Last week, Apple gave me yet another reason not to buy a smart speaker, now that I can stream Apple Music on my Nest speaker as well as my Alexa speaker Unless you are very attached to Apple's ecosystem and smart home platform, there is no reason to buy a HomePod or the new HomePod mini

Don't get me wrong, Apple's HomePod and HomePod mini sound great, but neither would be my first choice for a smart speaker This is because the value of a smart speaker is half sound quality and half smarts, and Apple's product lacks the latter

Let's start with the choices Apple is limited to two devices: the $99 HomePod Mini and the $299 HomePod Amazon, by contrast, has the new Echo Dot ($50), Echo Dot with Clock, Echo Show 5 ($45), Echo Show 8 ($79), Echo ($99), Echo Show ($149), and the new Echo Show 10 ($249), not to mention Echo Auto, the third-generation Echo Dot, and Echo Flex

My go-to smart speaker is the $149 Sonos One, which has proven to be the best when it comes to audio (works with both Alexa and Google Assistant)

Then there are the streaming music services: on the HomePod and HomePod mini, you can choose from Apple Music, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Pandora, but that's it; the Alexa and Google/Nest smart speakers have more No features, but both have Spotify; the Sonos One has hundreds of services

Next is smart home smarts Here, Apple's smart speaker has an advantage over Google in that it can create more sophisticated smart home routines, but it falls short of Alexa in terms of how it controls smart home gadgets like lights and keys

But then, HomePod's skills lag behind its competitors When Apple introduced the HomePod mini, it touted an intercom feature that allows users to broadcast messages to other HomePod and Apple devices But all you are doing is sending a pre-recorded message By contrast, Alexa and Google devices can have full-fledged conversations

Google and Amazon also have much more robust parental controls While I would hate to put a smart speaker in my child's room, if it were an Alexa speaker, I would have greater control over what my child listens to

Perhaps the only unique feature of the HomePod and HomePod Mini is that you can start playing music on your phone and transfer music to it by simply tapping your phone on the speaker Cool feature, but one I've rarely used I'd much rather tell Siri to play something than walk across the room, because it's much easier to do that

The fact that Apple is making its music streaming service available on other devices may be an implicit admission that it does not intend to dominate the smart speaker market like it has with smartphones and tablets But the company has now ceded the biggest reason to buy a HomePod or HomePod Mini to its competitors