Sound quality is 'pretty good' on the full sized ones and ok on the Minis. Siri is really inferior, and we've mostly switched to firing up music via the iPhone instead of asking Siri to play, as it usually gets it wrong.