Apple’s big Siri AI-powered smart home hub is nearly here

Apple has been planning a resurgence into the smart home market for some time. But, according to multiple reports over the years, Siri has always been the holdup—the initial Apple Intelligence push didn’t deliver, and the company had to rethink its entire “new Siri” approach.

With the OS 27 updates, we’re getting Siri AI, and it’s finally a modern, useful, smart AI assistant. Apple still has plenty of work to do, but this new Siri finally makes the leap from an old-style phone assistant to a modern multi-device LLM-based AI chatbot. Now that Siri is finally on the right track, Apple is finally able to release some of the smart home products it has been working on for a while. According to a new report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple is sitting on three products that are very nearly ready to release.

Two are updated versions of existing products: Apple TV and HomePod mini. They are expected to look just like the current versions, but with upgraded processors that can handle Siri AI. There may be other internal adjustments or design changes, but nothing users would notice. Both of these devices are currently set to release in the fall, Gurman says.

The third device is the most interesting one: A new smart home hub device that has been dubbed HomePad. Meant to be “the centerpiece of the company’s renewed home push,” it will be a new pad device with a 7-inch square-shaped display that runs an entirely new operating system based on the tvOS operating system that powers Apple TV. It is said to look something like a blend between watchOS and iOS, with icons, widgets, and apps.

This new smart display will feature FaceTime video conferencing (almost certainly with Center Stage), and most of the other features people expect from this sort of device, such as the ability to listen to music, view photos, see your calendar, and control smart home devices. Similar to Apple Watch, there will be a variety of customizable clock faces, but the marquee feature will reportedly be facial recognition. The device will know who is looking at it and their distance, so it can adjust the display preferences and size in real time.

Gurman says there are two versions of this smart home hub coming. One of them puts the display on top of a half-dome base that resembles a HomePod mini cut in half. The other has no base but is meant to attach to walls with a magnetic system. Apple intends people to put multiple units throughout their home. It’s not clear how much it will cost, but earlier reports pegged the starting price at around $349.

Gurman says there are at least two more devices further out, including an in-home smart security camera and a higher-end version of the home hub with a 9-inch screen on a robotic limb that can turn and move as necessary.