Today is HomePod launch day in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, and as promised, the speaker is now on display and available to purchase at most of Apple's retail stores in each of those countries.
HomePod has already received rave reviews for its sound quality from both the media and early adopters, but customers who prefer their own listening demo can now visit one of Apple's stores to hear it for themselves. Of course, customers can also take advantage of Apple's 14-day return policy and try it at home.
Most if not all of Apple's retail locations currently have plentiful stock of the speaker in both Space Gray and White, but we recommend calling ahead before making the trip. To check availability in your area: go to the HomePod order page, click on the link under the "Pickup" section, and enter your ZIP or postal code.
HomePod orders placed online today are estimated for delivery by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, so if you didn't pre-order the speaker, visiting an Apple Store is the only option to get one in your hands this weekend. Some resellers like Best Buy may also have limited in-store availability.
Meanwhile, deliveries are beginning to arrive to customers who did pre-order the HomePod a few weeks ago. If you've received yours already, be sure to share your thoughts in the MacRumors discussion forums.
Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1.
Release Date
Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors.
...
Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by Juli Clover
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing.
Test Settings
I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android.
The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple's Swift programming...
Monday October 27, 2025 7:41 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
You will "soon" be able to add a digital version of your U.S. passport to your iPhone, according to Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet.
Bailey reiterated that the feature is coming soon during her keynote at the Money20/20 USA conference in Las Vegas on Sunday.
On its iOS 26 page, Apple says the delayed feature will be "coming later this year."
Apple's...
Monday October 27, 2025 4:01 pm PDT by Juli Clover
For the 10th anniversary iPhone that came out in 2017, Apple introduced the iPhone X with Face ID, notch, and minimized bezels, providing more display space than ever before. The 20th iPhone anniversary is approaching and Apple wants to take the iPhone X design even further.
We're two years away from the 2027 iPhone, but it's tough for Apple to keep major changes under wraps. We've rounded...
I can't wait until Big Brown pulls up in front of my house and hands the HomePod to me later today!
In the meantime, in spite of the HomePod receiving rave reviews, I'm sure the haters that love to hang out in these front page articles will be lining up to make their comments...in fact, it has already begun!
I just picked up my pre-order unit at the Stanford Apple Store.
It was a pretty cool experience. Being close to Cupertino, they had the HomePod technical development staff at the store. As an engineer and being very interested in adaptive beamforming (I used to work in that area in another domain) I was able to find and talk to the engineer in charge of the beamforming aspect of HomePod for 15 minutes or so, and came away super impressed.
People make WAAAAAY to much of availability. It's a pointless metric by itself. It's so silly that people use it as a basis to claim a product is a hit or dud or being held back to gin up demand or whatever. No, you cannot infer anything by availability or unavailable alone a bubble. Sorry.
