It might seem odd that Apple launched a 2nd-gen HomePod speaker that was nearly identical to the first, but there’s a simple reason for that: people wanted it.
In an interview with Men’s Journal, Alice Chan, the company’s vice president of product marketing, said that after two years of the HomePod mini, Apple had “heard more interest than ever in the acoustics of a high -richer and bigger speaker”. That’s why it decided to resurrect the original HomePod nearly two years after the device was discontinued.
Chan said that Apple “took all the lessons from the original HomePod as well as the HomePod mini and applied it to the new HomePod,” which is obvious even without listening to one. The new model has an almost identical design and similar specs to the original speaker, but adds smart home features, including a temperature and humidity sensor, as well as Thread support. .
In addition to the newer parts, the new HomePod also has a very old Wi-Fi 4 chip from 2004. But in a separate interview with TechCrunch, Matthew Costello, vice president of hardware engineering and operations, says that it’s all by design: “The HomePod features Wi-Fi 4 connectivity that allows us to target exactly what works best across the system, ensuring Siri requests are responsive and ensuring a consistent experience for everything you listen to, controlling your smart home accessories and more, all while being energy efficient.”
Although it hasn’t been updated since its 2020 debut, the HomePod mini recently added support for its own temperature and humidity sensor, a rare major hardware upgrade for an existing product. However, with the revival of the original HomePod, it’s clear that Apple never really wanted the HomePod mini to carry the line. As Costello says, Apple’s engineering teams “really, really love this direction, in terms of shape and form” of the HomePod and according to Apple, a lot of other people do too.
