Our first-generation HomePod started clicking sometime in 2025. Not during the music — after it. The room would go quiet and the speaker would carry on ticking for several minutes before it gave up. Loud enough to hear across the room, and not what you want from something meant to stay on.
The usual ending is a new speaker. Most of what you buy now isn't meant to be opened, so when it goes wrong you replace it and the old one goes in a drawer.
Alvin Toffler called this in 1970. In Future Shock he wrote about Mattel offering girls a trade-in allowance on last year's Barbie against a new improved one, and what that teaches early — that our relationships with things are meant to be temporary.
Getting an original HomePod repaired
This one didn't go that way. Nic's Fix took it in, turned it round quickly, and sent it back with upgraded components. Nic films every repair and puts it on YouTube, which is worth a look even if yours is behaving. He's a dad on a mission about Apple hardware. We know the feeling.
He cleaned the mesh while he had it — ours had picked up handling marks from the years before it lived on a stand. He does colour changes too. We were tempted by orange to match the M1 iMac and didn't do it. Six Colors sent one in as well.
It's back by the window now, plugged in and running all day. The sound is where we left it and the mesh looks like nobody ever touched it.
We make a stand for a speaker Apple stopped selling in 2021. HomePod repair is the whole reason that isn't a strange thing to do — a speaker that can be fixed is a speaker worth standing up.
If you do go for a colour, tell us and we'll match the stand to it.
Let's play.
