You seemed to be suggesting Sonos support was superior to Apple’s or did I misread your point?
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HomePod Is homepod still worth it ???
- Thread starter Aditya rathee
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I don't think any company is the best. Apple support has certainly taken a nose dive though IMHO over the last several years. When we cringe at opening new products for fear of what's wrong with them or are scared to perform software updates for fear of lack of proper QA testing, then I think that's a big problem.
Sonos does one thing, and since I don't have insight into the processor choices they have I can't speak to what you linked to. But Apple too killed off support for optical drives, firewire, and many other things over the years or forced upgrades to USB C. These sometimes must happen, but anytime you buy into tech, do your homework first on the guts, that'll tell you if its can be supported for some time to come.
What percentage of the marketshare again? How much of this thing is still in inventory from almost 2 years ago? They are still shipping units with the same OS version 11.2.4 when these things released. I'm wondering how that bodes for sales.... Bigger picture thinking please.
This happens with every product Apple releases. They over-order to cover potential demand above their forecasts and then cancel that amount if they don't need it. This is what every electronics manufacturer and retailer does. They don't want angry customers having to wait months to get their products so they put the onus on their factories to sit on goods in China until they need them.
This is a matter of perception. If Apple had instead ordered half of their forecasts and customers were told they had to wait 60 days after the first batch sold out, the moronic media would instead be talking about how Apple has a huge hit on its hands, people on waiting lists, eBay prices double retail. It's all nonsense. This "oh, Apple is shipping old product" thing is just a function of a smart supply chain, something their current CEO is known for.
Market share? Have you ever taken a business class? Studied the Apple business model? HomePod is the most expensive and highest quality product in the smart speaker category. Completely in line with Apple going for quality over quantity, targeting the high end instead of the low end, making a superior audio experience to sell music subscriptions, not a crappy hockey puck to sell free shipping subscriptions. It's a luxury smart speaker for a luxury buyer. Just like Macbook. Just like Apple Watch. Just like everything else Apple makes.
The HomePod has sold 4 million units at an average retail of $300, generating $1.2 billion dollars in revenue. That's bigger than Casper. That's 1 Apple sku that's producing half the size of Sonos who has been in this space for 15 years and has dozens of products. HomePod is a massive success. Except for feeble minded bloggers who look at shipping manifests and draw the wrong conclusions.
So in over ordering to meet demand they ordered so many they still have sufficient inventory in the pipeline from the first batch 2 years ago. Makes complete sense given Apple likes to have 1-2 months inventory in the pipeline not 1-2 years worth. Sort of a big gap if you asked me and then to have to pay taxes on all that inventory that is held in place. I sort of wonder if it was intentional with the 13.2 update bricking all those devices so they could lessen the amount of hardware in stockpile. Such a gross act of negligence seems pretty major for a factory reset to have caused it. And my argument just now would also be financially sound and questionable if true and able to be substantiated... I'm sure they have insurance policies in place for these kinds of events to cover such things. Think that over for a moment...
Sure. Apple intentionally bricked devices. That’s clearly a sustainable business model.
Genuine question, why are you still bitching so hard about the HomePod bricking update from months ago? They didn’t leave you to rot, they sorted you out didn’t they? What’s the issue?
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Who says they have inventory that old? You? Mr. Brick? Mr. Marketshare? LOL.
They’ve sold 4 million units. $1.2 billion dollars worth. You don’t have to worry about aged inventory.
Sonos certainly is superior for most cases. In general, it supports more services, it has a wide variety of price ranged devices, and it supports 5.1 surround in its Home Theater setup.
Apple is so far behind and there really isn't any sign of them catching up, and trust me, I want them to catch up.
We were talking about whether or not the vendor supports the product, rather than whether or not the product supports different use-cases.
I would like better internet radio support, but that isn’t fully in Apple’s hands, at least as far as BBC Radio is concerned. I’m an Apple Music subscriber so, whilst I would be happy for the HomePod to support more services it doesn’t impact me personally.
Double duty as Surround Sound would be nice, but it would need to be through the AppleTV given the ecosystem setup and that would be too limiting for me with Sky plus terrestrial TV, so currently the HomePod isn’t a limiting factor here, either.
Don’t get me wrong, I want HomePod to be ‘better’ but from my perspective it is already pretty fabulous. I have six of them.
HomePod is exactly what it's supposed to be: a best-in-class luxury smart speaker. That's it. It's not supposed to be a component of a home theater system. It's not supposed to be a Bluetooth device.
It's a fantastic sounding audio product that puts 45 million Apple Music songs in any room of your home and it does a great job of that. It's all it needs to do.
The ability to talk to Siri is pretty good, too. Siri may not be able to buy you stuff from Amazon or search the web very powerfully but it is very good with home automation and Shortcuts allow you to build some interesting other things, too.
Definitely. I appreciate the Siri features. Weather reports, sport schedules, driving times to a destination, I use these features daily, they are great.
But unlike personal assistant based products from Amazon or Google that are cheap, poor sounding, and designed for commerce, the HomePod is a different device in a different product category altogether. It's a great sounding speaker first. That's its priority. Apple Music, 45 million songs, sounding fantastic.
The 'features' that HomePod is supposedly lacking are features it doesn't need. The features that HomePod has, people don't talk enough about- 6 microphones that can hear you clearly even while you're standing in a loud shower, 8 independent tweeters and subwoofer, and an A8 chip powerful enough to sense the objects around the room, their imperfections, and adjust the sound on-the-fly for optimal listening.
The HomePod is the world's finest bookshelf speaker.