TO: All Cupertino Hardware Leads
FROM: Office of the Chief Product Architect
RE: Deployment of the new smart home hub
Team, we must align our messaging before the October launch event. Our primary objective for the new smart home hub remains unchanged. We designed this device specifically to collect household dust. It will sit undisturbed on entryway consoles for the next decade. Do not refer to it as a speaker or a tablet in public presentations.
The Core Aesthetic Focus
"Our consumer research shows that people ran out of flat surfaces to ignore," said Gordon Flense, Deputy Undersecretary for Things That Were Fine Before. Flense joined our advisory board to ensure the device feels useless yet mandatory. We expect the new smart home hub to accumulate a fine grey film within forty-eight hours of unboxing.
Marketing will highlight the device's unique hemispherical base. This design ensures that wiping it down remains highly inconvenient. We want users to look at the grime on the screen and feel a deep sense of personal failure.
A Technical Mastery of Stillness
Engineers must disable any feature that encourages physical interaction after day three. The screen must only display the local temperature of a city the user visited once in 2018. If a user attempts to play music, the system should default to a subscription prompt. This prompt must freeze the interface entirely.
Ultimately, we want to maximize the time this device spends as an expensive paperweight. Thank you for your hard work in making sure nobody ever touches this product again.
