Personally, I don’t think apple discontinued the original HomePod because of its problems. I think the issues were a slow burn that apple was willing to endure so long as they were making money.
I think the problem for apple was that they weren’t making the money. Two price cuts and far lower than expected sales killed it. And so, yes I expect the newer one to have fixed the problems; but I suspect its reason for being is that apple has slashed its production cost.
With this release I now see the HomePod as sort of an appleTV type product. It’s a market that apple feels they need a toehold in, but not one that they really know what to do with right now. They’re hoping to keep the speaker around until something develops to support it.
The problem with that though is that in this case Apple already has the ecosystem to support it, but so far it’s not working. Who knows why for sure but my opinion is that Apple needs to take a “prosumer” approach rather than following their usual consumer level philosophy. In other words, be Sonos.
They can do that but I don’t think they will until the tech press starts to pressure them on how far they’ve allowed their music related product lines to fall.
Truthfully, the only great product apple has in that category are the AirPods. HomePods are mediocre at best and this new one should be being panned as a complete nothing burger.
But I honestly I don’t think that pressure will come because I don’t think that there is anyone in the tech press that truly is a music person. There’s no other way to explain the seeming lack of concern over the unmitigated buggy disaster that the music app on the Mac has become. And where are people like Gruber on the horrendous interface developments in Music? Elements that literally move as you’re trying to tap them? Impossible to manipulate controls? Hell, there’s a friggin INVISIBLE button on the Mac music app that’s a whopping 4” x 9” on my iMac. And it’s modal!
Geez.
