It is definitely the best speaker around, multiple reviews say the sound quality is amazing. However, we are in a golden age of ML and the Siri on HomePod is a joke when compared to Alexa and Google Assistant. Apple's culture of secrecy has left them woefully behind in the AI race (where researchers love to publish).
I agree with you that Apple does not really know where to go next. Awesome AR glasses that actually sell and do amazing things? An amazing smart home assistant that can run your home, but is handleable with simple within the Apple eco-system? I don't think Apple has done anything that bold in recent years and will struggle like you say.
Unless Apple secretly is doing something truly "Wow" and they're just quiet about it. Otherwise, I believe Tim Cook will earn more and more comparisons to Steve Ballmer: Great for sales/stock price, missed out on a game changing era of technology.
This has nothing to do with secrecy or lack of user data or lack of algorithms knowledge. What is missing in Siri is lack of high quality gold data sets -- this is often curated by hoards of phds and other domain experts. It takes time to do the curation and Google is ahead of the pack. Amazon has done a great job opening up the eco system to third parties.
Maybe this prioritization of a lot of new features is them making up for introducing a new product direction?
EDIT: oops, found Apple Homepod, maybe they're not marketing it well? Anyone here that uses it? My friends are apple lovers, buying nee iphones and macbook pro and havent heard of it either.