Apple planted its HomePod smart speaker deep inside a walled garden: You must have an Apple-branded mobile device just to set it up, and you can pretty much use it only with Apple’s own services if you want voice control for music. The company then adds insult to injury by leaving its older iPhones, iPads, and iPods outside that garden wall.
Unless you’re an ardent Apple fan who upgrades to new iOS devices with relative frequency, you won’t even be able to set up a HomePod. If you own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod model that Apple essentially rendered obsolete last fall when it established the hardware requirements for iOS 11, you’re out of luck.
