Well my father bought these for my brother's room in 1973. They're now in my house. Perfect as the first day
Exactly. Lots of us seem confused about the HomePod line but maybe think about it like this:
The ANALOG portion- the "dumb" speaker parts themselves- can/should have LONG lives sounding as good long after any Apple computing technology in any form available new today is fully obsolete. I have some great "dumb" speakers that are already about 4 years old. I just laid out over $6K for a new Studio Ultra. I'm 100% certain that Ultra will be macOS obsolete long before those speakers need to be replaced.
The DIGITAL portion- the "smarts" can take the whole ship down by them getting too far behind.
Loose Analogy: how many of us had to toss a perfectly good iMac screen when the iMac guts either died or macOS updates got too far ahead to make us feel the need for a new Mac. That screen was likely still perfectly fine. If there was a way to keep using it as a monitor, it likely had many years left in it. Instead, when the guts conk or no longer get updates, the whole thing gets chucked.
There's a YouTube video where a guy repurposes an old iMac screen into basically being exactly that by- essentially- creating a kind of AUX jack to use it that way.
While I'm not fan of Amazon smart speakers, I completely appreciate the little disc that is the entire "smarts" part of a Echo speaker in a dedicated package available as a SEPARATE product: Echo Dot. I'd prefer to see the same from Apple- the "smarts" as one product and a great-but-otherwise "dumb" speaker as another product. Those 2 could fit together to create a single unit like the "as is" but then the smarts piece could get upgraded when it is obsolete, while the speaker portion could continue to be used and enjoyed.
Now arguments could be made about the relative "smarts" or not in such a device. And isolating the "smarts" means that one could get all of those benefits with it attached to ANY speaker (not only a speaker made by Apple)... but, to me, I'd much prefer that in future offerings than an "all in one" where one part will certainly obsolete the rest one before the rest has any actual quality decay.
And lastly, AppleTV is basically
already this concept- dedicated smarts with Siri in a separate box- to which one can play anything on ANY soundbar, ANY mono speaker, ANY stereo speakers, 5.1 surround setup, 7.1 surround setup, ATMOS. Quality of those speakers can be dirt cheap to far beyond HomePod classic- one can get whatever quality they desire right now. If Siri in appleTV (or Siri in iPhone or iPad airplaying through AppleTV to those speakers) is smart enough, you already have a better incarnation of any new HomePod concept this way... perhaps far beyond another standalone box with narrow "smarts" built (er... LOCKED) into it.