Thats probably a mistake but it does appear thats their strategy. The "smart" part of the speaker is a total afterthought it seems.
Historically, their strength is UI and maybe they don't know how to find their feet in voice. It would explain siris lack luster performance in comparison to Google and Amazon.
Very much disappointed w/ this offering.
On the pricing front – I'm not very surprised that there's a bump. They've always been on the high-end of everything they release (Apple TV is 2.5x-3.X other competitors from Google/Amazon).
I think the main reason they played down the "smart" part is because they know Siri is behind.
Sonos will have Alexa in it and most people can't tell the difference between a better speaker over another in terms of sound.
It just ...looks better.
I have a hard time seeing this touching the Play-5 and the other Sonos products that stand out, the Sonos-Sub in particular.
That said, Airplay over Sonos is a massive pain, even with the Play-5 analog line-in, which requires an Apple Express router.
I hope this pushes Sonos to improve their interoperability.
It also sounds like there is a companion app of some kind (or maybe just for setup?), which could provide an alternative interface on a "pane of glass" that you already have -- your phone.
Quite sure this will eventually open up for developers, but I'm not sure how to provide a smooth user experience. Like how to handle the case when multiple apps would like to react to same voice command.
I wonder how Apple will handle the multi-user aspect though. Even with music multiple people in the same household will want to access their own playlists.