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One of my HomePods just failed as well. Wouldn’t turn on! I tried multiple plugs and brought it to the Apple store. It was bricked from the hardware side of things. If this issue is widespread, then this most certainly is a case of planned obsolescence. The Genius Bar employee offered me a replacement for $279 or to buy a HomePod mini, of which I opted for the latter.

I’m pissed now reading this article.
 
My stereo hps are warm now when they are being used - always ran cool - Im betting dolby atmos or lossless to blame… (at least on the a8) turning mine off for the duration…
 
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Just chiming in to add myself to the list of people whose HomePods in a stereo pair are running warm even when not in use since the 14.6 update. Unplugged them last night just to be safe.

Hoping Apple doesn’t sweep this under the rug since the product is “discontinued” now 🙏
 
I’m showing my age here, but this is reminiscent of the Apple subwoofer. It worked great, wonderful sound until … Apple upgraded the OS but didn’t upgrade the subwoofer software. Their response was, “Too bad.” That is the future of the HomePod.
 
Maybe a little off point, but does anyone have personal experience with an Airplay 2 powered speaker of similar price and audio performance they would recommend?

I have four HPs and one Mini and connectivity performance has been awful since the updates. Not sure whether 14.6 killed them or the recent Big Sur update. All perform fine when I Airplay to them via an iOS device, but when I try Airplay from either my M1 iMac or M1 MBA I have to restart the mac to get the HPs to connect.
 
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I have two HomePods paired in the kitchen/family room and 2 minis in the bedrooms. All have 14.6. Is it me, or have the big HomePods gotten ”stupid” and slow to to respond over the last several updates? Also, the microphones don’t seem to listen as well? When I ask Siri to skip a song, she keeps playing the song for 2-3 seconds before skipping. Half the time, I start to ask her again because it is taking so long. Then every few days after speaking a command she will ask “Who is speaking?” This seems so ridiculous. Then last night, my wife had to power cycle the bedroom mini because when she asked it to turn on the 6:30am alarm, after a long pause Siri said “Hmmm, I’m having a problem…”. The wife acceptance factor is at an all time low…It’s gotten so bad, I wish I had kept my Alexa echo studios and echos.
We have two and they keep talking to us even when we haven’t said “Hey Siri”. “I’m sorry” or almost anything with the “ry” sound seems to set them off. It’s getting ridiculous.

They’re not horrible to operate but they’re not great either. Like you, I notice they can be obtuse about commands sometimes.

To make matters worse, we have a cat who has learned how to turn one of the more accessible ones on to see the light go on and cause other mischief. Like my Google speaker, it’s too easy to activate by touch.

I prefer my now older Echo that’s in the kitchen. It’s durable and it just works.
 
Yes, in retrospective, it has been a bad purchase, unfortunately. Too flaky and unreliable product. Volume wise and general sound quality wise, I realize now that a pair of Sonos Five would have been a better option, albeit more expensive.
 
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Yes, in retrospective, it has been a bad purchase, unfortunately. Too flaky and unreliable product. Volume wise and general sound quality wise, I realize now that a pair of Sonos Five would have been a better option, albeit more expensive.
One of its biggest faults is that it does not have fallback to simple Bluetooth operation or AUX port, if something goes wonky with the smart electronics or wifi.

I have a homepod mini (mainly as a homekit hub for my garage opener), but if it craps out it wasnt super expensive. I would be pissed at a bricked HomePod, as they were about $500 after taxes here in Canada.
 
I have 2 OG HomePods in my bedroom connected to the new Apple TV 4K. They are both far beyond their warranty, as I bought one a few months after it came out in the US and then I bought the other one here in Canada, as soon as it was available.

they have been acting very strange. Including:

- volume indicators staying on. Only way I can get them to disappear is to airplay music to the stereo pair homepods and the living room HomePod mini and then uncheck the stereo pair and then the volume indicators disappear. I have stopped airplaying music for the time being, as I have been using the homepods predominately as the main speakers for the Apple TV and the volume indicators turn off successfully after shutting the Apple TV and the TV itself off.

- a week ago I had this strange issue where the volume would fluctuate on my homepods. I’ve seen a delay before in changing the volume, but this occurs without me touching the volume at all. The speakers go from sounding great to sounding almost as if I’ve summoned Siri while listening to music. The music or even whatever I’m using the Apple TV for, gets quiet and sounding very flat.

- Airplaying music or asking Siri to play music on the homepods resulted in only one speaker playing music, even though they were stereo paired and showing as so in the Home app.

I haven’t had these issues since I stopped airplaying and asking Siri to play music. I also completely reset the homepods and then reconnected them to the Apple TV and that seems to have solved any issues I had with the Apple TV-HomePod combo. Now the speakers are working flawlessly with the Apple TV, but I’m almost scared to do anything else other than use them with the Apple TV.
I believe you and I had the same bug - I mentioned this in my first post in the topic - but mine was caused by "airplaying" a phone call to the pair.

I'm a bit concern that they felt warm to touch while in use with the Apple TV but I'm not sure what is normal because I rarely touch them.
 
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It's like the Homepods knew their time had come and just went silent. Seems appropriate. Those of us with AEX units see and hear them soldiering on with no complaint and producing better sound from legacy speakers or, in my case, modern actives.
 
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It’s Reddit so don’t pack up your dead HomePods yet. It would be the quickest recall program in Apple’s history on a product out of stock.
Obviously we take Reddit posts with a grain of sat. However, the guy in particular who posted this has been in contact with apple support and senior engineers for roughly the past two weeks since this issue started happening on a wide spread level. He’s also been buying bricked HomePods off people and trying to repair the issue himself with genuine apple parts. Seems pretty invested in getting this situation sorted out and escalated. So, for now it’s the best news we can go off of.

I myself have been in contact with senior advisors and getting things escalated to the engineer team. Should be getting a call back today so we shall see what other news we can get.
 
I’ve unpaired my stereo pair and removed them from my Apple TV. Even though mine are fine on 14.6, I’m not taking and risks.

And an update to my earlier post with the static sounds on ARC, Apple emailed me today asking me for a video so least their sorting that out. Such a shame the HomePod is like this with the updates, it’s a phenomenal speaker. Fingers crossed they sort the issues.
 
One of its biggest faults is that it does not have fallback to simple Bluetooth operation or AUX port, if something goes wonky with the smart electronics or wifi.

I have a homepod mini (mainly as a homekit hub for my garage opener), but if it craps out it wasnt super expensive. I would be pissed at a bricked HomePod, as they were about $500 after taxes here in Canada.

I bought a pair of original homepods at full retail price back when they were released.
 
Maybe a little off point, but does anyone have personal experience with an Airplay 2 powered speaker of similar price and audio performance they would recommend?

I have four HPs and one Mini and connectivity performance has been awful since the updates. Not sure whether 14.6 killed them or the recent Big Sur update. All perform fine when I Airplay to them via an iOS device, but when I try Airplay from either my M1 iMac or M1 MBA I have to restart the mac to get the HPs to connect.
The Sonos One has Airplay 2 functionality but uses your choice of Alexa or Google Assistant instead of Siri.
 
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A few times lately I experienced low volume while using them as tv speakers for the Apple TV. But can get it back by switching to another app, playing something and then switching back.
 
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