Apple makes its smart home more accessible with a $99 HomePod Mini

[MUSIC] The Apple home pod Mini is real. It's 99 bucks and it's coming out next month. Here is everything we know about Apple's newest smart speaker. [MUSIC] So Apple held an event today to show off the new 5g iPhone. They actually kicked off the event with this tiny looking spherical Apple home pod Mini. There had been rumors and leaks about this thing, but now it's real and it looks kind of cool. A spherical and has a fabric mesh covering, which is supposedly specifically designed with acoustics in mind, and it's $99 you can start pre ordering it on November 2. Six, and it's going to start shipping on November 16. So that's pretty soon. And the bigger news is that Apple is jumping in and trying to stay competitive in that smart speaker space. Prior to this, they had the apple home pod, which was more expensive than the competitors from Google from Amazon. The home pod mini being 100 bucks is still a little bit more expensive than the nest mini which is 50. The Amazon Echo Dot, which is 50. It's twice the price. But those smaller smart speakers don't sound all that great. So Apple can get an edge here if the sound quality is living up to what's promised. [MUSIC] The old HomePod was 350 bucks so it was really expensive but it did sound great. And if the HomePod mini can live up to that, then maybe 100 bucks is Worth it, it's still going to include a whole bunch of cool audio tech, it's going to have an S five chip. So it's going to intelligently adapt the audio based on the room. It's in the base the volume to make your music sound as good as possible. It's a sphere but it's going to be playing audio with 360 degrees. Green sound so 100 bucks is twice the cost of the mini versions of its competitors. But Apple could have the edge if the sound technology lives up to the promise. A couple of other things to note. It can sync with different home pod minis throughout your home. To play music in time, and if you have two homepod minis in the same room, it will automatically start playing your song in stereo, which is kinda cool. You'll be able to hand off music that's playing on your iPhone to the home pod mini when you get close to, And you'll apparently be getting visual and haptic feedback when that process is occurring. And that interaction with the iPhone in addition to making the music experience better is part of the way Apple is talking about using it to make your Smart Home smarter. So you'll be able to use the home pod mini to send a text or make a call. Once you sync it with your iPhone, it'll automatically connect to everything you have set up in the Home app. So that means Apple homekit synced up right with the home pod mini right away. So you can command the devices you have set up, you can control your scenes, the stuff you'd expect. Beyond that, you can give a command And to the home pod mini and have that command broadcast to other smart speakers in your home. That sounds familiar. It's because both Amazon and Google have similar features. You can control which speaker will receive the broadcast or send it to iPhones or iPads. Path with a push notification. Your kids might be upset to learn that same broadcast can go directly to their air pods. So Apple is really trying to bring their different devices together and have all of it work seamlessly. The other cool thing is that the home pod mini will be able to recognize every voice from every family member in your home. They didn't specify how many voices that is, but, if you, You send a text message, it'll go out on your phone versus your significant other. And you can do that for playlists or checking your calendar and that sort of thing as well. Apple bragged about how Siri is getting 20 times more info and is faster and more responsive than ever, which should make for a better overall Homepod experience, I was also going to be integrating homepod with CarPlay. So if you ask for directions to target, then that message can pop up on your car's screen. When you get in and plug in your phone which is kinda cool. You can also broadcast messages to your car and. Stop using the word broadcast because that's Google's word for the same service. Apple is calling it intercom. And finally, Apple talked about the privacy of the home pod Mini. Nothing you say will be shared without your consent and you can choose whether to send your information to Apple or not Also nothing you say will be associated with your Apple ID and it won't respond to personal requests unless your phone is in the room. So a handful of nice safeguards that sort of matched with the other big companies are doing. Apple showed off the HomePod in both white and space grey. It looks like a pretty good option if you're heavily invested in that Apple ecosystem. If you're not into the apple ecosystem, well, that $99 price is really going to waver a lot based on how good it sounds and how seamless all this smart home stuff ends up being. Fortunately, we're not going to have to wait a whole lot longer for answers. Again, you can pre order on November 6, and it's going to start shipping on November 16. So we'll know just how good the apple homepod Mini is going to be very soon. Thanks for watching. Please hit that thumbs up button if you enjoyed the video and Subscribe to cnet's YouTube channel for much more Apple stuff.