I Was Right That Apple Was Wrong
Rest in peace, HomePod
Bust out the gym shorts folks, it’s time for a victory lap. Earlier this evening, Matthew Panzarino got the scoop and the quote for TechCrunch: Apple would be discontinuing the HomePod.
This is both surprising for a product which Apple launched just three years ago to much pomp and circumstance, and entirely not surprising if you happened to read this here site back in 2017, ahead of the launch:
As we’re all well aware, Apple had to delay their foray into the space, the HomePod, into 2018. But not only did they miss the all-important holiday shopping season, I’m increasingly thinking that they may have missed the boat.
Believe me, I know how dangerous this line of thinking is with regard to Apple. Apple is almost never the first-mover in a market. Instead, they prefer to sit back and let markets mature enough to then swoop in with their effort, which more often than not is the best effort (this is both subjective in terms of my own taste, and often objective in terms of sales). But again, I increasingly don’t believe that this will be the case with their smart speaker.
Now, it’s true that people often shit on new Apple products and mock them relentlessly (until they inevitably buy them).¹ I am not one of those people, obviously. I buy every Apple product. Including the HomePod, by the way. I’m all in. It’s a sickness, really. The only cure is more Apple product. Anyway, despite my predilections, it seemed to me that the HomePod strategy was uniquely flawed from the start. Per above, Apple is rarely a first mover in a space, but the issue here was that Amazon had changed the entire game with their Echo/Alexa strategy before Apple entered it.
Said another way: Apple brought a Sonos to an Alexa fight.
Apple was fighting yesterday’s battle and didn’t know it. But what’s really wild is that they should have known it. One of the very few times when Apple was a legitimate first-mover in a space was in the digital voice assistant world, thanks to their purchase of Siri back in 2010. Apple should have owned this space, which makes Siri’s continued shortcomings all the more frustrating.
Imagine a world where Siri was hands-down the best digital assistant on the market. I still think trying to sell a $350 speaker as your only in-the-home end-point for that functionality would have been dumb, but it may have actually worked to some extent. If the product was pure magic — or the centerpiece of the home — the people would have come. Instead, Apple focused the HomePod on music and Siri was secondary at best. And so we got the iPod HiFi 2.0, failure and all.
As I said at the time, it seemed reasonable for Apple to focus on music to start as it was a strength and core competency (whereas Siri clearly was not).² But they needed that to be just the entry point and to build from there quickly. Otherwise, you had a $350 speaker. (Eventually discounted to $300.) Again, that’s the Sonos market, and it’s fine. But Apple should have aspired to more. They should aspire to do what Amazon and Google were doing in the space.
At the time, some were quick to jump on that notion as misguided because Apple would never want to sell cheap devices. The focus would be on quality and profit over ubiquity and red ink. The Apple playbook. I get it, I really do. As stated, I just didn’t think it would work here. And it’s hard to read today’s statement as anything other than an admission of complete and utter failure:
HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod, it will continue to be available while supplies last through the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Resellers. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care.
The quote about the end of the HomePod is mainly about the HomePod mini. Ouch. But it makes sense. The HomePod mini is what the strategy should have been from the get-go. No, a $99 speaker still couldn’t quite match Amazon’s $30 or $50 (and often cheaper!) ubiquity, but this is Apple. $99 is their throw-away price.
The bigger issue remains Siri. Over a decade and many overseers later, she’s still horribly flawed. The only thing that out-numbers the excuses Apple makes for Siri’s performance is the number of mistakes she makes on what should be routine tasks. I don’t know that we’re at the scrap-it-all-and-start-over point, but my god, there’s a necessary level of trust that is going to be very, very hard to win back.³
Well, rest in peace, HomePod. You were a legitimately good speaker for music brought into this world years late and the opposite of dollars short.
¹ Exhibit A: Apple Watch. A “flop” unlike any other. Now clearly a massive success to everyone. Perhaps their “best” device.
² Also, if the focus was going to be on high quality music, it continues to be bizarre — from a marketing perspective, if nothing else — that Apple isn’t matching their rivals with a high fidelity music streaming offering…
³ Does Siri need a rebrand? Could Apple even do that at this point? It just feels like the service is the butt of a few too many jokes, to the point where even if you believe Apple is improving the service by leaps and bounds, the perception will always be tainted.
