Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that’s taken over our lives.
Wait, has that stool been oiled?
Andrew Hoyle/CNETWhere should you put your HomePod?
Should you give the smart speaker pride of place on a mantelpiece, right next to your favorite sports star’s bobblehead?
Or should you, perhaps, put in on its own wooden pedestal, there to be admired by visitors?
Apple would like you to know that you should think twice about putting it on an oiled wooden surface.
You see, Wirecutter observed that the HomePod caused white rings to appear on both an oiled butcher-block countertop and on a wooden side table.
Some on Twitter had noticed it too.
No, Apple didn’t suggest to Wirecutter that anyone had been holding it wrong or placing it wrong.
Instead, it reportedly confessed that this can happen and that “the marks can improve over several days after the speaker is removed from the wood surface.”
Which seems a little unfortunate. You expect your $350 speaker with Siri attached to fill your room with sound, not fill your furniture with scars, even if the scars may be temporary.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment as to which surfaces were safe and which weren’t.
Wirecutter, however, says that Cupertino suggested an alternative would be to “try cleaning the surface with the manufacturer’s suggested oiling method.”
The company also told Pocket Lint that this was a common problem with speakers that enjoy a silicone base.
It seems, indeed, that this issue may not be confined to the HomePod.
A very similar thing happened to me with an Echo Dot on oiled wood. I re-oiled the wood and put a cork coaster under the Dot. All is fine now.
— Ted Landau (@tedlandau) February 14, 2018
I am surprised, however, that if Apple knew about this problem, it didn’t decide to capitalize on it.
Your hand-crafted HomePod coaster, unashamedly forged from plastic. Yours, for $75.
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