HomePod makes its triumphant return
Nearly two years after it was discontinued, Apple has revived HomePod. Here’s what’s new.
Apple on Wednesday, in a surprise early morning press release, introduced a brand new HomePod model that will ship on February 3, 2023, and is available to pre-order now. HomePod. Is. Back.
I remember when Apple launched the HomePod in 2018. It instantly recalled to my mind the iPod Hi-Fi, a speaker dock made for iPod that Apple discontinued in 2007 after only about a year-and-a-half of sales. Like the iPod Hi-Fi, Apple’s main selling feature for HomePod was its great audio. And like the iPod Hi-Fi, the HomePod initially retailed for $349. When Apple introduced HomePod my hope was that they would stick with it and not abandon it as they had done with iPod Hi-Fi, even if sales wound up being below their expectations. Apple did stay behind the HomePod for a bit longer. It was on the market for two-and-a-half years, but it was seemingly similarly plagued with sales that were below Apple’s expectations. But a few months before discontinuing HomePod, Apple introduced HomePod mini, and has had it in the lineup ever since. The HomePod mini, while certainly not coming close to matching the full size HomePod’s audio fidelity and volume nonetheless sounds very good, and retails for only $99. It hit a sweet spot and has seemingly found a lot of success.
So why bring the full size HomePod back now? Here’s what Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in the press release:
With the popularity of HomePod mini, we’ve seen growing interest in even more powerful acoustics achievable in a larger HomePod. We’re thrilled to bring the next generation of HomePod to customers around the world.
Now cynically, that might just be a more public relations-friendly thing to say than, “We goofed the first time around, but now we think we’ve got a more compelling product at a more compelling price.” But I do wonder if HomePod mini has brought more public awareness to the HomePod brand and its features and has genuinely created a more ready market for a larger HomePod to thrive in. I guess we’ll see.
It’s hard for me to parse through all of the audio jargon to know exactly what’s new on that front, so I’ll leave it to audiophile reviewers to do some testing between the first and second generation HomePods. But the new HomePod does come with support for Thread, the mesh networking protocol used by modern smart home devices, and Matter, the consortium that will allow smart home devices to communicate across smart home platforms.
It also has a temperature and humidity sensor, so you’ll be able to query Siri about those conditions in your home without needing a dedicated device for that purpose. There’s also a new feature called Sound Recognition that will allow HomePod to send your iPhone a notification if it hears your smoke detector or carbon monoxide alarm going off. That’s both neat and a killer safety feature, and something you’d previously have needed a dedicated device to facilitate.
And the good news continues: If you already have HomePod mini speakers in your home, it already has a temperature/humidity sensor that’s never been available for you to use. But an upcoming software update, possibly coming as early as next week, will enable you to use it. Interestingly enough, we’ve known for a couple of years that that sensor was there, we just never knew if Apple would make it functional or not via software. Here’s what I wrote at the time this was discovered:
…I certainly hope that Apple does enable this sensor via a software update down the road. It would make everyone’s existing HomePod minis all the more useful. Not only because you could query Siri for that information, but because it would work in concert with HomeKit automations or other HomeKit devices.
I’m very glad to see that Apple is now enabling that feature. Apple is also bringing the new Sound Recognition feature to HomePod mini as well. There’s not stated release date for it other than that it will come later this Spring.
I’m glad HomePod is back. At $299 it’s pricy for a smart assistant device, which is what many customers have mistakenly assumed was its primary reason for existing. Its main purpose is to be a killer way to listen to digital music. If you pair two of them together, they’ll also make a killer, albeit pricy, home theater system for your Apple TV. Because the integration with Apple TV is so good, I actually use a pair of HomePod minis as my default TV speakers even though the volume and bass levels of those smaller speakers is only just adequate. If you’re curious what that’s like and how to set it up, I wrote about that in detail.