HomePod Mini

<i>HomePod mini works with your iPhone for requests like hearing your messages or notes, so they are completed on device without revealing that information to Apple.</i><p>This is the big differentiating feature, along with the seamless integration within the rest of Apple&#x27;s product line.<p>EDIT: HomePod does this too but it was not at a price point nor size that competed with other assistants.

I&#x27;m a big apple fan, got a homepod last christmas, and it&#x27;s the worst apple product that I&#x27;ve ever owned. Truly disappointing. Siri fails to recognize commands that work great on alexa or google, the features it does have often fail (if I transfer a podcast from playing on my phone to play on the homepod, my phone often fails to sync with the location of my homepod).<p>There&#x27;s no way I will buy one of these until I hear from multiple people I know that they have one and it&#x27;s truly amazing.<p>edit: typos

So here is the thing I struggle with. I have a NAS. On it is my media (music, videos, photos) collection. I do not have a subscription to Apple Music, or the reset of the streaming services and I not want one. So how do I play my own music collection with this?<p>Right now to do this I have an AppleTV on every TV. I have an app on the AppleTV called MrMC which is basically a paid for port of Kodi for the AppleTV. The MrMC app can mount the NFS file share and play my music just fine. The AppleTV is plugged into and HDMI splitter that strips audio and outputs it to an amp which goes to my speakers. This just works, and I can remote control it with my an app on my iPhone.<p>Given that the HomePod will not be able to access my music collection, it is useless.<p>I would be happy with the HomePod being able to steam music from an open Music app on a Mac somewhere. I have enough spare Macs that it would be simple to just run Music on it (which mounts the network share.) But of course, I would be wasting power.<p>Oh well.<p>It would also be really nice if the AppleTV would just support SMB again.

The coolest part to me is that they&#x27;re using the S5 watch SoC to power it. Pretty cool that Apple&#x27;s various hardware teams can just grab a part off the shelf to use in a completely different class of device.<p>I&#x27;d love to see them reintroduce AirPort routers powered by an A-series chip.

I was tempted, but my partner has an Android and I&#x27;m pretty sure these can&#x27;t even function as a basic Bluetooth speaker for non-Apple devices, so unfortunately it&#x27;s a no-go. Apple got this right with AirPods: special integration with other Apple devices, but basic functionality with everything. Hopefully they will with these too one day.

It doesn&#x27;t look like the HomePod Mini would support Bluetooth devices as an audio source [1] (the older HomePod has the same issue), even though it lists Bluetooth 5.0 as a connectivity option.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;homepod-mini&#x2F;specs&#x2F;#specs:~:text=Audio%20Sources" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;homepod-mini&#x2F;specs&#x2F;#specs:~:text=Audio...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;homepod-mini&#x2F;specs&#x2F;#specs:~:text=Wireless" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;homepod-mini&#x2F;specs&#x2F;#specs:~:text=Wirel...</a>

If they could make these work in a wireless atmos setup seamlessly with the apple tv I&#x27;d buy like 14 of them and place all around my living room. Syncing video and audio in real-time wirelessly is really difficult apparently, there&#x27;s a standard for it called WiSA but almost no adoption sadly. I&#x27;d love to cut down on wiring.

One feature I wish Apple would build into this would be a 3.5mm jack or optical audio out. I have a lot of very nice speakers already in my house, but no multi-room audio, or voice assistant. I know the echos can do this, but I don’t want them spying on me.

The U1 ultra-wideband chip means the HomePod can be used a fixed reference point for general purpose indoor location finding! Would be great for AirTags, if those ever become a reality.<p>At the moment, the U1 is only be used for the nifty hold-your-iphone-close move, but I have no doubt Apple has other applications in mind. Ultra-wideband is amazing for its indoor high-resolution position finding. Down to the inch is possible. But the more reference points you have, the faster&#x2F;more accurate it will be.<p>When used with the U1 chip also in your iPhone, having a HomePod mini around could enable Apple&#x27;s forthcoming AirTags to be located more quickly&#x2F;precisely. Or enable a better AR experience. They&#x27;re basically GPS satellites for in-home position finding. (Ultra-wideband uses time-of-flight, just like GPS)

Pretty disappointing that some users here flagged this post, apparently just for spite. Some of us are interested in this discussion.

Really cute :). I have a pair of Homepods which pretty much has replaced my stereo for me, as together they sound really impressive. And are very convenient to use. Most of the time, I use my iPhone to control them. Certainly will get one or two minis for the rooms I am not constantly in, but would like to have some music support.<p>One thing I don&#x27;t get, why Apple doesn&#x27;t push them more as computer speakers. Mojave still doesn&#x27;t support them as a pair, and the latency is too big for normal speaker usage. Should be a relative easy sell with a new Mac, if macOS supported them as a proper pair with low latency.

I have the iPhone now and have always used MacBooks, but so far I have refused to buy other products from them because they insist in keeping the ecosystem so closed. No Spotify support is why I’m not buying this. I’ve had Spotify for years and I’m not looking to switch. And Siri, unfortunately for me it’s now a selling point. It struggles so much on my phone that I can’t bring myself to use it often enough to care about it.

One of the interesting things is that on the specs page it says it supports “Thread”, which is a new wireless protocol championed for home automation tech, as an alternative to zig bee and Zwave. One thing I didn’t see was any mention of if it would support being a “Home Hub”, allowing for remote access to smart home stuff.

No Spotify support. Spotify’s market share is probably so large that Apple will sell fever of this speakers because of that.

One thing I don&#x27;t quite understand about the HomeKit &quot;ecosystem&quot; is that there doesn&#x27;t seem to be much of one...<p>I&#x27;ve looked on the Apple store, the local electronics store, but everything I would <i>expect</i> to see in a range of smart devices are very notably absent.<p>For example, I can&#x27;t find a reasonably sized multi-port Apple HomeKit power board.<p>I can&#x27;t find motion or person presence sensors.<p>In fact, just about the only products that seem to exist are &quot;smart&quot; light bulbs, but I don&#x27;t see what&#x27;s so smart about paying AUD 150 for a light bulb...

Wish I could get 4 or 5 of these and use as a home theater setup. It&#x27;d be significantly cheaper than a Sonos Arc, and presumably offer better surround (though worse low-frequency response).

I think this is big. I&#x27;ve never gotten an Echo because I don&#x27;t trust Amazon, but at $99 I&#x27;ll buy one or two of these.

Oddly enough this was the most exciting thing for me today.<p>I use a Google Home in my kitchen almost exclusively for hands-free timers and music control when cooking&#x2F;cleaning. My Home got bricked by an update last month and was going to just forgo replacing it because I am getting tired of Google&#x27;s diminishing support of their products and the privacy concerns.<p>My only concern is Siri is easily the worst assistant when compared to Google or Amazon. I just hope it is good enough to handle my music and timer requests.

Can anyone with a Homepod comment on the usability compared to the Google and Amazon spy systems... err speakers?

Curious how much market share this homepod line has. My gut feel is that Amazon has the lion&#x27;s share, followed by Google and everyone else has crumbs at the bottom.

I&#x27;m bummed the didn&#x27;t release a smart display. We&#x27;re an iPhone&#x2F;iPad&#x2F;Mac&#x2F;Apple TV family, but the Nest Hub Max has become a really great part of our lives. When combined with the Nest Hello, we get video of the front door in the kitchen when the doorbell rings, and the Google Homes in the bathrooms also notify us. We have a couple HomePods that we tried to use, but there&#x27;s no doorbell integration we could find, and believe it or not, I really like having a photo display and visual cues when we interact with the kitchen device. I would spend the money to transition to an Apple smart display&#x2F;doorbell and these HomePods, but they have stubbornly refused to produce the product so many others are selling. I just don&#x27;t get it.

From the video intro, it looks like the power cord is hardwired into the device. I would have thought it was going to be USB-C.<p>I&#x27;d prefer to swap out the cable in case it comes with a standard 6&#x27; and I want to tuck the speaker next to an outlet on a shelf.

It&#x27;s unfortunate that isn&#x27;t battery powered&#x2F;more portable.

I laughed out loud when they mentioned the intelligibility of Siri.<p>Every 6 months or so I try Siri and am shocked it still can’t understand basic things my kids are using Alexa for.

I think the killer feature is the Intercom

I was expecting a refresh of the HomePod too, though rumors mentioned only the HomePod mini. I also thought that a price of $79 would’ve been quite attractive compared to the $99 price. Just have to wait for holiday sales, I guess.<p>I can’t wait for reviews and comparisons on the sound of HomePod vs. HomePod mini.

Come with the power adapter. With the size constraints, I guess it was not possible to have it built in.

Looks like the Echo Dot that was just released a few weeks ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;All-New-Echo-Dot-4th-Gen&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07XJ8C8F7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;All-New-Echo-Dot-4th-Gen&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07XJ8C8F...</a>

Woohoo, finally a cheaper homepod! I was looking forward to something like this to be able to remotely control my Home Assistant setup through Homebridge Hue.<p>Without having dedicated Apple TV&#x2F;iPad&#x2F;Homepod at home, you can&#x27;t access devices in Home app, even if you have VPN.<p>This meant that even at home I had to unlock the phone and wait for it to connect to Wifi before Siri would do anything with devices. This delay made it impractical to use Siri for controlling devices through Siri.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s possible to make it work with VPN by also forwarding some autodiscovery packets, but I&#x27;m not sure.

Am I right in thinking this doesn’t work as a speaker for your living room unless you do everything through Apple TV? Is there a way to use it with a PS4 at all for example?

These look great, and much cheaper than I expected. I already have a couple of the big HomePods and they&#x27;re great, but I couldn&#x27;t quite bring myself to buy any more for rooms that I really just want the smart assistant stuff in. But for this price I&#x27;ll pick up three I think.<p>I&#x27;m sure my wife is going to drive me up the wall with the intercom feature though!

This doesn&#x27;t appear discussed in the copy: does anyone know if HomePod&#x2F;(Mini) has been updated to be friendlier towards households with more than one adult user in them (families, roommates, whatever)? I initially found the HomePod alluring, but that it could pair only with one iPhone (and thus effectively one user) was a real turn-off when I last looked into it.

We own four of the standard HomePods. They are supposed to be stereo pairable. They are, but several times a week they either plain don’t work, lose the channel, or play different music on each channel.<p>Generally speaking, while the sound is excellent that user interface and implementation are atrocious.

Not much buzz about the sound quality yet, but it looks like a solid attempt. Force cancelling passive radiators with what looks like back suspension too, but I wonder if it will have vertical axis vibration issues if they arent doing something about that from the speaker driver itself.

All these devices look so beautiful until you add the unsightly power cords.

Cute, an Apple themed Google Home. Is it still the case that Spotify won’t work with it? Because that really makes the device worthless to me and many others like me.

There are no power cords in any of the images I&#x27;ve found yet.

Could these be used as conference room speakerphones&#x2F;mics?

I have to wonder if Apple will ever release a sound bar or the like, for Sonos-style &#x27;sound bar plus two rear speakers&#x27; surround sound rather than just stereo.

Get 2 of them if you are gonna do it, it sounds amazing for original HomePod and for 200 for a pair that’s the setup you want

Even if this thing were to respect one&#x27;s privacy, it still normalises the intrusion by other smart speakers.

Do these work together with the old HomePod?

&quot;Hey Siri, where are my keys?&quot;<p>...<p>Nope. Not useful enough yet.

&gt; Private and secure.<p>As long as it&#x27;s sending data to Apple, it&#x27;s anything but private.

It&#x27;s also the same price as a braided solo loop watch band.

Yes, but Siri

This is so me-too. The only newish feature is a better privacy argument.<p>This is a full 5 years after the Amazon Echo was introduced.<p>This just adds to my creeping feeling that innovation is dead at Apple.

It’s nice, but I wish it had a line out jack for an external amp. I would love to replace my Echo Input with one, and keep the nice speakers I have...<p>Oh wait, it’s not available in my country...

so much apple-fanboy on here. Grab a good second hand hi-fi set (cheap this days, everyone wants to be &quot;smart&quot;), play your own cd`s, vinyls, *.flac or other good quality digital media) and you will get a good sound...<p>HomePod mini works effortlessly with your Apple devices.<p>and only apple devices.<p>Burned myself on apple years ago, got myself an ipod, learned my lesson with itunes, sold it, never come back.

Sounds okish and very nicely priced.<p>Too bad it seemingly relies so much on Siri. I haven’t been able to make Siri play me any music what so ever, despite multiple attempts. Once I’ve started playing, I can’t even make Siri skip tracks forward or backwards. Absolutely worthless.<p>Caveat: not using Apple Music.

I don’t get it. Siri is the absolute worst compared to Google assistant, the only compelling reason to buy the HomePod is for sound quality.<p>So unless this has some other redeeming quality over “Siri in your living room”, I don’t think it will sell well. The original HomePod regularly went on sale for 33% off already.