San Jose: After a marathon set of announcements this morning, Apple invited press into a hands-on area for a brief play with their new Macs, iPads and the much hyped HomePod, Apple's take on the multi-room speaker.

The biggest crowd was gathered around the HomePod table. Apple spent a long time framing this as a high end speaker first — something that competes with the Sonos or the Samsung Multiroom — and in a different league to "smart" speakers like the Google Home or Amazon's Echo.

A cynical view would be that this was to justify a high price tag but, after listening to the speaker in action, the comparison seems justified.

When first unboxed, the HomePod scans the room, emitting reference sounds and listening back to them to work out where it has been placed.