My computer speakers live on a bookshelf in the center of my apartment, so I don't want them to sound muddy from the side that they're not facing. I wanted the Homepods because they're omni-directional, they sound great, and I think they're really cute! I would've happily paid extra for that set of traits, but Apple seems determined not to have me as a customer.

What I ended up doing is getting two of the Bose Home Speaker 500, which has sideways-firing speakers. I leave them in aux mode all the time and arranged them so that no matter which side of the shelf you're on, the left audio will be on your left side and the right audio will be on your right side.