It sure looks like a gamechanger to me. I have an Echo at home, and I've gotta say it's a bit limiting to converse with. At $349, though, they're clearly going for a smaller market than Amazon & Google.
Sure. I like my Echo, but it's painfully stupid quite often, and, while the speakers are pretty good, to me, they aren't as good as a high quality wireless speaker. It seems like Apple's build quality + Siri will result in a new best-in-class home speaker.