Last week, Apple launched the HomeView, its first smart home screen thing that is attached to a speaker and rather obviously intended to compete with Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub. The HomeView is basically Apple realizing that it needs to be in this space and not giving it up to its competitors without a fight.
But it is not a perfect product. It seems to be designed to only attract people who have all the other Apple products, and somehow haven’t bought smart home devices from other ecosystems. That niche probably exists and may be bigger than you’d expect, but the HomeView has some pretty obvious flaws, including the fact that its screen doesn’t rotate. According to a new report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple seems to be well aware of this and is already working on an improved version.
This HomeView could launch as HomeView Ultra or Max or 360 and will have a larger 9-inch screen attached to a robotic arm, therefore solving the lack of swivel of the current HomeView. Interestingly, Gurman says the HomeView is a fairly old product that literally sat in warehouses for “the better part of a year,” just “waiting for the software to catch up.”
That explains its huge bezel, A18 chip and 8GB of RAM. It is said to be first delayed until spring 2025, then summer, then fall, then spring this year, etc. The 9-inch HomeView is currently slated for release in 2027 or 2028, according to Gurman, and it’s codenamed J595. It will identify who is talking to it and the screen will follow you around thanks to its metal arm. It will surprisingly be more expensive than the HomeView, but by how much is not yet clear.
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