Mostly pussyfooting around the issue, TAPs has been banging on about the “superior sound quality” presumably because anyone who thinks Beats makes good quality speakers and listens to lots of Coldplay has no concept of what makes a good sound.

Occasionally you can feel a hack wanting to tell his readers the truth, and Business Insider  has managed to pull it off by listing the crucial things Apple's HomePod can't do. To be fair, Avery Hartmans placed the worst last because he can argue that Apple fanboys will get to the end and never really learn the truth.

Here is Hartman’s list in the correct order and with Fudzilla’s comments

7. HomePod can't answer random questions
You expect a speaker to be able to answer questions and have chats much like Alexa and Google. However according to Apple that is far too intelligent for HomePod. Its assistant is only capable of "general knowledge". That likely means it can't answer obscure trivia questions, play games, or tell jokes like other smart speakers. AI it does not appear to be, it probably has a list of prepared questions and answers.

6. HomePod can't make calls on its own
Apple fanboys are used to getting Siri to call their mothers, but to make a call using HomePod, you have to dial the person's number on your iPhone, then manually select that the called play through HomePod. Automation is something other intelligent speakers do.

5. HomePod can't hook up to another device using an auxiliary cord
HomePod does not have any inputs, so there's no way to plug in an auxiliary cord to listen on a non-supported device. It would not have been a killer to provide this, but Apple did not think that users wanted flexibility.

4. HomePod hobbles other streaming services
While we did not think that Apple would want people to see that streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, and Tidal are better than its Apple Music, it does this in a particularly nasty way. It allows them to be part of the operation, it just means that they do not work particularly well. Once your HomePod is synced with your device, you'll be able to play whatever you'd like through the speaker, thanks to AirPlay. But you won't be able to control your music using Siri, which takes away a lot of the functionality that makes HomePod "smart".

3. HomePod can't check your calendar
The version of Siri that lives inside HomePod isn't a dumber version of the Siri on your iPhone. It appears to have been programmed by the same team who writes Apple’s clock software. They have clearly decided that checking your calendar for events or make a new one is completely above their skill set so they didn’t bother. Both Google Home and Amazon Echo have those skills — and not just for Google Calendar. Even the Echo can sync with your iCloud calendar because it is not exactly rocket science.

2. HomePod doesn't recognise different people's voices
HomePod will answer to anyone's commands and cannot recognising individual voices. This means you can't set up user profiles or tailor the device to different members of a household. You would have thought that Apple could have worked something as basic as this out.

1. HomePod can't pair with Android phones or older iPhones
We would not expect the HomePod to work with Android as this would cause an Apple fanboy’s head to explode. In fact, it will also not work with those heretic Apple fanboys who refuse to upgrade their phone. It will only work for the iPhone 5S through iPhone X (including iPhone SE), and selected iPods including the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, 10.5-inch iPad Pro, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation), the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2,3,4 and the iPod touch (6th generation).

So what are you getting for your $350? Apparently, the HomePod has "room-sensing technology" which maps out the room to provide a better listening experience. All this strikes us as pointless. You are not going to be able to provide a decent quality of sound from a single small speaker set up where room sensing technology is going to make a blind bit of difference.

What should be alarming Apple users is that the HomePod is so completely outclassed by the AI setups by Google and Amazon, offering nothing that its rivals do not do better for about a third of the price.