A mini disaster or a maxi success? For 99 bucks this may be just right for a lot of people no matter what sort of failure siri is on the ipod home. Thoughts?
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Itās all in the sound quality. Siri on HomePod is not interesting. Sound is.
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For 99,- i can replace my old AppleTV as Homekit-hub. Music is a bonus.
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Iāve got 2 homepods, i use them as much for music as for siri (having a bunch of connected devices). Siri is a total failure for connecting to homekit devices in my opinion. It also delivers very poor results understanding my music/playlist requests. Music quality is great but withhout solid ability to control it, it is often a source of frustration for me.
That is tempting, but Siri is a disappointment so far (for that matter so is Alexa on the Echo) so Iāll probably pass for now.
I hear you. I have a HomePod in the house, though I usually use Sonos for music.
One source of annoyance with Siri is her inability to understand single items composed of two words when adding to lists. Example: āHey, Siri, add popcorn salt to my grocery list.ā āOkay, Iāve added two items.ā And sure enough, when I check my list, Siriās added popcorn and salt. 
To be fair, most of my annoyances are minor ones. The one big one may be user failure on my part (I probably need to look up the correct syntax). After setting up Homebridge, I asked Siri to set my alarm system to home mode. Instead of doing that, it set off the alarm.
Fortunately, I was near the keypad, so I could shut it down immediately.
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We are so frustrated with our quirky Google Home devices. I donāt think my wife would have a problem at all replacing most of them with HomePod mini. Iād probably disable the mic on most of them and just us an Apple Watch for control.
I donāt do a lot of conversing with voice assistants. I think the novelty wears off for most people beyond kids. We generally set timers, turn lights on/off and get weather forecasts via voice. Rarely do we do much querying beyond that.
I like my Sonos One but even they are a bit on the large size. I hope the mini is tiny so that they can be tucked into places and look unobtrusive
Iāve got 4 HomePods (all acquired substantially below list price) so I donāt really need another one. For $99 Iām tempted to get one just to play with the UWB integration.
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Weāve been holding off on HomePod because the price point is hard to justify as a replacement for our good-enough playing-music-out-of-the-TV set up right now. (I know, I know.)
But at $130 CDN, it might be nice to put one in several rooms, just so we donāt have to blast the volume on the TV to hear it while cooking in the kitchen or whatever.
Weāll see. Thankfully we have a couple weeks to think about it!
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Siri on my HomePods understands me better if I talk in a high, valley girl accent. I guess that reflects its roots in California.
The announce and intercom features would be nice. I hope thatās coming to the regular HomePod too.
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Ha, valley girl accent, will try that 
Lots of places to practice here in San Diego. It seems though that Siri has gone through some changes affecting her ability to understand me. In the beginning the HomePod Siri was smack on but as of late she is rather more likely to misunderstand me and direct me to the internet for various reasons. She is also more prone to have heard āhey Siriā in our regular talk than before. Perhaps Appleās tweaks to improve the algorithm(s) arenāt working for my family so well.
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Funny, because in our house with four teenage girls it never, like, understands them except for, like, when they speak in a deep, monotone, voice!
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Might not be too little but it is too late for us. Five Amazon Echos here that work with everything including Apple Music but unfortunately not Apple Reminders but we use our iPhones for that. OTOH we donāt have anything that is Homekit enabled. (And Echo Dots are $19 each on Prime Day!)
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I have two HomePods at the house but a HomePod mini might be nice for the office.
I was going to add 4 more Sonos to my home but the reality is I really just need something the size of the HomePod mini and quite honestly Sonos has been pretty flakey.
I think Iām going to do at least two HPm in my boys room and if I likeāem Iāll do a stereo pair in the Master Suite and leave the Sonos for the Living Room and Kitchen so far.
I have 8 in-ceilings that Iām swapping out so I donāt want to go too crazy on voice assistants for speakers.
I have a scene called āpottyā that turns on yard lights for our dog. In my regular voice, Siri is about 50/50 on running the scene or not understanding or doing something random.
With higher pitch and āvalleyā inflection, I can say, āHey Siri, like pottyā and it works every time.
Strange.
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I skipped the HomePod. Sound didnāt impress me.
- I use AppleTV got HomeKit integration
- I rely on the iPhone for Siri
At $99 (and probably ā¬9999 with the usual Apple-conversion-rate
) I think I will get one because of Siri. HomeKit is nice, but sometimes the Iphone is in another room (āHey Siri, turn on the lightsā¦ā OK, left the phone in the bedroomā¦) or in the jacketā¦ Iād put one in the living room and could voice-command HomeKit, get weather, etc.
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I really want Ultra Wide Band support sprinkled throughout the house. I think this is what is going to make AirTags a popular product. Weāve used Tile for couple of years now and the UX just isnāt what I want. I want a unified family account to track all the devices that we want.
Putting a handful of HPm across the home isnāt cheap but it isnāt exorbitantly expensive either given the functionality of Intercom features (which I do use on my existing Google Homes) and the potential of UWB.
The Thread support is nice as well. I believe this is Appleās first Thread product and Thread support means the HPm is likely to make a smooth transition to Connected Home over IP.
I think Apple will rev the larger HomePod with a less ambitious product (read less speakers, cheaper price)
AirPlaying stereo system audio from macOS to a stereo HomePod pair still doesnāt work, right? 