Apple has announced the release date for their HomePod! The HomePod was originally supposed to go on sale before the end of 2017 but they unfortunately had to postpone the release and after Apple missing a massive holiday season where millions of smart voice-activated speakers were sold, they have finally announced that the Apple HomePod will be officially release on February 9th and available to preorder on the 26th of January.

Apple however, is playing in a very different market than Amazon’s and Google’s primarily cheap and tiny speakers. The HomePod is currently going for $499, which is a lot compared to all of the other ones available on the market currently.

So what are the good and bad things about the HomePod?

Well Apple has designed the speaker to work with Apple Music, but hasn’t been clear if the speaker would work with other music programs such as Spotify. The focus also continues to be on music and sound quality, rather than the speakers intelligence, which is the core focus of many competitors’ products. This means Siri isn’t as capable as it is on other OS devices. We will more than likely have to wait for Apple’s next developer conference to see if the company intends to expand what Siri will be able to do. However, what we do know is that Siri will be able to support a bunch of features such as integration with Homekit as well as the ability to set reminders, play news podcasts and supports as a speaker phone for your iPhone. The Apple HomePod has the ability to analyse its surroundings to produce tailored, echo-free sound and has a beautiful sleek and simple design.

So what do you think? Let us know in the comments if you will be preordering this one or giving it a miss!