I bought 6 HomePod minis, and they're a curse on my life. My reply after Apple tech support session:

[NBachers]

They should be called HomePOS mini

Actually, the Senior Tech Support guy was great; walked me through everything and we got it all working fine. It's just that, the next time I tried to use them after that, the whole system had collapsed again.

Don't buy the Apple HomePod mini. They are a dysfunctional rip-off. They will ruin your life with frustration, rage, and days of wasted time trying to get them to work- and you'll never get them working properly.

Here's the review I sent to Apple today in response to their survey of my tech support session:

I live in a small San Francisco apartment. I have excellent fiber internet and wifi. I bought 6 HomePod minis, and divided them into 3 pairs. Every time I try to listen to music, it is a bloody nightmare. They won't connect to AirPlay. If they do connect, they play different music than what I'm playing on my phone. If I ask them to play music I want to listen to, some connect, some won't, and it's impossible to get the volume properly adjusted between them. Each pair will play randomly different songs than the one I want to listen to. Or, some will play the same song, but they play the same song in different places of the song. Volume control is often non-existent and useless. I try both Control Panel and Home, and Siri. They switch on and off randomly. All I want to do is listen to music, with each pair playing the same thing. When I try to listen to music, it becomes hours of difficulty and frustration. I wish I'd never bought them, and I'm ready to sledge-hammer them all to pieces out on the street. If I do, I'll film it and post it on YouTube.

80 years ago, in 1941, I could have turned on the radio and listened to music with no effort. If I wanted to listen in 2 rooms, I'd turn on a radio in the other room. One minute of volume control knob adjustment would equalize the volume. Simple and easy. The HomePod minis are not as advanced as this 80 year old technology. I compare them to the state of automotive technology in 1905. Finicky, difficult to start, and breaking down as soon as you start driving, needing to be constantly fixed and repaired. I absolutely hate these HomePod minis; they ruin my life every time I try to use them. Nothing but frustration, rage, wasted time, and wasted money. And Siri? Her favorite statement is "Hmm, I can't do that right now. Try again later."

I am copying this review and posting it on my Facebook page.

[MerryHolidays]

1. Wow....If I were Tim Cook at Apple

I'd be sending a bunch of Apple techs from Cupertino to SF to fix your devices ASAP!

[NBachers]

2. So here's the question: Am I the ONLY one who's having these problems?

None of the vaunted reviews I read mentioned any of these problems. They all sounded like they'd been cut and pasted from Apple Media Relations. I'm capable of following directions. It can't be WiFi, because I just live in a little studio apartment.

[CountAllVotes]

5. I was just reading someone's tweet abt. their worst purchase in 2021

It was an Apple iphone.

I do not have one of these phones for one reason: I do not want one nor do I need one!

If I care to listen to music I have a working assortment of tapes decks, CD players, boomboxes and a huge stereo system c. 1980 and an assortment of radios.

Why would I want one of these things?

I have a telephone. If someone cares to speak with me, they can pick of the phone!

I wouldn't waste any more of my time with this device and I would also DEMAND a refund for ALL of them!!!

[wryter2000]

7. I love my iPhone

I'm sorry yours sucked. I do listen to music on it, but that isn't my main use.

[Beetwasher.]

3. You Have Alexa Too? Maybe Alexa's Fucking With Apple?

[NBachers]

4. No, no Alexa. Yesterday, we disconnected & re-set every speaker. I ended up with 6 speakers, each

one playing a different song it had picked out of my library. Imagine turning up the volume on that and turning it into my own Experiment in Terror. Maybe I got the ones that were supposed to be sent to Guantanamo by mistake.

[NightWatcher]

6. Dude, I would've given you three of mine just to get them out of the house

Have you seen what they do to your bandwidth usage? I thought they'd be great to play pink noise/sleep sounds in mine and my kids' room. Then they started pausing the music to say "One moment, I'm working on that" randomly at 4 AM or such. If the wifi blinks off, we get another message.

I don't use them anymore, but my kid still likes theirs and doesn't mind the hiccups.

[CloudWatcher]

8. Wireless goes through walls

I've no experience with these devices, but the specs say it uses both WiFi and Bluetooth. I'll go out on a limb and guess that your small apartment in San Francisco is inundated with your neighbors' wireless signals and the devices are getting confused.

That error from Siri is pretty typical of what I'd expect if Siri isn't able to "phone home" and communicate with the AI-engine/database at Apple.

So you say you have "excellent fiber internet and wifi" ... well no, I suspect not. I think you've got excellent fiber but am guessing that your WiFi radio bands are seriously saturated and full of delays and dropped packets that are just not noticeable in normal usage.

You *might* have some luck if you poke at your WiFi base station and reconfigure it to have your home WiFi network use a different set of radio frequencies (bands). But success is far from certain, and requires your neighbors to not also move to the new bands.

Really sad that the software in these things doesn't have a better failure mode so it can tell you why it's screwing up so badly under conditions like yours.