Unveiled back in June, the Apple HomePod smart speaker was expected to hit the market in December. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that this Siri-powered accessory will start shipping in early 2018.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-s-HomePod-smart-speaker-delayed-until-2018.264066.0.html
Was hoping to see how the HomePod stacked up against the Google Home Max. Google has their AI driving the Max to shape the sound to the room dynamically. Plus it will have much bigger sound with two 4.5" woofers compared to the Apple HomePod only have a single 4" woofer.
Was going to be interesting to see how well Google AI stacked up against Apple using a traditional approach to shaping the sound. Google has done amazing things with AI and photography and thinking they could do similar with sound.
My guess is the HomePod was not going to compare well and Apple decided they need more time. The problem is AI improves and pretty quickly versus traditional approaches improve at a much slower rate.