astrofish

Slightly underwhelmed with my newly arrived blue HomePod Mini.

The apple marketing shots and gallery don’t fully reveal that the top control surface is as bright white as the white HomePod mini - and the power cable has just a hint of blue such that it seems more a pale grey. I was sort of expecting it to be the same colour as the cover (like the coloured iMacs have matching cable colours) - and checking the marketing shots, the cable doesn’t appear anywhere.

I am already on my second XR case. I bought the first case soon after it was launched but by April 2019 was demonstrating all the bad behaviours reported above and I logged a service visit to my local Apple store and they replaced it (although I had to revisit to collect as it counted as a replacement part and they had to ship one to the store - despite there being plenty of them on retail display!).

My second case has similarly degraded to the point that I no longer use it - it’s in a drawer - and I intended to go back to Apple but held back because it was a bit of a hassle previously to get a replacement. Seems now I can get a replacement with a single visit (🤞) so I’ll be taking advantage of this right away.

Interestingly I had similar problems with an Apple battery case for an iPhone 7 soon after those were launched - same behaviours - the replacement didn’t degrade though.