WWDC had plenty of content regarding Apple’s tried-and-true platforms. There was a new macOS, new Macs (including some so new they are only in the queue), new iOS, and new iPads.
And then there were the two announcements that got the most attention — the announcement of Apple’s ARKit and the HomePod kit. The products seemed to attack markets heading in different directions, with AR being touted as a universally applicable next frontier that will gobble up virtual reality in its march forward. On the other hand, home audio seemed like a sleepy niche market to be heading into near mainstream irrelevance before it was woken up to the cry of “Alexa!” Indeed, Apple itself had tried its hand at a home audio speaker during the height of the iPod’s popularity with the unsuccessful iPod Hi-Fi. Like the HomePod, it was priced at $349.
ARKit and HomePod also seem like counterparts — the former, a software-related announcement that screamed to call for hardware, and the latter, a hardware announcement that seemed to have no software component. But we can expect both of those scenarios to change in the coming years into initiatives that span Apple’s trademark combination of hardware and software.
Take HomePod. Like the iPod in its early days, its name seems to imply something beyond a fixed-function…
