Apple (video, Hacker News, MacRumors Six Colors, MacStories, Slashdot):
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.
[…]
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.
John Gruber:
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.
Hartley Charlton:
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:
Update (2026-10-14): Julian Chokkattu:
It doesn’t have an App Store. Instead, Apple has a curated selection of apps, including FaceTime, Messages, and Safari. A handful of third-party media apps like Spotify are available, and developers can bring over existing CarPlay apps. If your iPhone already has one of these CarPlay apps installed, it can automatically appear on the HomeView after setup. (There are no video streaming apps like YouTube, Netflix, or Disney+, but if those companies choose to make their apps available on the CarPlay framework, they will show up on the HomeView; for now, you’ll have to consume videos by using the Safari browser.)
Via John Voorhees:
CarPlay makes some sense as a way to push apps to the HomeView, but unless the entitlement is opened wider, it also makes no sense at all.
I suspect this is just the mechanism for audio and video apps and not a more general developer channel for making apps.
Jason Snell (MacRumors):
Beyond that, though, it seems like HomeView is at least starting life as a very limited app platform. Apple does say that if you make a Siri AI query for your personal content, it will search everything on your iPhone or iPad—and that includes apps that aren’t on the HomeView. So you should be able to query your iPhone apps, but not actually run them.
Rui Carmo:
I do think I want one, but there are a few things to settle besides price and value. For starters, having more screens in the house doesn’t seem like a winning proposition (the HomePods we’ve got work OK for alarms, reminders, etc.), and the American fascination with the kitchen island (which, by the way, needs power sockets in the middle…) doesn’t translate to European flats.
Paul Solt:
Are you going to cut a hole in your island to feature HomeView?
Mr. Macintosh:
I really like the new Apple HomeView device!
The only thing I can’t get past, (as a previous iMac G4 owner) is the screen can’t rotate vertically.
Notice the slick Apple video edit:
If someone needs to rotate HomeView, the whole base needs to rotate along with the power cord.
Mr. Macintosh:
Wait… I just noticed something else from the HomeView video🤔
When she goes to grab the HomeView, you can see her right hand reach out to grab the lower right hand corner of the screen. But then the cut shows her grab the top of the base to rotate it?
Did they not like the cut where the entire base rotates? (This would would have shown the USB-C plug rotate along with the entire unit)
Basic Apple Guy:
iOS Icon History: iPod/Music
Bob Burrough:
Folks speculating HomeView is the tail end of Tim Cook’s product “leadership,” but 1) Ternus is the CEO and can torpedo it if he thinks it’s a stinker. 2) He’s also the guy who spearheaded iPad’s “what’s a computer?” campaign and the idea that an iPad was a viable replacement.
Quinn Nelson:
The biggest issue with Apple’s Home ecosystem is the absolutely garbage Home app. Still, in 2026, there is a tab dedicated fully to buying more smart home gadgets (aka, an ad) within the iOS Home app and it can’t be removed. Yet rooms are buried up top. Pitiful.
Scott:
This is the ONE THING (“One more thing”?) I’d been hoping to get from
@Apple
in this announcement: they were redoubling efforts on HomeKit/Home.app to make the ecosystem actually work better… annnnnd did not get that impression. At all.
IMHO, as an HomeKit user with dozens of devices in 2 Homes, there is SO MUCH low-hanging fruit that
@Apple
could be working on to improve the UX, it is pathetic.
Steve Troughton-Smith:
The original HomePod didn’t come to the EU either for 5 months, and even then it was only in two countries. The original HomePod never came to Ireland at all, before it was discontinued. But if you only listened to the pundits, this is somehow now the DMA’s fault.
See also: Marques Brownlee.
Update (2026-10-16): Jesper:
It is so convoluted that people will be having trouble understanding it, and if they have trouble understanding it they’ll be having trouble trusting it. Most of what it does involves somehow sucking in the juices from the people’s devices that cohabitate with it.
[…]
That it works at all is impressive, but will people really put their integrity in its hands? Between this and the various “always-listening” features of the recent Apple Watch releases, I’m thinking Apple has gotten a bit too high on its own supply.
Steve Troughton-Smith:
Apple overhauled the external display APIs in iOS 27 for unclear reasons and replaced it with a ‘scene accessory’ API, which I believe powers the iPhone Duo’s both-screens-at-once entitlement-gated API.
Enter HomeView, with its ‘CarPlay’ API, which is clearly a stopgap solution that will please nobody.
But if we’re beaming UI from a connected iPhone, the external scene accessory API suddenly looks more promising. That way you could do ‘real’ apps without an App Store.
See also: Dithering and Accidental Tech Podcast.
Update (2026-10-19): John Gruber (Mastodon, tweet, Bluesky):
I do think the basic concept is an intriguing idea. But as an implementation of that concept, my initial impressions are threefold. First, I am unconvinced that anyone in a family would use this for anything other than playing music or podcasts, rather than just using their phones. And if that’s the case, why not just have a HomePod? Apple’s video shows family members taking turns to use the HomeView, rotating it on the kitchen island to face themselves. Why? Why does the mom check her calendar on this, rather than on her iPhone, while the dad is using it to follow a French toast recipe? There’s a real “Why do we need this?” question here and I don’t think Apple’s video answers it, at all.
Lex Friedman:
I don’t have a HomeView yet. But I’m excited to own one.
[…]
I’m confident that Apple won’t show endlessly scrolling promos on that screen.
[…]
Yes, my phone shows those things. Yes, my Apple Watch shows those things. But I like that data being glanceable and not requiring I look at a full-on distraction machine. I’m thinking the HomeView might be the Kindle hardware of tiny bits of data I want.
Mark Gurman (via John Gruber):
Apple postponed the HomeView repeatedly — first until spring 2025, then summer, then fall, and then again throughout 2026 before finally unveiling it this past week. And the hardware betrays its age. With thick bezels, an A18 processor and 8 gigabytes of memory, this is clearly a product conceived years ago. Finished units have been sitting boxed up in warehouses for the better part of a year, waiting for the software to catch up.
Adam Engst:
Apple produced a 3-minute promotional video that purports to show a “typical” family using a HomeView. The ad has drawn criticism from John Gruber and TidBITS readers, who were horrified by the behaviors portrayed, and more to the point, it doesn’t seem to show the HomeView making life any better. Certainly, nothing in that video matches how any “typical” morning has ever gone in our household.
Although we use our HomePods heavily to turn lights on and off and listen to music, it’s hard to think of much else we would choose to do on the HomeView.
[…]
As someone who cooks seriously, I’m skeptical of HomeView’s one-step-at-a-time approach.
I cook a lot and can’t imagine using HomeView for recipes. I always reformat and edit them beforehand. I print them out so I can jot notes as I’m cooking and easily see more than one at once without having to fiddle with a screen.
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