Immersive, high-fidelity audio.
An intelligent assistant.
Works seamlessly with your Apple devices.
A powerful way to control your smart home.
Private and secure.
Positioning the HomePod (2nd generation) as their home hub, Apple is smartly reintroducing this larger speaker, which was thought to be retired back in 2019. I would have thought that the AirPort Extreme WiFi product would make more sense as the home automation hub, but duh — Apple always leads with music, since it has the most global, universal appeal.
This also means that SONOS is going to need to respond — and upgrade all of its products to support more Home Automation if it wants to stay long term competitive with Apple's value prop. I have a SONOS household currently and I'm happy about that — but as I obtain more smart home devices and entertainment accessories, the poor performance of Apple's Home app to date really leaves an opening... and if the HomePod makes all my smart appliances suddenly work much more intelligently — it creates a strong incentive for me to consider switching — at some point.
@chrismessina You can see what happens with Matter. https://www.theverge.com/2354715...
I'm skeptical. "If a device supports Matter, it will work locally with Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Apple Home, Google Home, and any other smart home platform that supports Matter. It will also be controllable by any of the four voice assistants. However, Matter is still totally unproven, as there are very few devices anyone can actually get their hands on to test, so there is a lot of speculation still as to just how effective it will be."
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