Apple has unveiled HomeView, a curious little device that borrows the floating display of the original iMac G4, the touchscreen of an iPad, the familiar faces of an Apple Watch and the speaker base of a HomePod. It’s potentially a great combination, a 7-inch smart display designed to become the center of the connected home.
At US$299, HomeView promises music, video, FaceTime, smart home controls and a substantially more capable Siri, all without reaching for your phone. It’s an appealing proposition, but Apple is entering a market where much of this is already familiar. Amazon’s Echo Show has been doing the countertop assistant thing for years.
So what’s actually new here?
Four devices, one countertop
The aluminum tabletop model features a tilting stainless steel hinge and comes in silver, starlight, rose pink and space gray. Its Liquid Retina display supports True Tone and automatically adjusts its brightness to suit the room – from 500 nits down to 0.3 nits so it won’t blind you on a nightstand.
Apple has paid considerable attention to the audio. The tabletop version packs two full-range drivers into the display housing, paired with a down-firing woofer and two force-cancelling passive radiators in its domed base. Computational audio adjusts the sound in real time, while Spatial Audio promises a more immersive listening experience. Small devices have made remarkable advances in speaker technology, and the original HomePod’s ability to project sound around a room was most impressive. Whether HomeView can manage something similar with its more compact speaker arrangement remains to be heard.
There’s also the familiar ecosystem – Apple Music, Podcasts, Apple TV, compatible third-party apps and FaceTime with Center Stage, which keeps callers framed as they move around.
Whether a 7-inch display is really the ideal way to watch TV is debatable, but for recipes, video calls and background entertainment, the format makes sense.
What I find interesting is how HomeView behaves when nobody’s actively using it. Apple says its interface adapts to viewing distance, displaying basic information from across the room and greater detail as someone approaches. It can recognize up to six household members by their faces, presenting personalized information for each.
It’s a neat trick, although Amazon’s Echo Show devices already offer displays that adapt to viewing distance. Apple’s ability to recognize individual household members and present their personal information could be its advantage.
The five-minute egg timer problem
For years, one of the most useful gadgets in my kitchen was an Alexa with a clock. Not because it could read the news or play music, but because I could say “Alexa, set a pasta timer for eight minutes” and glance across the room at a big round clock with LEDs counting down.
I’ve since replaced that functionality with my own locally hosted voice assistant, Yaffle, and a couple of Ulanzi pixel clocks. As I described in an earlier article, I can now ask for a timer and have the countdown appear automatically on the appropriate display.
It took considerably more effort than boiling pasta should reasonably require, but it demonstrated an important point. The value of a smart home assistant isn’t necessarily how much it can do, it’s how naturally it fits into the things we already do.
Apple appears to understand this. HomeView isn’t trying to replace an iPad or an iMac. It’s trying to make technology useful without constantly demanding our attention.
But for anyone already running an Alexa-equipped household, or experimenting with Home Assistant, the basic proposition isn’t particularly revolutionary.
The intelligence comes with conditions
Apple’s real differentiator may be Siri AI, its substantially upgraded voice assistant. The company promises more natural conversations, broader general knowledge, and a degree of awareness.
And, inevitably, we arrive at privacy. It’s one thing knowing things. It’s quite another thing knowing things about you.
For Siri to retrieve personal information from Messages, Calendar and other apps, HomeView requires a paired Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone or iPad. General conversational assistance remains available without one, but those personal functions depend on another device.
Apple says sensitive camera and microphone processing is isolated within protected areas of its A18 chip, while personal information is only displayed when the appropriate household member is recognized and their paired device meets Apple’s security requirements.
That’s reassuring, but I think it marks another small step in our relationship with household technology. We’ve grown accustomed to devices that are always listening. Now we’re inviting devices that are also watching, recognizing who’s standing in front of them and adapting accordingly. The convenience is obvious, but so is the question of just how much attention we want our homes paying us.
Certain server-assisted AI features will also have daily usage limits, with expanded paid access planned for the future.
Another screen, or a genuinely smarter home?
HomeView can, of course, control compatible smart home devices, including lights, thermostats, blinds and locks. It can also display security cameras and, with compatible equipment and an iCloud+ subscription, recognize people, pets and deliveries. Its camera interface can show nine feeds simultaneously, although fitting that many onto seven inches might require good eyesight.
Apple also offers a wall-mounted version, with mounting hardware and power accessories costing extra. Deliveries begin November 13.
Of course, the hardware looks attractive, and Apple’s approach to personalization could make it an appealing addition to households already invested in its ecosystem.
The wider challenge isn’t putting another intelligent screen on a kitchen counter. Amazon already does that, while platforms such as Home Assistant demonstrate just how much can be achieved with relatively inexpensive hardware and a little determination.
And perhaps that’s where Apple’s greatest opportunity lies. I’ve spent countless hours persuading different devices, software and voice assistants to cooperate, and I’ve even enjoyed some of it. But most people don’t want a hobby masquerading as a household appliance. They just want something that works.
If Apple can bring the flexibility and intelligence of a sophisticated smart home into a device that requires little more than a straightforward setup, HomeView could represent something genuinely significant. Not because it does things nobody’s done before, but because it makes those things accessible to people who’d never dream of building them themselves.
Can these devices genuinely understand the household they’re supposed to serve? Apple wants to make the whole house feel effortless. That would be a considerably more impressive achievement than simply giving Siri somewhere new to live.
Source: Apple
