Apple may still be in the HomePod business, but the original high-end speaker is no more. Apple just gave its original hi-fi smart speaker an unceremonious burial following a late-night update to its website Friday (fave. co/3ej4JKp).
The timing of the news may have been surprising, but the substance was less so. The bigger, pricey HomePod (fave. co/33gNyD3), which Apple promises to continue supporting, has been languishing in a limbo that’s familiar to high-end, Apple-branded speakers, while the arrival of a smaller, more affordable follow-up (fave.co/3h4r2pg) last fall turned out to be a harbinger of things to come.
Originally selling for $349 before Apple chopped its price to $299, the HomePod brings to mind the iPod Hi-Fi, a big white speaker with an iPod dock that landed with a thud in 2006. Cupertino scuttled the iPod Hi-Fi (fave.co/3nPz6vk), which even the Apple faithful shunned, after just a year.
The HomePod, on the other hand, had its fair share of fans, and it’s easy to see why. Dressed in an eye-catching cloth wrapping, the HomePod ranks as the most sophisticated speaker Apple ever built, complete with an upfiring, high-execution speaker encircled by seven tweeters, with each driver powered by its own amplifier.
Powered by Siri, HomePod was—for a time—the only smart speaker that acted as a home hub for HomeKit, Apple’s budding smart home platform. And with the arrival of AirPlay 2, you could arrange a number of HomePods in a multi-audio setup for playing different tunes in each room of your home.
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