HomeView
Apple (video, Hacker News, MacRumors Six Colors, MacStories):
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.
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Designed to fit in any space, HomeView can be placed on a tabletop as the center of the home or wall-mounted to fit in spaces like the entryway or hallway.
I guess the best part is the price. $299 (not including wall mount) is less than the base iPad and the same as the Apple TV. But I just can’t imagine what I would use this thing for. It does not seem more appealing than an iPhone or HomePod for any tasks. I wouldn’t want to dedicate any kitchen space for it, and the cord is a problem. Why would I not just use an old iPad or iPhone, which are wireless and support apps and standalone video? Maybe it would be interesting if it could do something extra, like act as a Time Capsule.
HomeView does not have FaceID. I asked about this and Apple reps said that first, your home is (reasonably!) presumed to be a safe space. But in order for users to be recognized — by voice or face — they must have a “registered [non-watch] personal device” that supports Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, that device must be present on the home’s Wi-Fi network, and it must have been recently unlocked.
Apple said it is “working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward,” but provided no timeline for EU availability.
Previously:
- HomePod mini 2
- Siri AI Ships (But Still Beta)
- No Siri AI in EU
- Apple Officially Discontinues AirPort Router Line
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Is it true that it won’t have any kind of App Store or third party app support? I feel like that’s a pretty big piece of the product story that most reports aren’t even mentioning.
> Why would I not just use an old iPad or iPhone […]
Because they are huge dicks and prevent old devices from working. I have multiple iPads and iPhones with perfectly working hardware that are stuck on iOS 9-12 (or thereabouts), so most useful applications don’t work anymore. I repurposed some of them as interactive picture frames to keep them from the landfill, using a home made web app which was a real pain to develop and test, because Safari’s dev tools simply do not connect to them anymore. And I’m not talking about recent Safari versions, I’m pretty sure they didn’t work in Catalina either, for example.
An open boot loader and Linux would breathe new life into these great devices, but of course Apple will never support that… the greed is sickening.
I have to wonder how long this has been in development, and how much of it is pieces cobbled together from other products.
This whole event seems like something they meant to do a long time ago and finally just shoved all this stuff out the door.
They still don't seem to have an actual strategy regarding Home. They just decided it was time to jump in with what everyone else was doing, with some unique Apple limitations of course.
HomeView seems comically out of touch. The 3-minute ad was super cringey. It might sell, because there are enough people out there that believe Apple's marketing BS, and it's not very expensive. But I predict those buyers will stop using it within a year. For the home automation part of it, what's the point when Apple's ecosystem doesn't work (or work well) with 95% of the devices on the market?
It also needs and iPhone or an iPad nearby to actually function, and it must have been unlocked recently (not sure what "recently" means). But not a Mac on the home network? And no unlocking via Apple Watch?
I don't see what problem this solves when it needs the iPhone you've already got in your pocket anyway.
