Mark Gurman, reporting earlier this week for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc., aiming to catch up with rivals in the smart home market, is nearing the launch of a new product category: a wall-mounted display that can control appliances, handle videoconferencing, and use AI to navigate apps.

The company is gearing up to announce the device as early as March and will position it as a command center for the home, according to people with knowledge of the effort. The product, code-named J490, also will spotlight the new Apple Intelligence AI platform, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is confidential…

The device has a roughly 6-inch screen and looks like a square iPad. It’s about the size of two iPhones side by side, with a thick edge around the display. There’s also a camera at the top front, a rechargeable built-in battery, and internal speakers. Apple plans to offer it in silver and black options.

The product has a touch interface that looks like a blend of the Apple Watch operating system and the iPhone’s recently launched StandBy mode. But the company expects most people to use their voice to interact with the device, relying on the Siri digital assistant and Apple Intelligence. The hardware was designed around App Intents, a system that lets AI precisely control applications and tasks, which is set to debut in the coming months.

In August, Gurman leaked a version of this product that stood on a countertop with a robotic arm rumored to cost an eye-watering $1,000 but then modified his reporting months later to include the addition of a non-robotic version with a stand similar to the iMac G4. (This product has been slowly leaking for years, and it’s giving me major AirTag déjà vu.) I assumed the product would look more like an Echo Show, but with the Apple touch — I didn’t expect it to be wall-mounted. Either way, this seems like the comparatively low-end version of what I predict Apple will call the “HomePad”: a 6-inch, square-shaped device that runs a new operating system. If it sells well, Apple will probably release the ridiculous robotic version, and maybe that’s the one with the iMac G4-like stand.

The OS is perhaps the most interesting tidbit from the story: Gurman says that it’ll heavily rely on Apple Intelligence — which it’ll be able to do with 8 gigabytes of memory; I predict it’ll run on either an A17 Pro or A18 Pro — and will run certain Apple-made apps, but there’ll be no App Store for third-party developers. I truly don’t understand why Apple chose this route, especially because Live Activities, widgets, and shortcuts could potentially be useful on a household tablet. Even the HomePod has basic voice control for supported music streaming services. I don’t expect Apple to launch a brand new App Store for this operating system alone, but iPad apps should be able to run just fine, even if the screen has a 1-to-1 aspect ratio, thanks to recent iPadOS optimizations made for Stage Manager. If there are no third-party apps on this device, I predict it’ll be a flop.

This device probably begins the lineage of an operating system derived from iPadOS, tvOS, or both, presumably called “homeOS” or something similar — and the OS will be its main selling point. A 5.5-inch Echo Show costs $90, and Apple’s version will almost certainly be more expensive than the standard HomePod, which sells for $300. I believe it’ll sell for $500, which is five times more expensive than Amazon’s competition, and that’s not great for the prospects of this device. For it to be enticing, it needs to run every app an iPad can with support for multiple Apple accounts per household. Apple’s operating system, without a doubt, will be oodles more intuitive and performant than whatever Amazon uses to run the Echo Show — and it’ll have ChatGPT support through Apple Intelligence — but Siri’s reputation isn’t the best (for good reason). Whatever Apple calls it, it’ll be a very difficult product to sell at anything over $200.

Knowing Apple, the biggest selling points will be Apple Intelligence and sound quality, but I just don’t think many non-tech-adjacent users care about either of those. Alexa is known for being reliable, and Siri isn’t. The larger HomePod, by itself, is an abysmal value at $300, and if the HomePad is a penny more, it’ll be a flop. That’s not good for Apple: two flops in a row — Apple Vision Pro and the HomePad — isn’t acceptable. I said this when I wrote about the robotic HomePod, and I’ll say it again: Apple needs to understand overpricing products won’t work anymore. Apple is no longer regarded as a luxury brand because iPhones are a commodity, and the more Apple price-gouges consumers, the worse it will be for its ability to develop new products.

This brings me to two sentences Gurman wrote in his latest Power On newsletter:

It may even revisit the idea of making an Apple-branded TV set, something it’s evaluating. But if the first device fails, Apple may have to rethink its smart home ambitions once again.

Apple has been toying with the idea of making a television set for as long as I can remember — certainly since Steve Jobs was chief executive — and once, I was bullish on it. But if Gurman’s reporting is to be believed, Apple is making a major foray into the home with robots, smart displays, and, according to Ming-Chi Kuo’s reporting, security cameras that integrate with HomeKit Secure Video. The TV project is yet another branch in this very complicated tree. I’m in the market for all of these products, and I’ll buy them no matter how expensive, but I don’t think an Apple television will cost anything short of $10,000 — no exaggeration. It’d be the most beautiful TV ever produced, but nobody would buy it. In fact, if the Apple TV (set-top box) hadn’t been a success pre-2015, I don’t think developers would’ve made apps for tvOS either. Every time an Apple product is too expensive, it sets up a chicken-and-egg problem: Apple makes the best products, but they’re only the best if developers make apps for them. We’ve seen this with Apple Vision Pro, and we’ll see it again in March when the HomePad comes out.