ionicle

citpeks said:

Apple has squandered the lead it had with Siri and HomeKit.

Both have languished, and lag behind Google's and Amazon's efforts.

Instead, the company still treats the Apple TV like a hobby, if not some sort of disease to be avoided, and offered users an expensive smart speaker whose best feature is sound quality; nice but not exactly the top priority for a smart speaker.  The market reacted predictably.  A smaller, more affordable version might be more attractive, but hardly breaking any new ground.

And that's it.

Meanwhile, users who want IoT products that are fully integrated with the Apple ecosystem find themselves as second class citizens, lacking the same variety of choice and pricing that competitors like Google and Amazon provide.

Occasionally, a promising product that does feature HomeKit is announced, and ships on time, but many are also delayed, or never have their promise of HomeKit compatibility fulfilled (looking at you, Ring, but you're not alone).

The IoT market is worth hundreds of billions, but for reasons unknown, Apple executives are happy to let others dominate, and not do more to ensure Apple users have a similar level of options, except with the polish, and privacy-oriented design that they expect.  Not a speaker or camera whose mission includes helping a company compile a data profile of your habits, in order to send you more ads, and have you buy more stuff.  Where did the vision go?  Where is the plan?

Meanwhile, money and resources are plowed into big, risky bets like autonomous driving vehicles (which are still a long way to being commonplace) and AR (the 3D glasses of the 21st Century).

Puzzling.

KBuffett said:

So it doesn’t have the flat edges, as the rumours suggested