A HomePod a Day Keeps the TV at Play (Premium)

We don’t write much about Apple’s HomePod line of smart speakers here at Thurrott.com, but I’m suddenly knee-deep in them. They work well within the company’s ecosystem and not at all otherwise, which is problematic and makes me wonder what all the fuss was about Sonos before its recent “Sonosgate” new app troubles. Kind of.

Curious about the history of these speakers–I have only a vague memory here, as I never intended to buy one–I looked it up. And I was surprised to (re)discover how long ago the first HomePod debuted. It feels more recent. But Apple announced the OG HomePod, an expensive “Siri-powered” (yes, really) smart speaker that would sell for $349, all the way back in mid-2017. Back then, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were still current offerings, and Apple would go on to release its first “all screen iPhone,” the iPhone X, three months later. What it wouldn’t release that year was the HomePod: Apple promised the speaker would ship soon, but then it delayed the release to 2018.

The HomePod didn’t get off to a good start, and I described it as an immediate failure in February 2018 because of its high price, Apple exclusivity, and low sales. Worse, Apple didn’t allow Spotify to access the speaker as part of its anticompetitive strategies. Bloomberg reported two months later that HomePod inventory was piling up, unsold. But Apple gamely kept up the ruse, lowering the price to $299 in April and releasing software updates throughout the year, adding features like phone call support, stereo pairing, and more. And then we kind of lost interest, just like Apple’s customers had.

This is amusing to consider now, since we’ve come to understand that Amazon and Google both lost billions of dollars trying to build out their respective personal digit assistant ecosystems, Alexa and Google Assistant, with smart speakers and related smart devices. But at the time, it was clear that Amazon was the market leader with its Echo speakers, and that Google was a distant number two (and went on to rename its Google Home speakers to Google Nest). Meanwhile, Sonos was the brand to beat in the high-end of the market, and Apple wasn’t particularly competitive there: Potential customers could purchase two Sonos One speakers for the price of a single HomePod.

So Apple tackled the low-end of the market next, taking on Amazon and Google more directly by introducing the HomePod mini in October 2020. Priced at a reasonable $99 and available in white or space gray like its bigger sibling, the HomePod mini delivered the basics, with stereo pairing support out of the box. But it also had some interesting new internals, including the same S5 processor Apple used in its then-current Apple Watch Series 5 and the Apple U1 ultra-wideband chip that first debuted in the iPhone 11. This enabled a neat Handoff feature, where you could move music playback between the speaker and an iPhone by tapping the two together.

Though it also lacked Spotify compatibility, the HomePod mini sold better than its predecessor as expected, and Apple discontinued the bigger HomePod the following March, leaving a void in its product line-up. Reports at the time noted that customers buying up remaining stock, often at big discounts, were getting HomePods that had been manufactured when the device had first launched; the Styrofoam in some of the boxes was already degrading.

Apple announced it would bring lossless audio and Dolby Atmos capabilities to Apple Music at no additional cost in mid-2021. These features would be added to the HomePod and HomePod mini via a later software update, but with the OG HomePod now out of the market, Apple fans who wished to say in the ecosystem didn’t have a full-sized speaker option. That November, Apple added three bold new color choices–orange, yellow, and blue–to the HomePod mini, but no new features. And no larger speaker.

That would eventually change: In August 2022, we learned that Apple would soon release a new full-sized HomePod. And the firm announced that speaker, called HomePod (2nd generation), in January 2023. Still the current version of the product, it’s available in two colors, white and midnight (a slight change from the previous space gray), supports lossless and Dolby Atmos spatial audio capabilities, and uses a more powerful Apple S7 chip, plus some components common with HomePod mini, including the U1 chip, Thread support, Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 5, and humidity and temperature sensors. It also features sound recognition capabilities for smoke and carbon monoxide alarm detection. And like its predecessor, it costs $299. In July 2024, Apple replaced the space gray HomePod mini with a midnight color that matches the larger HomePod. And here we are.

Apple commentators have made much of the fact that Apple is ignoring HomePod–and some other key products, like Apple Watch–in its Apple Intelligence push this year. But the simplicity of these devices is a big part of their appeal, I think. It’s certainly why I went down this path this past year when I tried to figure out seamless speaker solutions for our Apple TV-based TVs in Mexico City and here in Pennsylvania. As I noted previously, I was vaguely aware that HomePods could be used seamlessly with Apple TV, and after a bit of research I ended up buying a pair of HomePod (2nd generation) speakers to test here at home and then maybe bring to Mexico City.

That’s not happening: Those speakers are bigger than I’d like and traveling with them would be difficult. But they also sound great and work as seamlessly as I’d hoped with Apple TV. I had a hell of a time getting them properly set up and configured when they arrived in July, but after working through that–it literally took 24 hours–they’ve never not worked instantly and correctly. And so we’re keeping them, and will continue using them for the TV here in Pennsylvania, replacing a Sonos Beam soundbar.

We’re heading to Mexico City in early October, so this past weekend I ordered a pair of HomePod mini speakers, also in midnight, to test and then bring with us. They arrived yesterday, and they worked right out of the box, due in part, I think, to me choosing the midnight version that first started shipping just a few months ago: I suspect the big HomePods had been sitting in their boxes for a long time, and so they had a lot of updates to get through. Not so with the minis: There was a single software update, but it installed quickly, and I paired the two together and cycled through some content to see how they did. Given their small size, the sound quality is pretty incredible. (This is true of some Amazon Echo Dot speakers I recently purchased as well.) They should work well in our small Mexico City apartment.

To be clear, the value proposition here is that they’re just TV speakers, an alternative to a soundbar. I turn on the Apple TV (and, simultaneously, the TV itself) using the Apple TV remote and the sound just works. This side-steps the problems with Apple’s lock-in in the sense that I don’t care that I can’t “cast” music or other audio to them from an Android device or Windows PC. I don’t like that the power cables are hard-wired–they should be standard USB-C cables instead–and, yes, it would be nice if they could have a second life as basic Bluetooth speakers if needed. But the minis in particular are inexpensive enough to get over those facts. And the seamless nature of their interaction with the Apple TV is real.

Sometimes “it just works” wins out over other concerns. This is one of those times.