If you’re an Apple rumor aficionado, one of the longer-gestating storylines in the late-Cook/ early-Ternus era has been the gadget known by Apple outsiders as the “HomePad”—a smart speaker with an iPad-like screen, designed to function as the new center of your IoT life. Manufacturing was reportedly all lined up a year ago, but Apple’s difficulties in shipping a non-crappy AI-enabled version of Siri delayed the project.
Well, all indications are that it’s coming out Tuesday, and it’s going to be called “HomeView.”
Don’t take that to the bank—Apple likes to zig when people expect it to zag—but I’m getting it from two places, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the most reliable stateside collector of Apple leaks and secrets, and a MacRumors report from Friday about a HomeView trademark filing, attached to some company called Home Services LLC—possibly an Apple shell company.
The name would make sense. The elusive product we’ve been calling the HomePad is a smart home hub with a view-able touchscreen, and rumor has it the HomeView will view you right back. Past reporting from Gurman says it will be armed with facial recognition, giving it the ability to personalize itself for whichever member of the household happens to be standing before it.
And since part of what Apple apparently envisions for the HomeView ecosystem is that you’ll buy several of them—and why wouldn’t Apple envision that?—instant customization for each user sounds like it has its place. Here’s an example I made up myself: I stand in my kitchen and use the rumored HomeView intercom function to call my son down to dinner. It’ll register as a message from Dad. And if, after dinner, I address that same son in the kitchen while I’m standing in his dirty room, to tell him he needs to clean it immediately, it’ll still say he’s getting a message from Dad. That might not be the exact HomeView vision, but it’s probably close.
Gurman claimed last month that this product unveiling would be on October 13—alongside some other product debuts. That prophecy appears to be mostly fulfilled, since Apple now says something called “Welcome Home” is happening that day. It’s not expected to be a big keynote-centric tour-de-force, with Jon Ternus announcing a “one more thing,” and all the other trimmings, but just an “Apple Experience” in Tribeca, New York at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday.
If you still can’t make heads or tails of what this new product is supposed to be, Apple has reportedly anticipated your confusion. Apple Stores will reportedly soon feature the product heavily along its “Avenues,” the sections of the store where the third-party products and peripherals usually live. That way, perhaps unsuspecting members of the public just looking for new phone chargers will find themselves seduced by a whole new type of Apple thingamajig.
