According to Bloomberg, the Apple speaker is out of date, particularly compared to Amazon’s Echo. In 2014, when the Echo came out, Apple engineers had been working on a smart speaker of their own.

They thought that the weakness of the Echo was its speaker and got back to work building a better speaker.

While Amazon’s Echo became a hit, Jobs’ Mob dithered. The project was cancelled and revived several times, they said, and the device went through multiple permutations. Apple bigwigs could not work out how it would fit into Apple’s ecosystem of products and services.

The HomePod was supposed to be out in December, but Apple delayed it as someone twigged  that it was an accessory, like the AirPods earphones. It is expensive and can’t do anything that the Echo can and is more expensive.

While that would be a killer for many companies, Apple has been following that business strategy for a while, and no one appears to have noticed. But Amazon is in the same position that Apple was when it sank its Windows and Blackberry rivals = and initially was giving Android a run for its money.

Amazon offers thousands of “skills” (voice-activated apps) that let users do a range of things, including buy stuff from Amazon. The Google Home Mini, which debuted earlier this year, is not bad either. The HomePod can only play Apple Music, controlling Apple optimized smart home appliances and sending messages through an iPhone. So you are paying more for less again.