HomePod it was disassembled shortly after it came into the possession of iFixIt and we are talking about the company's first product Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), which had to be cut in half to be completely disassembled. HomePod has a very elegant and very simple design, but inside there are many components carefully placed by Apple engineers, and repairing the speaker by customers without destroying it is considered to be impossible, by iFixIt.
HomePod has a 14-pin connector hidden by the Apple company, which is most likely used to diagnose possible problems of units brought for repair in stores. HomePod also has an A8 chip, as promised by Apple, 1 GB of RAM is most likely integrated, but a storage space of 16 GB is also used, its role is to store, most likely, songs played through Apple Music via streaming.
The HomePod also has a power socket consisting of two pieces, one of them providing electricity for the 7 tweeters and the subwoofer, which was to be expected in such a configuration. Apple also uses 19 LEDs to display an animation for Siri, the + and – buttons being embedded in the logic board used for control, a huge magnet being used to provide power to the subwoofer when listening to music.
HomePod is an extremely resistant speaker, it being designed by the Apple company to withstand even a strong impact with a hard surface, but this makes repairs extremely difficult. That's probably why Apple is asking $280 to completely replace a HomePod speaker that needs repairs, the Cupertino people not having any other method listed to repair broken speakers, apart from completely replacing them for this cost.
