It would be cool if Apple had an Apple Home hub, that was a brain for your whole house and it could be swapped out over the year for more processing power. M4 Chip, 10GBe, Wireless for your whole home, no graphics chip (or relativly very small), then Homepods would just become quite dumb speaker and microphone for the Home Hub, make these as cheap as you can make them etc so people buy multiples of them
That would be nice but that’s not Apples business model, their model is the upsell, they would much rather sell you a robot for 3 grand or something silly which they make obsolete in 4 years time. And not have any improved AI on its HomePods and instead force you to buy an iOS device. No mention has been made of the Apple Watch and its improved AI, that has t got the chips required for it and most likely won’t so you’ll need an iPhone to use Apples AI with the Apple Watch. Again the upsell.