Eshu Marneedi

Apple Newsroom, during Tuesday’s “Welcome Home” press briefing in New York:

Apple today introduced Apple HomeView, designed to be central to the home and personal to everyone in it. With a stunning 7-inch Liquid Retina display, HomeView brings entertainment, connection, and smart home management together in one place, from playing music and making FaceTime calls to home monitoring and hands-free automations with voice control — all designed with privacy and security at the core. HomeView recognizes users by their faces, adapting so they can access their personal content in Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders, and Find My. HomeView features Siri AI, an entirely new version of Siri that’s profoundly more capable and conversational, with broad world knowledge that powers richer music discovery and onscreen awareness. When paired with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device, it can also draw on a user’s personal context, such as their Calendar, Messages, and relevant information across their apps, to provide more helpful, personalized responses.

Apple HomeView — I’m still debating whether or not I put a “the” in front — runs a special unnamed operating system that runs only on the device. It seems to be a weird mélange between watchOS and tvOS, with stripped-down versions of the aforementioned Apple apps. The most interesting note about the product, to me at least, is that it doesn’t directly support third-party apps: Rather, it runs certain audio and video apps, like Spotify and Audible, through, peculiarly, CarPlay. Developers do not write new apps or optimize their existing apps for HomeView at all; if they make an audio or video app for CarPlay, it will be available to use on HomeView. These apps don’t run on HomeView directly, though: Much like CarPlay, connected iPhones run the apps while HomeView merely broadcasts the user interface. (This is from excellent reporting by Joanna Stern over at The New Things.)

Siri AI is the centerpiece of HomeView, and rightfully so. I continue to think Siri AI is one of the most compelling artificial intelligence products of the era, and it should be brought to the home. When Siri AI taps into the personal context, it either recognizes a user by voice — like all HomePods — or through camera-based facial recognition. This is intentionally and carefully not called Face ID because it does not use the almost bulletproof facial recognition technology on iPhones and iPads. I suppose it can be tricked by photos or identical twins in ways Face ID cannot. But it’s presumably accurate enough to secure text messages, calendar events, and more. Siri AI in iOS 27 also benefits from visual responses, and having those on a screen will be particularly helpful. Again, Siri AI doesn’t run on HomeView itself; it runs on connected iPhones. This means that if your iPhone doesn’t support Siri AI, buying a HomeView won’t let you use it, either. (It also means that HomeView is not for sale in the European Union.)

HomeView is a compelling product for anyone who wants a HomePod with a screen. At $300, I find it reasonably priced, especially now that the HomePod mini is $150. That market is narrow, but it must exist somewhere, and HomeView sells at a good price for those buyers. For everyone else, I find the omission of third-party apps unacceptable. If the idea is for HomeView to be an iPad for the home, it fails spectacularly. I don’t think games or work-intensive apps are fair game for HomeView, but certain recipe books, browsers, note-taking apps, and to-do lists ought to be on this device. People use calendaring services other than the stock Calendar app. Many families have grocery lists and other tasks in third-party apps like AnyList and Due, not Reminders. In fact, Reminders is relatively ill-suited for families — it’s almost too simple. And what about third-party messaging apps, like Discord or Instagram, which are used by teenagers more than Messages?

So HomeView is not an iPad. It’s a home-control device first and foremost, displaying ambient information like the weather, time, widgets, or Now Playing. Again, I find that framing perfectly acceptable — it’s a HomePod with a screen; the HomePod does not support third-party apps, or any apps for that matter — but Apple itself seems confused about what the product is intended to be. Why does it display personal information like messages or reminders at all if it’s clearly ill-suited for those duties? Why does it have a web browser if the only way to open it is by using iPhone Handoff to transfer a webpage from iOS to HomeView? (I will admit the feature that cleans up recipes is nice; that should come to iOS.) I will frame my question more explicitly: Is this product an iPad or a HomePod? If it’s a HomePod, it’s doing too much, and if it’s an iPad, it’s doing too little. HomeView is a fundamentally confused product, marketed in a product launch video that frankly is one of the worst Apple advertisements in modern history. Much like the characters in that video, HomeView tries too hard and fails too much.

Also from Tuesday:

Apple today announced the next generation of Apple TV 4K, delivering its most immersive home theater experience yet. The new Apple TV 4K features Siri AI, an entirely new version of Siri powered by the next generation of Apple Intelligence, transforming how users search for, discover, and enjoy their favorite movies and TV shows through a full-screen Siri AI experience. With built-in far-field microphones, Apple TV 4K also lets users talk to Siri completely hands-free.

Apple really buried the lede in a footnote here: Siri AI is available in beta for all Apple TV 4K models, second-generation and later. The reason why is because, again, Siri AI runs on connected iPhones, not on these products themselves. So the new Apple TV 4K adds two new features: surround sound using HomePods, and a microphone to speak to Siri hands-free. (The Apple TV 4K does not have a speaker, so it’s not a HomePod replacement. Rather, the microphone just means you don’t have to hold up the Siri Remote to speak to Siri.) The refreshed Siri Remote is available standalone for $60 and includes a speaker and better Precision Finding capability, which seems like it’s worth the price. The refreshed Apple TV 4K also moves the indicator light to the center and includes an A19 processor with Wi-Fi 7.

For this — surround sound with HomePods and a microphone for Siri — Apple asks $300, a 2.3-times increase in price over a few months ago, when the Apple TV used to cost $130. Again, for a 2.3-times increase in price, the only new features are surround sound with HomePod mini and a microphone. There are no sensible words to describe how ludicrously overpriced the new Apple TV 4K is. I must imagine the margins on this product have always been sky-high, and Apple is intent on maintaining them throughout the memory shortage. This product doesn’t even have that much memory! Yes, the Apple TV 4K is leagues ahead of every one of its competitors, and if I didn’t own one today, I’d probably pay $300 to get one. I own three myself and love them. But that is a pathetic excuse to charge $300 for a product whose software receives almost no attention from Apple year over year. This is asinine.

Speaking of unacceptable:

Apple today announced HomePod mini 2, featuring Siri AI, gorgeous new colors, and enhanced audio experiences. Siri AI, coming to HomePod mini 2 in a future software update, is a profoundly more capable and conversational assistant with personal context understanding, broad world knowledge that powers tasks like richer music discovery, and the ability to tap into even more apps — bringing a whole new level of capability to HomePod mini.

The new HomePod mini¹ at least adds Siri AI and a new feature called Sound Glow, where the top display shows the colors of the music’s album artwork. Still, it retails for $150, a $50 price increase for a product that has almost no memory. It’s running a last-generation Apple Watch processor — in what world does that cost $50 more? I am not one to complain about Apple product prices. I gladly pay top dollar for the highest-quality Apple products because I know they’re reliable and useful. The Apple TV has always been more expensive than any of its competitors, but it’s so ahead of them that it feels unfair to even call those products its competitors. I’m not of the opinion that the “Apple tax” is a genuine phenomenon, but I’m strongly reconsidering my opinion. The HomePod mini is not worth $150, and Apple missed the mark on all three of its product launches on Tuesday.