This is an understatement.
I bought one just yesterday, and was very very surprised by how small it is. It just blends in unobtrusively with the room. It's like it's not even there. A pretty good step on the route to making computers blend in with the world.
If you're a tech nerd who is OK with wires and blinking lights all over your home, this won't be important to you. But if you are someone, or live with someone, for whom the aesthetics of your home are important, this is a very important feature.
And yes, the aesthetics. It just looks good. Actively good.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41A-xmDb8nL...
https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/z/Bi0AAOSw5cRZICJN/$...
I do remember the 90's. I wasn't a fan of it.
computer hardware that wasn't SGI wasn't allowed to be any color besides Beige
I used to dream about one day pounding away on SGI gear. I eventually (early/mid-2000's) got moved to an office with meteorologists that had Indigos and Octanes, and I think Irisseseses. Blue was awesome. But then they all got replaced by generic Dell machines. Ick.
I remember back before all computers looked the same. Back when keyboards were vastly different between models, and would have blue or red or brown or very rarely green keys. Standardization? That was for the Telex at work. Computers were going to free us from that tyranny. Except they didn't.
Not true. Digital (DEC) PCs were "almost white" (maybe stightly off-white but still approaching a cream, not beige).
Hard to find a picture that shows this without having aged but this does a good job: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/68...
Note the marked difference between the beige floppy drive and the case.
Also: https://www.speedhelp.net/Bilder/Computer/ISA/P1/digital_ven...
HomePods, for all their flaws, are very decent speakers in a small footprint. They blend in and are very minimalist, in my opinion, and that's important to me.