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Apple’s smart home event: All 7 devices, prices, and release dates
Apple's "Welcome Home" event featured all the new smart home hardware coming to the Apple lineup.
Apple held a “Welcome Home” event on October 13, where it unveiled seven new smart home products. The small event wasn’t livestreamed, but Apple quietly dove headfirst into the smart home market with its first smart panel: the Apple HomeView.
We also saw the Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini refreshed, as well as a new Home Collection featuring a security camera, video doorbell, smart lock, and smart thermostat. The latter was created in collaboration with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric.
For years, we’ve been waiting for a new Apple smart home product that serves as a smart panel, consolidating a full view of your devices in a stationary form factor. Apple has finally turned this dream into a reality. With the Apple HomeView, Apple made a committed entry into the smart home market to more aggressively compete with brands like Amazon and Google.
The HomeView serves as a control center for the Apple smart home and supports third-party brands via Matter and direct Apple Home integrations.
As for the device itself, the HomeView features the A18 chip, likely with 8GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence, a setup similar to that of the iPhone 16. Apple is giving the HomeView Siri AI, marking the first time that a generative AI-powered Siri enters the smart home category.
This kind of generative AI places the HomeView in the same league as Amazon’s competing smart home panels, which now feature Alexa+, a generative AI virtual assistant that can respond to natural-language queries and take actions on behalf of the user.
Also: 5 ways HomeView could make me switch from Echo
Beyond serving only as a smart home display, however, Apple is positioning the HomeView as a panel that ties your entire Apple ecosystem together. It’ll be the last loop to close in the Apple ecosystem, alongside the Home Collection and Siri AI in the HomePod mini 2 and Apple TV 4K.
Physically, the HomeView has a square display and a rounded speaker on the back to which it is attached. There is also a wall-mounted version available.