In Defense of the HomePod

After a year of use, HomePod wins where it matters

Before HomePod, I had never owned a smart speaker. Music from the Amazon Echoes I’d heard at friends’ houses always sounded sub-par to me, and I don’t trust Amazon or Google enough to believe that they wouldn’t use their devices’ always-on microphones — or worse, cameras — to surreptitiously spy on and document me in order to discern my purchasing potential. I don’t have any smart home devices, I don’t subscribe to Amazon Music or Google Play Music, and the idea of asking Alexa to tell me a joke or play a game seems like a pointless novelty or something for children.

But as someone who loves music and has an above-average ear for sound, I found HomePod to be incredibly intriguing when it was first introduced. The idea of a speaker that could intelligently and dynamically tune itself based on a particular song or the speaker’s placement in a specific environment seemed like a fascinating new realm for home audio that I’d never considered. With the rise of streaming music services contributing to the decline of large stereo systems, the idea of a compact, easy-to-move, yet room-filling internet-connected speaker seemed like an attractive option. And as an Apple Music subscriber and owner of several Apple products, I already possessed the devices and was paying for the service needed to get the most out of the HomePod.