AppleCare+ for HomeView costs $24.99 a year, HomePod mini 2 $9.99 - The Mac Observer

At the old pre-June prices, you could buy a 128 GB Apple TV and a pair of HomePod Minis for $350 ($150 + $100 + $100). Four short months later, with today’s new models, that combination would cost $600 ($300 + $150 + $150).

Apple’s new HomePod mini 2 costs $199 CAD, while the full-size HomePod 2 sells for $479 CAD. That’s a $280 difference, but is the larger speaker really worth paying more than twice as much for? The HomePod mini 2 was announced this week in Canada with an S10 chip, support for Siri AI and new audio features. It’s available for pre-order now, with deliveries beginning October 30. Apple also introduced a new Apple TV 4K with four-speaker surround sound and revealed Canadian pricing for its Apple Home Collection.

The iPhone Duo starts at expensive and goes up to exorbitant for its higher-capacity configurations, and if something happens and you need a repair, the costs could be substantial without AppleCare coverage. The base 256GB storage option is priced at $1,999, but if you want to max out Apple’s new foldable phone with 2TB of space, it’ll cost $3,199. That’s pricey by iPhone standards, compared to the iPhone 18 Pro that begins at $1,199, though in line with the retail prices of Android folding phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

Updated: Oct 14, 2026 9:17pm UTCThe iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable, is already an incredibly expensive phone, rolling in at $1,999 to start. While the buy-in price is high, it's also going to be extremely expensive if it breaks. Ahead of the iPhone Duo's release next week, the foldable's repair costs were found by 9to5Mac, and they're staggering if you don't have AppleCare+. They range from damage on the glass back of the phone costing you $199 to inner screen damage costing $999 to repair. Apple will apparently also charge up to $1,499 to fix "other damage," though it's not clear what exactly that means. All of these prices will be drastically lowered by having AppleCare+. Because the iPhone Duo is such an expensive and complicated device, anyone dropping the cash to buy one should seriously consider bundling AppleCare with it. I'd even go further and suggest picking up an iPhone Duo case on top of that. As scary as these high repair prices look, Apple basically skipped the era of fragile foldables.