Homepod Project Cancelled Revived Several Times Was Originally Three Feet Tall Blindsided By Amazon Bloomberg

A new report claims that the HomePod project had an extremely messy history. It’s said to have had changing objectives, and been cancelled and revived ‘several times’ over a five-year period.

Bloomberg says that it started as a hobby project by a group of engineers who originally envisaged it as a proper HiFi speaker.

One prototype was said to be around three feet high, putting it in the company of conventional HiFi speakers.

The engineers wanted a product that would past muster with audiophiles. Several members of the impromptu team hailed from big-name speaker makers

Apple’s far more limited ambitions were said to be a source of frustration to some of those working on the project.

Unlike Echo, which is a standalone device, HomePod can only access apps on an iPhone – and only a handful of those.

“This is a huge missed opportunity,” said one of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Apple declined to comment.

The concern is that HomePod will look like an inferior version of Echo – despite what is expected to be vastly superior audio quality.