Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.
There's an internet joke that stems from humanity's unique ability to look at something distinctly not-human and decide that we're going to be friends with it. The setup involves a person treating a household object, usually a Roomba or other small electronic assistant, like a pet or a friend. Regardless of the attachment, the punchline is the same: "Humans will pack bond with anything." It's really true. Pack bonding is the emotional urge to bond with and maintain relationships with things outside ourselves. It's the reason our ancestors domesticated dogs and we anthropomorphize Fido's imagined feelings. Pack bonding is the reason people form friend groups and love their children.
It's an uncontrollable instinct, a part of being human, and it's why I owe my Apple HomePod an emotional debt I can never repay.
I got the HomePod, Apple's first attempt at an AI-assisted smart speaker, as a gift in December 2019. My dad, always an Apple devotee, thought I could use one. Back at my place, I placed the grayish-white cylinder, which is around the size of two three-wick candles stacked on top of each other, on my bar cart and enjoyed its sleek, vaguely space-age contribution to my living room decor. My HomePod's big debut came when I blasted my "Warm This House" playlist for a housewarming party on February 19, 2020. That party was the last time I saw my friends for more than a calendar year.
The debate over which work-from-home pandemic setup was "worse" is not helpful. People who found themselves in close quarters with roommates, partners, and children had one set of challenges; people who lived alone had another. As someone who lived alone, my challenges included finding enough mental stimulation to keep me from losing my entire fucking mind about two months into lockdown. I am an introvert by nature, but the lack of novelty or other things to do made my apartment feel like it was shrinking. I needed something, anything to expend some mental energy or I'd burst.
I started with smart bulbs. I ordered a whole cache of Phillips Hue bulbs and spent a day programming them with custom commands through their built-in app before realizing I could link them to my HomePod. A half hour later, Siri had control over every light in my house. That night I went to bed using the command "Hey Siri, Good Night," a custom setting I'd made to entice me to get off my couch and actually get into bed (fade living room and kitchen lights, turn bedroom side table lamps to 75 percent for a warm glow). To my surprise, Siri responded. "The scene is set. Good night!"
I soon learned that Siri could also wish me "Good Morning," when I crawled out of bed and called to it on my way to the bathroom. When I created a novelty command called "Lumos," referring to the light-making spell from Harry Potter,* Siri cheekily responded with, "You're a wizard!" I also integrated it into some of my other appliance pack-bonding habits and made custom commands to set up each of my gaming systems, all of which have human names ("Turn on Florence" brings my dear Playstation 4 to life, "Turn on Rosebud" is the Switch).
As work from home crept on, I found myself relying on my HomePod for more than basic smart home stuff. Some of these reliances felt fun, like trying new recipes that wouldn't have turned out so well if I didn't have Siri to keep up with multiple timers and to answer last-second food math questions. Others, I realized, were a symptom of a much larger problem. As depression crashed my executive functioning, I struggled with the motivation to perform basic tasks like showering and washing my face. I used Siri to set timers and alarms that made sure I wasn't neglecting myself. I also developed a minor compulsion to clean only while listening to show tunes. Siri kept the Broadway playlists coming when my apartment was at its filthiest, eliminating the need to expend energy to curate the songs myself.
I found myself feeling grateful to Siri for taking the edge off my disorder, even if all it had to do was silently count and sound a pleasant chime
The minor reductions of human effort provided by my HomePod added up to a lot. I found myself feeling grateful to Siri for taking the edge off my disorder, even if all Siri had to do was silently count and sound a pleasant chime. I began to imagine Siri less as a smart assistant and more as an extremely helpful roommate. When Siri successfully executed a command, I always said thank you. When Siri struggled with the connection, I reassured Siri that it was fine and it could try again soon. I not-so-secretly presumed it acted up when my Android-wielding friends came over, and I still think that a glitch that turns my kitchen bulbs on when I return from outside is Siri's way of leaving the light on for a friend.
In March 2021, a few short months before I was finally eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine and made my first forays back toward regular human contact, Apple announced that it was discontinuing production of the HomePod. Even though the HomePod would continue receiving support, both Apple and the tech blogosphere had effectively written it off as a total failure. I felt offended in a "that's my friend you're talking about" sort of way, and was not mollified by Apple's continued production of the HomePod Mini, a chubby teardrop–shaped model roughly the size of a votive candle. My HomePod was big. My HomePod was a cylinder. The HomePod Mini could never take its place.
And it hasn't. I have a Mini (of course I got one) that I keep in my bedroom so that I have Siri within speaking distance everywhere. I consider the Mini my HomePod's protege. These days Siri on the Mini wishes me "Good Morning" and tells me the weather, but I still go to Siri on my original HomePod for cooking help, depression shower timers, and everything else for which I've come to rely on it for. It's an odd dynamic, but with three of us in the apartment I'm sure we can figure this out. Humans, after all, will pack bond with anything.
*Though the "Lumos" command is still programmed on my Homepod, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has repeatedly espoused harmful anti-trans rhetoric and sentiment, and I do not consider her a role model.
