mpantone

Personally I think the idea of a fixed tablet makes zero sense for today's consumer. No one wants to get up to go look at a screen. They want to do everything from their phones (or possibly an Apple Watch) since that's realistically those are the only two devices they are going to carry around with them throughout the house.

The most plausible Home Hub hardware device would be some sort of dual- or multi-function MagSafe-equipped smart charging stand that would be controlled by a software interface primarily from their phones.

A device with HomePod-like features would be okay but again but voice control only works within normal speaking distance.

One thing for sure that this Home Hub device would have to conquer would be effortless device configuration. It needs to "just work" rather going through complicated, unreliable, convoluted pairing procedures. That's like 95% software.

Also devices like iPhones and Apple Watches can indicate where the person is (living room, den, bedroom, garage, laundry room, etc.) and possibly adjust connected devices appropriately. If I need to walk up to a touchpanel to dim the lights upon leaving a room, hell, it's easier to just hit a physical light switch.

We've seen consumers push back on full touchscreen interfaces in automobiles and a return of certain physical controls (like cabin climate control). It's way easier to just turn on/off the bedside lamp by hitting a switch rather than hunt around some screen for the button that turns off that light or use voice commands which might disturb other occupants.

And speaking of software it's clear that a Home Hub device will work better if it interfaces with a Siri implementation that isn't as dumb as a rock. That means that Apple really needs to release a context-aware version of Siri with Apple Intelligence with meaningful accuracy and reliability before they will have anything really useful in a Home Hub.

Releasing any sort of Home Hub device with Siri's current capabilities will not help adoption. This is one of those types of new devices that I will not be an early adopter of. I will probably wait 5+ years before thinking about having some sort of smart home hub. I'm sure Apple has prototype hardware in its labs. It's the software that is key.

Based on what I've seen in Apple Intelligence in March 2025, I think we are still 3+ years away from having an Apple Intelligence that will make the smart home viable.

Wesley Hilliard said:

kiltedgreen said:

Maybe off-topic but please can journalists (and the rest) stop referring to X/Twitter? It’s X and I think the entire world knows that by now. It’s a bit like referring to Apple/Apple Computer We know. Thank you.

Twitter was rebranded "X" two years ago. Twitter existed since 2006. Facebook became Meta four years ago and everyone still calls it Facebook. Ever heard of Alphabet? Even Elon Musk still says Twitter by accident every now and then.

Some people barely even knew what Twitter was when it was still Twitter. They're less likely to even know what X is. The name on its own says nothing about what it is or does. In the past 19 years, people on the internet reading news have been exposed to the idea of tweets and Twitter. They're likely to know what that is. X sounds like a porn website, which, to be fair, it mostly is at this point.

I'll call it X when Musk calls his daughter by her name. Fair deal?

Meanwhile, on the topic of the post, I think it's the MacBook Air and iPad Air with M4. And Apple will slide the iPad 11 in at the end with an Apple Intelligence chip, whichever one.

Just refer to the service as the one named by the service on the homepage.

X (the service) and the company that runs it (X Corp.) were both rebranded a couple of years ago. If you visit twitter.com, it will automatically redirect you to X.com. Note that the Twitter app on macOS and iOS (just as the one running on my iPod touch 6th generation running iOS 12) don't actually work anymore. Same with the old Twitter app on Windows. All the Twitter apps started throwing errors about 1.5 years ago.

It's not Twitter anymore. It's X.

Facebook (the service) still runs at facebook.com. It does not redirect to Meta.com. The company that runs the Facebook service changed names years ago.

Same with Google. The services still resolve at google.com. The company that runs Google renamed themselves Alphabet years ago.

Remember that Apple Computer Inc. rebranded to Apple. And no journalist still refers to it as Apple Computer. And the changeover was pretty quick.

And what do you call Apple's cloud service? It used to be called MobileMe. Do you still call it that? It's the same company running it. Nope, you call it iCloud because Apple rebranded it to that. The old me.com email addresses and Apple ID accounts registered to those addresses still work, but it's not called MobileMe anymore.

If Apple rebrands MobileMe to iCloud, then you can start using the name X because that's what it's called now. Consistency is important in online reporting.

entropys said:

Offices are so much more interesting that that strange soccer thing where people fall over in fake pain all the time.

LOL, the exact opposite is the case.

You have to *pay* people to go into offices. People *pay* to watch football.

No one goes into offices for fun. In fact, there was a big insurrection after COVID restrictions were lifted and companies started scaling back or completely eliminating "work from home" initiatives.

But these are television shows -- entertainment -- not the real world. I know it's difficult for some people to understand the nuanced difference.

The fact that Apple has produced both shows that they realize that different types of entertainment will appeal to different audiences. It's worth nothing that Apple has a major stake in MLS now with their MLS Season Pass. That will go on for many years beyond 'Severance' and 'Ted Lasso'.

It's worth pointing out that all of the top 20 TV programs annually in the US are sports events; only US presidential debates even show up in that list. Worldwide football television coverage dwarfs everything else.

Oh, I understand that the home-focused devices Apple ships today aren't capable of Apple Intelligence. But I don't see how a touchscreen panel device with an AI-capable processor is going to be any better than just controlling this from an existing M-series Mac, a newer iPhone, or maybe a juiced AppleTV. 

For sure anything with a touchscreen display and an Apple logo is going to cost as much as the cheapest iPad. How would this device be any better than an iPad, especially if it is meant to be fixed on a wall? It would probably still need some sort of battery in case of a power failure so it's not like COGS will be cheaper.

It makes more sense to put an Apple Intelligence SoC in a device like AppleTV that is intended to stay at home or simply just run the home control software on an Apple Silicon desktop Mac. The Home Control UI can exist anywhere: iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, AVP, whatever.

Remember that the smartphone is the driver of all consumer technology in today's world. If I can already control a bunch of home functions from my phone, whatever that replaces it must do 2-3 things considerably better than the iPhone. The Apple Watch did this for health monitoring and activity tracking.

There is no clear differentiated value-add to a standalone Home Control touchscreen device, especially at the gross margins one would expect from Apple. And they aren't going to ship a headless $30 stick like a Roku that you plug into a socket to control your house.

And beyond that, how does Apple monetize the service? Do they charge $20/month for home control features? Is it an an additional tier to Apple One or maybe an add-on feature? And as far as I can tell, Apple still relies on third-party companies to provide the various devices to connect with. Frankly I would be more convinced if there were 4-5 other similar devices made by major competitors on the market already. There's an Amazon Echo smart home console for $180. I'd expect a comparable Apple unit to start at $399.

Which leads to the obvious question: how would an Apple home control console be any better than one from a well-known competitor (Amazon, Google/Nest, Samsung, whatever)?

There are still a lot of unanswered questions and uncertainty about how such a device would be worth it to Joe Consumer. I'm not saying it won't ever come, I'm just doubtful that it will happen this year or next.

Apple is struggling to get Apple Intelligence launched in a meaningful way on iPhone so far. Any home control effort is going to drain brain resources from their Apple Intelligence efforts. Apple Intelligence needs to work well and be useful on iPhones first. That is Apple's top priority because iPhone is their cash cow (still represents 50% of Apple revenue). Apple doesn't even have enough engineering resources to provide Apple Intelligence feature parity on Macs; Apple Intelligence on macOS Sequoia trails iOS 18 substantially.

Apple has had mixed success with pure play and devices with limited usage cases. And it's far harder in 2025 when consumers expect these devices to do more. Apple had obvious difficulties describing what true benefits the Apple Watch had when it debuted in 2015. A few years later, Apple had honed in on its health monitoring and activity tracking features and the device really found its place.

I foresee a similar challenge for Apple in marketing a home control console device. It's worth pointing out that Apple has abandoned a bunch of markets where pure play and limited usage cases stunt growth: printers (LaserWriter), WiFi routers (AirPort), music players (iPod), and more. Some of this is just the changing nature of consumer technology and the expectations of consumers. In some cases the product category becomes a commodity.

AppleZulu said:

mpantone said:

This contradicts an earlier rumor speculating a Home controller in the first half of 2025. 

We have been over this before. If Apple is going to launch this platform, they need to have the requisite software infrastructure in place. Not just HomePod's OS but also iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, etc. It would be well documented with multiple APIs so third party developers would be able to access the environment.

We know that infrastructure does not exist at this point. Thus, if Apple unveils this infrastructure at WWDC 2025 in June, then it should considered an upcoming release. But until Apple unveils this software backbone, it's just pure speculation. And not just one paragraph in a press release. It would be several APIs, lots of documentation, source code examples, WWDC breakout sessions, etc. And if indeed it's some sort of hardware device, most likely there would be engineering samples/dev kits loaned out to the bigger players for development purposes (under NDA until Apple launches the thing).

Apple cannot just release some sort of Home Control controller or touchpad without adequate and robust software support.

Apple doesn't just upload a press release to PRNewswire and it becomes a done deal.

We will know in June if this is going to happen. If they announce nothing, you can mothball this rumor for another 17 months (until June 2026). It's rather silly to speculate on this now since there is little indication of any meaningful development.

Personally, I think Apple has more than it can handle with Apple Intelligence right now based on the way they have metered out new features. Any sort of home control integration project is likely several years away. Hell, Apple can't even offer synchronized Apple Intelligence feature parity on both iPhones and Macs right now (e.g., Genmoji on Sequoia is still Work In Progress).

It's important to stress that Apple can't just release it and say "Come and get it." It's not 2017 anymore when the HomePod was announced. Today's consumers have far higher expectations on what home control devices should do in 2025. These controllers must support a much larger variety of devices from various manufacturers today than 7-8 years ago.

They don’t need all that to launch a hub. AppleTVs and HomePods already are hubs. All a separate new hub needs at launch is the horsepower to handle onboard Apple Intelligence functionality. With that alone, it will handle and thus enable AI and the AI-powered Siri for all the AppleTVs and HomePods on the same network.  

Adding comparatively inexpensive terminal screens for the hub that can attach to wall mounts and stationary stands can present a version of the Home app that’s at the ready in multiple places in the home, no matter where you’ve left your iPhone. All that would be an excellent starting point and wouldn’t require at start-up any of the APIs and groundwork that you’ve described. 

I'm very skeptical about this. If your iPhone/Mac/iPad have the horsepower to handle Apple Intelligence, why rely on Home Control on a dedicated device that might mostly be idle 21-22 hours a day? I should be able to tell the iPad in my lap or the Watch on my wrist to do whatever I need to happen rather than stand up and walk to some touchscreen panel (which is like a fixed iPad) to do what the devices on my person can already do.

Hell, I work from home and my Mac mini M2 Pro rarely breaks a sweat. My guess is that 98% of the time it is under 5% CPU utilization. And I'm composing this response on my Mac.

Actually speaking to a Watch and have it relay instructions to your phone makes the most sense since your phone is the device in your house that is most likely going to be connected to the network (home network, cellular data, broadband Internet, whatever).

Again, this new proposed home controller device needs to differentiate itself and do something (more like 2-3 things) better than your phone can.

I can see the argument for putting an Apple Intelligence-capable SoC in an AppleTV box for this purpose. I'm having a harder time seeing any value-add from a dedicated device at this time, especially one that forces you to get out of your chair. Consumers in 2025 are lazy, they don't want to stand up and walk to the thermostat. Standing up and walking to some Home Control touchscreen panel is basically the same effort.

Hell, in some cases, the super fancy touchscreen device might be more intrusive and inconvenient. We're already seeing that in auto manufacturers put some vehicle functions back on dedicated controls because it's far more distracting having to go through a bunch of menus just to adjust the cabin temperature. So manufacturers are putting big dumb dials back in cars that can be operated with gloves/mittens safely in the dark.

My prediction is that in a few years, there will be a backlash against some of the home automation features and many people will move back to simpler manual controls just like they've clamored for less touchscreen nonsense in vehicles. Programmable home thermostats for zone-based climate control? Sure, I get that. Controlling window shades in a smallish house? Not so sure about the value-add there.

So not only would this purported Home Control touchpanel need to be better in multiple ways than your iPhone, it would also need to be better in multiple ways than an iPad mounted on the wall.