The only reason not to buy an Apple HomePod mini

You might think: “Well, you shouldn’t buy it, because of its high price, especially compared to devices like Amazon’s Echo, or Google’s Nest devices.”
This might be the reason for a lot of people. But it is not if you are already fine with spending the money an HomePod mini costs, and you are attracted by choosing a smart speaker that extends your Apple ecosystem.

To get to the reason why I will not buy an Apple HomePod, let’s talk about what I like using my Amazon Echo for. I mostly use it for pretty simple stuff you can do with a smart assistant: getting the current outside temperature, controlling my smart light bulbs and ask it to play a song that's on my mind. It’s not a lot, but I just got used to do those tasks with my smart speaker. Because these tasks are simple, they’re nothing the HomePod can’t handle. I mean it’s Apple, what can’t it do, right?

Personally, I am quite deep into the Apple ecosystem. I use a Mac and iPhone as my primary devices for my personal life and work, I own an iPad and recently bought an Apple Watch. So you might ask yourself, why don’t I want to get a HomePod. The bizarre thing is: I want to, but a can’t.

As much as I enjoy using the advantages of the Apple ecosystem, I enjoy using Spotify. You might see where this is going.

I am happy using Spotify. Why, would I switch to another music streaming service. I can listen to all the songs and podcasts I want to, I pay for the family premium plan that I gladly share with my family members and I can use it on every device.

Well, not quite. There is one exception, one device it can’t run on. You guessed it: It’s the HomePod.

On the Amazon Echo, I installed the Spotify Skill and set it as the default for playing music or podcasts. With that, it will stream music via my Spotify subscription every time I say “Alexa, play …”.

This is not possible for the Apple HomePod. Of course, you can say: “Hey Siri, play …”, but the HomePod handles this request by trying to play what I want from Apple Music per default. If you’re not subscribed there, you’ll be left out in the cold.

There is the option to play music of Deezer, using Siri. But if you want to use Siri to play music of Spotify on a HomePod, you’ll probably just find yourself in some forum together with countless other Apple fans complaining about their hopeless situation. Or you will spend hours trying to find the best workaround.

I don’t know if this problem the fault of Apple or Spotify (probably both), but until I can’t use Spotify on a HomePod without any inconvenience, the HomePod mini will be a pass for me.