So the Home Pod was announced. Supposed to be better than Sonos. Its supposed to be magical. I would bet that the Play3 and a dot would do more.

[Link: cultofmac.com]

I wonder if Sonos is scared or not?

Airplay 2 is pretty interesting. Being able to group and ungroup audio zones. I'm more interested in how that works.

Late to the party
Me too product
Apple fanboys only, who haven't already bought into another product line
Selling sound quality to techies is tough road

Apple's success with this means even less profit for custom installers. I wonder if it will integrate with other music services. If not there's no way it could compete with Sonos

$350? People like you Apple, but not that much.

Airplay 2 is the interesting aspect of the announcement.
Will it be backwards compatible with other Airplay speakers / amps etc?
Up until this point, Airplay was crippled for multi-room, this may fix that... well, it will most likely go 'most of the way'. But as with most tech it will go part of the way.

If Airplay 2 can be made backwards compatible, a lot of punters will be happy to be able to use their products more effectively than they have in the past. But, Apple won't make any money out of doing that...

Sonos has just announced that the introduction of the Apple product is not going to force them to lower their prices even one tiny bit.

We've been talking about a Sonos Killer for years. None of the major companies have been able to do it and I believe Apple is the only one with enough funding to truly compete. Hopefully this steps up the game for others and it involves allowing us to integrate with our control systems. Also the system needs to be able to power any speaker, maybe with an Airport Express/Amp and it has to include all music services. I guess that's where Airplay 2 can work. Last, it would help to have the wireless mesh network that I think is a great advantage with Sonos...Oh yeah, let us make money too.

To think this is a Sonos killer and that we will be able to integrate something is delusional.

Yeah, since when have you seen Apple be integrator friendly? I thought y'all was kiddin me.

Apple is a hardware company with iTunes they are going to go balls out with their sonos wannabe. Right now its nothing to worry about but what if they match all of the sonos skus in a year?

The UI will probably suck as bad as itunes/Music (mobile devices) but seems like no one cares anymore about UI.

Apple finally has someone else to copy. If they do that they will be in the game. If they try and reinvent the wheel it will be a waste of time.

Will it take some of Sonos market share? Definitely. But I am afraid Apple is going to have to settle for the Silver medal in this competition. Sonos is just so far ahead in so many ways and is now starting to turn their ear towards custom integration (slowly may I add). I see this product, like the last few Apple products, uninspiring.

What makes it so hard to compete with is that Sonos is, in fact, very Apple-esque. It is simple to use, compact and works great. If Apple is going to imitate and try to revolutionize, they should probably go after a sector that needs improvement.

I'm sure Apple knows Sonos very well, as do other Sonos competitors. No doubt a good percentage of their employees are using Sonos right now. The difference is Apple has way more money and engineering behind them than anyone else. I don't think anyone else has the man power to engineer anything better. If Apple wanted to they could do what Sonos does. So what is stopping them? Patents? Perhaps no one else is as focused as Sonos who does nothing but wireless speakers.

Alexa still needs some work, but from my experience she's more accurate and better at answering requests than Siri. She also cost me $50.

Ditto