Apple Discontinues The HomePod

Matthew Panzarino, reporting for TechCrunch:

Apple has discontinued its original HomePod after four years. It says that it will continue to produce and focus on the HomePod mini, introduced last year. The larger HomePod offered a beefier sound space but the mini has been very well received and clearly accomplishes many of the duties that the larger version was tasked with. The sound is super solid (especially for the size) and it offers access to Siri, Apple’s assistant feature.

The original HomePod was a feat of audio engineering that Apple spent over five years developing. In order to accomplish its development, the team at Apple built out a full development center near its headquarters in Cupertino, with a world-class development environment with a dozen anechoic chambers, including one of the bigger anechoic chambers outside of academic use in the US. I visited the center before its release, noting that Apple took it the extra mile to get the incredibly complex series of tweeters and woofer that built its soundspace:

But slathered on top of that is a bunch of typically Apple extra-mile jelly. Apple says that its largest test chamber is one of the biggest in the US, on a pad, suspended from the outside world with nothing to pollute its tests of audio purity. Beyond testing for the acoustic qualities of the speaker, these chambers allowed Apple to burrow down to account for and mitigate the issues that typically arise from having a high excursion subwoofer in such a small cabinet. Going even further, there are smaller chambers that allow them to isolate the hum from electronic components (there is a computer on board after all) and make attempts to insulate and control that noise so it doesn’t show up in the final output.

I found it to be one of the best speakers ever made for the home when I reviewed it in 2018. From the booming base and well-shaped nature of the tweeter assembly inside; the cloth cover that was specially shaped to avoid interfering with sound quality in any way; the way that it sensed the way that audio was being shaped by walls and other obstructions and adjusted its output to compensate. It was the definition of ‘no effort spared’ in the speaker department.

I found this news surprising and disappointing, but not shocking. Plenty have tech pundits have already remarked that the HomePod’s demise was almost certainly a direct result of its high price. Not enough consumers care enough about audio quality to pay $300 (or $350, when it first launched) for what they understood to be a smart speaker whose virtual assistant was actually rather dim witted. The public perception was the problem all along: the HomePod was always intended to be an incredible sounding speaker, not an astonishingly intelligent one, but the market was (and still is) captivated by shitty little Amazon pucks that can do about a billion “smart” tasks but have sound quality akin to an iPhone 4 speakerphone inside a Folgers can. Apple wasn’t playing the same game as their competitors, and the market didn’t understand that.

The only thing I do find odd is that Apple was rolling out brand new, meaningful HomePod (proper) features as little as a couple months ago. The ability to use a pair of them as the default audio output for your Apple TV 4K just launched late last year, and it’s a great feature that is easy to set up, works flawlessly most of the time, and makes your tv sound incredible. Perhaps we’ll continue to see new features despite its discontinuation? Maybe they’ll revamp the HomePod, or come out with some sort of HomePod Pro? One can dream.