To me, Sonos always seemed half-baked because they have a simple mode to mirror the audio to separate speakers (their whole home audio feature), there is no way to coordinate multiple speakers into a wiresless 5.1 or 7.1 sound system.
And there's nothing at all that says HomePod will do this, beyond some of "us" making up features that even Apple hasn't promoted to imply that these can do anything. Personally, I suspect if HomePod could be a replacement for Home Theater speakers, Apple would have talked that up. It would have clearly distinguished this from Echo and Google's product and more obviously make it competitors to not just Sonos but also many other home theater speaker providers at MUCH higher prices than HomePod and Sonos offerings. That message- even formally hinted- would have significantly fueled price acceptance AND had the early adopters imagining buying 5-6 HomePods at launch instead of 1 or 2. I suspect Apple would LOVE the idea of consumers already gearing up to pay 6X $349 instead of 1X or 2X $349... and all that would have taken was as little as a single slide, maybe a spoken sentence or two at the "big reveal, or even a single bullet on the slide."
Instead, Apple said NOTHING about this being a direct competitor for 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound speakers. We have just made that up as part of trying to imagine $349 as a bargain instead of trying to rationalize $349 vs. Echo, etc pricing.
Adding a voice assistant to Sonos now is just an act of desperate panic on their part, they've failed miserably to develop a decent product, and their prices are absurd.
Says who (that is objective)? Except for the more-to-most fanatic, many will argue that Alexa is superior-to-much superior to Siri. And it is
already available in a "smart speaker" that costs a fraction of HomePod. And it has
already been objectively reviewed
outside of a controlled environment at HQ for entities that know that bad pre-reviews probably doesn't get them invited back again.
Their only saving grace has been a lack of anyone else competing in the space.
They've had many direct competitors but have generally been deemed best in their space. They do generally charge more than their direct competitors, but often the best charges (more) for the best (see Apple product pricing vs. direct competitors).
Their saving grace has been a system that works well... and works well with Apple products. Note that Apple HQ has opted to sell Sonos in Apple stores, so even Apple thinks the product is good enough to allocate precious retail space to Sonos products. Or are you saying Apple is wrong for opting to push a "failed miserably to develop a decent" product at "absurd" pricing in Apple's own stores?
Note also that "WE" and invited press have decided to imagine HomePod as a Sonos competitor, presumably because it's harder to mentally rationalize it as an Alexa Echo competitor at 2X (or more) the price. Nothing in Apple's presentation made it appear to be a direct competitor to Sonos. In fact, it looked more like Apple was positioning it as Echo Pro at "pro" pricing.
Apple's main justification argument at the event seemed to revolve around "better quality speaker" which, even if that proves to be objectively true, is about the easiest part to (quickly) replace in competitor offerings. Apple did NOT tout a significantly enhanced version of Siri or the 5.1 or 7.1 usage. So Apple's "saving grace" apparently revolves around brand loyalty and the tenuous spin of "better quality speaker." Hopefully, it brings more than that.
If Homepod is 1/10th as good as it's supposed to be at the $350, it will obliterate Sonos, and no voice assistant is going to save them.
Says who (that is objective)? We haven't even had ONE objective review yet. If sound is 1/10th as good as being superior to existing players (as claimed by Apple Marketing), I can't see how anyone could argue it sounds better than established players. I can't imagine there is a 90% quality fluff layer in the quality of sound for a 10% "as good" to actually be better. But we'll see, no HEAR that for ourselves soon enough.
All that said, we're generally Apple people here. So I get how much we want to believe that whatever Apple rolls out is the best by far. However, with this thing, we almost have NOTHING on which to base such adulation. Just as we won't take Amazon rolling out a new Echo and claiming it's speaker has been upgraded to 2X better than Apple's, we should not be so quick to blindly accept marketing claims as absolute fact. Nor should we be making up rationalizations that may or may not apply (like this ongoing spin about 5.1 or 7.1 speakers).
All we actually know right now is Apple is rolling out a speaker that THEY claim sounds better than the competition and that it appears to be something akin to an Echo pro. We can hope that it brings much more than that but hope doesn't automatically mean Siri will be smarter... or these can sync up and work as 5.1 or 7.1, etc. I'll hope it does all these added things some of us have been postulating, further hoping Apple chose to keep the distinguishing "magic" secret for some reason until closer to public launch.
