re: Apple Cuts Homepod Orders After Lackluster Sales

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Same here...

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Yeah I don't get the Apple Music hate, it works great for me and is a huge force.

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"They are at 40 million users..."

While that might sound good, it isn't. The marketshare of iOS is slowly, inexorably dropping.with every quarter that passes. If that is users in the US, it's just over 10 percent.

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Wat. Apple did lose some share in the recent quarter or two in some markets in part due to the delayed and expensive X, but iOS market share in the US is ~ 40% per multiple articles, and Apple continues to claim the vast majority of profit in smartphone sales. Its services business alone would be a Fortune 100 company if it were split off.

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Apple has floundered since Jobs' death.

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Wat. Apple's market cap is currently $900 billion, and 2/3 of that has come since Jobs died.

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I was in an Apple store last month to get the battery on my Wife's iPhone 6 replaced. The overwhelming majority of people in the store were over 50 technophobes.

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I don't think that implies what you seem to think it does.

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Apple is turning into the Oldsmobile of Tech while its CEO is too busy playing SJW to run a competitive business.

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Each statement more misinformed and biased than the last.

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Apple is turning into the Oldsmobile of Tech while its CEO is too busy playing SJW to run a competitive business.

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Apple remains extremely popular among well-to-do young professionals

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TigerGman

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I did. It works great with Apple music and the sound is very good.

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My main gripe is that Echo's and Home were devices that can work across platforms and utilize voice and smart home automation much, much more efficiently and effectively than the HomePod can dare to dream of in its wildest REM cycles.

With Echo, you have a $30 entry point with a $99/year service like Prime. Or with Google, it's a similar price point for entry and without a need for Prime.

Apple's product won't work without another, far-more-expensive device that's tied to a huge up-front payment or a two-year long service agreement, period. It's easily the most expensive cost to get into the game, and that's not counting the actual cost of the product which is over 11 times more expensive than Amazon's product.

You can crow about the quality but it falls flat on functionality, so regardless of the design or build quality, it ends up being an inferior product from both a cost and a functional perspective.

You cannot compare this product to the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad or even the Apple Watch. In each case, Apple came out with a product that was compelling. Comparing my iPod Mini or 5th Generation iPod (Video iPod) to my Sansa tiny-arse, barely functional mp3 player before was laughable.

The iPhone was a revelation. Likewise, the iPad created a market for tablets almost out of thin air. The Apple Watch was a product that many people were already used to paying for at the price point it entered the market at to start off with, and had plenty of uses that extended the usefulness and functionality of existing Apple Products it was paired with.

The HomePod does not do that. It's a speaker that you can use Siri with. Siri being an already inferior feature. It does not provide the smart assistant (much less the polish) that Alexa or Home do...and it fails to hit these marks at over 10 times more of an expense to its market.

CAD and perhaps some others will tell you that I am an Apple aficionado. I have owned Apple Products for 14 years and extolled their virtues here since I was posting on the OT with the title, "Tech Board Post:..."

But this is a big failure. To be honest, it's not Project Ara or Google Glass...but it's in the same ballpark. Just a dumb decision on pricing and lack of functionality on Apple's end.

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Google Glass

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praise the lord that this failed.

can you imagine the world we would be living in today if everyone was walking around with glasses that recorded everything and had the 'facebook plugin' installed?

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eah I don't get the Apple Music hate, it works great for me and is a huge force.

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Needs streaming services like Spotify that is not tied to your phone.

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Which coupled with the lackluster sales should prove to you or anyone capable of rational thought that its failed in that marketing process.

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Mehhh I think they simply overpriced it.

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but using Siri and not utilizing Bluetooth (when its actually included in the innards of the damn speaker itself)

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You're just hung up on inability to play bluetooth when anybody with common sense wouldn't want to with something that will work and sound much better over wifi.

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Look at you comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

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Not really because you have to jump thru hoops to play streaming services outside of Apple music on the home pod

I saw BestBuy has dropped the Homepod's prices by 50$ so it's down to 299$ now. I *want* to want to buy 1-2 of these but I'd be more comfortable buying 2 at $400 than 2 at $600.

Just wish apple would price them and directly compete with Sonos. Right now, it's still too pricey just to mainly play music and nothing else.