Dieter Bohn, The Verge:

Today, Apple finally announced a shipping date for its smart speaker, the HomePod. And something about the launch of this Apple music device reminds me of the launch of that other Apple music device, the iPod.

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” said Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda on Slashdot on October 1st, 2001. (The Nomad, if you’re wondering, was a pre-iPod MP3 player that was the size and shape of a Sony Discman in its early incarnations. So.) At the time, Slashdot was the most important online community for talking about tech. And at the time, tech news meant for discussion (a lot of Linux) was posted with brief news snippets submitted by readers, snarky one-liners from the people who posted, and even snarkier tags. The iPod came “from the well-thats-not-very-exciting dept.”

Here’s a link to that canonical iPod review.

Good analogy, comparing the HomePod launch to the iPod launch. Will HomePod succeed? I suspect we’ll see at least enough success to justify the effort, given that Apple is selling into a pool of about 30 million Apple Music subscribers.

If things go well, the enthusiasm of the HomePod enjoyers will help bring more people into the Apple Music fold. Seems a reasonable bet for Apple.