The $349 gadget — which Apple unveiled on Monday at its annual developer conference and will begin s

The $349 gadget — which Apple unveiled on Monday at its annual developer conference and will begin shipping in December — is inspired by the Amazon Echo, the smart speaker<br />that houses Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, and that seemed like a joke until many people (including yours truly) suddenly began to love it.<br />I got a chance to listen to HomePod — but not use any of its voice-activated features — after Apple’s keynote.<br />The company that’s hailed for innovation does not often invent things first — it didn’t create<br />the first personal computer, the first digital music player or the first smartphone.<br />Yet the reinvention that matters here isn’t about a single device — it’s larger:<br />The success of HomePod will really depend on whether Apple can reinvent itself.