{"id":11431,"date":"2020-10-15T10:25:11","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T23:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=11431"},"modified":"2020-10-15T10:28:15","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T23:28:15","slug":"apples-new-homepod-mini-is-right-for-almost-no-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/news\/apples-new-homepod-mini-is-right-for-almost-no-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple&#8217;s new HomePod mini is right for almost no one"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <a href=\"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/news\/apple-announce-iphone-12-with-4-models-available\/\">yesterday&#8217;s iPhone 12 announcement<\/a>, Apple pulled the old &#8220;one more thing&#8221; on us by introducing a new, smaller and cheaper HomePod that pretty much no one was asking for.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Despite looking a little like a giant dust mite in the opening of Apple&#8217;s promo video the new HomePod mini is quite the attractive little smart speaker.<\/p>\n<p>Retailing at just A$149 it&#8217;s a far more reasonable price point <a href=\"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/reviews\/review-apple-homepod\/\">than its original big brother<\/a> and by all accounts bring a significantly higher level of audio quality than similarly sized smart speakers.<\/p>\n<p>Apple also doubled down on its privacy campaign, touting the HomePod mini as being &#8220;private and secure&#8221; with none Siri&#8217;s requests being recorded and analysed in a way that other smartspeakers might.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Introducing HomePod mini \u2014 Apple\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VF-WANzs624?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Apple, that&#8217;s also the problem, with Siri still being at the bottom of the pecking order when it comes to virtual assistants. For me personally, I actively go out of my way to avoid Siri, disabling it in as many places I possibly can.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, Apple have gone the extra yards to incorporate new radio and music services to extend the HomePod&#8217;s appeal beyond its own walled gardens. Something I honestly never thought I&#8217;d see.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">apple announces podcast\/radio partnerships for homepod mini, but where&#39;s spotify ? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/AujfzpLmZC\">pic.twitter.com\/AujfzpLmZC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ashleyrcarman\/status\/1316063209275764738?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 13, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s missing though, is the world&#8217;s largest and most popular music streaming service, retarding the device&#8217;s appeal beyond the Apple faithful.<\/p>\n<p>I have no doubt the new mini will be a banger of a little device, ideal for bedroom side-tables, bathrooms and alike, but even at a new and extremely attractive price point I fear it will only continue to play in the shallow end of the smartspeaker sales pool.<\/p>\n<p>The new Apple HomePod mini is available to pre-order from November 7th with units shipping November 16th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At yesterday&#8217;s iPhone 12 announcement, Apple pulled the old &#8220;one more thing&#8221; on us by introducing a new, smaller and cheaper HomePod that pretty much no one was asking for.\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":11432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10],"tags":[13,1355],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"reckoner_social_message":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11437,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11431\/revisions\/11437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}