Apple has a new kind of device, and it looks less like a HomePod than a giant Apple Watch bolted to a speaker. The company introduced HomeView at its Welcome Home event in New York on Tuesday, a long-rumored smart home hub built around a 7-inch Liquid Retina display set in a square frame, a shape Apple is betting will stand out against the landscape screens on gadgets like Amazon's Echo Show.
The screen sits above a 12-megapixel camera that uses Apple's Center Stage zoom for video calls, the same trick found on recent iPads. Two full-range drivers inside the body push what Apple calls room-filling Spatial Audio. Running the show is an A18 chip, the same silicon in the iPhone 16 series and the MacBook Neo, which should leave enough headroom for Apple Intelligence and the newly conversational Siri that Apple previewed back at WWDC in June.
That Siri tie-in is the real point of HomeView, according to Ben Wood, chief analyst at FDM CCS, who was at the New York event. "It is little surprise that the HomeView coincides with Apple's renewed push on Siri AI and Apple Intelligence," Wood said, noting Apple had been waiting on the upgraded voice assistant given how central talking to the device is meant to be.
One screen, many faces
What makes HomeView unusual is that it is trying to be both a shared household gadget and a personal one, somewhere between an Apple TV and an Apple Watch. Built-in facial recognition is meant to tell family members apart, surfacing each person's own Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders and Find My data on the same screen. Pair it with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device and Apple says HomeView can pull in personal context to answer questions more specifically.
"Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a press release. Households that haven't bothered with shared photo albums or shared Apple Music playlists may want to start, since those are the features HomeView leans on.
The display can rest on a counter with a domed speaker base or mount flush to a wall using one of three purpose-built mounts from Schneider Home, installed yourself or by a professional. That's a decision buyers have to make at checkout, since the wall and tabletop versions are separate products, not one device with interchangeable parts. Idle screens can show family photos or an animated Snoopy that reacts to movement in the room.
HomeView is available to preorder now in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand for $299, in silver, starlight, rose pink and space gray, with deliveries starting November 13.
A new remote arrives too
Apple also launched a fourth-generation Siri Remote the same day, priced at $59 and compatible with every Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K model sold since 2015. It looks nearly identical to its predecessor but adds Find My support and Precision Finding, which uses onscreen arrows on a compatible iPhone to guide you to a lost remote, backed by a built-in speaker that can chirp on command. Apple says Precision Finding needs an iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, or iPhone 17 or later, excluding the iPhone 17e. It also ships November 13.
What's left open is how HomeView holds up once it's actually in homes, whether facial recognition is quick enough for a busy kitchen and whether Apple's conversational Siri is ready to carry the weight Apple is putting on it. Reviewers will get their hands on units before the November 13 ship date, and that's when the harder questions get answered.
HTFiled by The Home Tech Desk
TVs, home appliances and the smart home: refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, purifiers, robot vacuums, the sets on the wall and the platforms that connect them. Launches, prices in the US and India, and what changed.
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