With HomeView and a new Siri, Apple takes another run at the smart home, and raises its prices

No keynote in Cupertino, no big stage. On Tuesday, October 13, Apple invited a handful of journalists and content creators to a New York space branded “Welcome home”, put out its press releases that morning and let guests get their hands on the products. The centrepiece is a square 7-inch screen perched on a small dome that doubles as a speaker: HomeView, priced at $299.

Around it sat a fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, a second-generation HomePod mini and a line of accessories, the “Apple Home Collection”, designed with South Korea’s LG Electronics and France’s Schneider Electric. Twelve new products in all, by the count of French site JeChange. It is one of the first launches under John Ternus, the former head of hardware engineering who replaced Tim Cook as chief executive on September 1. Above all, it is a real-world test of the rebuilt Siri, whose delays held these launches back for two years.

A screen for the whole family that knows who is looking

HomeView comes in two versions at the same price: a tabletop model with a tilting stainless-steel hinge and a woofer in the base, and a wall-mounted model with thinner sound that fits onto powered mounts sold by Schneider Home (from $59.95). It runs on an A18 chip, the one in Apple’s 2024 iPhones, with a walled-off area that handles camera and microphone data. The Liquid Retina screen adjusts its brightness from 500 nits down to 0.3 nits depending on the room, and shows less detail when viewed from across it.

What really sets it apart from Amazon’s Echo Show or Google’s Nest Hub is face recognition. HomeView can identify up to six household members and switch to each one’s personal Home Screen, with recent apps carried over from their iPhone. Personal data only appears if the recognised person’s iPhone or iPad is on the same network; nothing is stored on the device. A stranger gets guest mode. In one demonstration described by Reuters, the screen pulled up a recipe received in a text message; when another family member stepped up, it showed the arrival time of their flight and started the coffee maker.

« One of the things we talked about is not building a marketing profile. »

Kaiann Drance, Apple vice president of product marketing for home products, to Reuters

The privacy pledge is as much a sales pitch as a technical choice, aimed squarely at Amazon, whose assistant also exists to sell things. Apple says none of the data will be used for marketing, including its own advertising. Lilian Rincon, vice president of product marketing for AI, told Reuters that Siri would not routinely end an exchange with a follow-up question: Apple, she said, is not trying to keep users engaged across “many, many, many turns”.

Everything rides on the new Siri

The hardware is polished, but it was never the hold-up. According to Bloomberg, as reported by Dataconomy, the new Apple TV was meant to ship in 2024; the repeatedly delayed Siri overhaul is what stalled it. “Siri AI” is finally here, in beta, built on Apple’s in-house Apple Foundation Models. Since a deal the two companies announced in January 2026, those models have been based on Google’s Gemini technology. Apple, which long set its discretion against its rivals’ assistants, is now handing part of its smart home’s brain to one of them.

The limits are in the small print. At launch Siri AI speaks only English, and only in eight countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore and South Africa. Canadian French will come “later” in an update, with no date; French as spoken in France has not been announced. Personal context requires an iPhone or iPad that supports Apple Intelligence. Some server-side features will have daily caps, and expanded access will become a paid option in future, the HomePod mini release warns.

Nor is the timing the same everywhere. On HomeView, Siri AI is there from day one, on November 13. On the HomePod mini, it will arrive “in a future software update”: TechCrunch notes that Apple gave no date. The competition has not stood still. Amazon has launched Alexa+, its generative-AI assistant, whose rollout has run late, and Google has begun replacing Assistant with Gemini on its Nest speakers and displays. Apple is arriving third on ground where the other two are still struggling to win people over.

More AI, higher prices

The day’s other message was on the price tags. The 2020 HomePod mini cost $99; its successor, with an S10 chip, costs $149, 50% more. It gains a glowing top that pulses with the music (“Sound Glow”), smoke and carbon monoxide alarm detection, something Alexa speakers have offered for years, and the ability to form a four-speaker system with the new Apple TV. It ships on October 30 in pink, green, blue, white and midnight.

The Apple TV 4K’s jump is steeper still. Until June, the entry model launched in 2022 cost $129; Apple then raised it to $199 amid soaring memory-chip prices, according to MacRumors. The new box starts at $299, in a single 128GB configuration with Ethernet. It moves from the A15 chip to the A19 (50% more CPU performance and twice the graphics performance, Apple says), supports Wi-Fi 7 and Thread, and has three microphones so you can talk to Siri without the remote. It ships on November 13. Older models, from the second-generation Apple TV 4K onwards, will get Siri AI in beta.

The bill climbs fast with the Apple Home Collection, due in December in the US, with some items slipping to early 2027. The products carry their makers’ brands: an LG video doorbell at $249.95, LG cameras from $199.95 to $399.95, an LG smart deadbolt at $349.95 that unlocks as your iPhone approaches using ultra-wideband, LG and Schneider Electric thermostats at $199.95, and sensors at $39.95. Camera recordings require an iCloud+ subscription. Apple is reusing the recipe that works so well for the iPhone: a coherent set of products, one-tap setup, and a recurring service at the end of it.

For French and African buyers, a slimmed-down offer

Seen from Paris, Apple’s 2026 home comes down to two products. According to JeChange, only the HomePod mini (€169, up from €139 for the old model) and the Apple TV 4K (€349, up from €229 for the old base model) will be sold in France, both without Siri AI. The other ten products, HomeView and the whole Home Collection among them, have no European date. Apple blames the EU’s competition rules, the Digital Markets Act, and says it is “working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward”. A screen built around Siri AI makes little sense without it.

In Africa, the only official way in is South Africa, where HomeView will be sold through authorised resellers and Siri AI will work in English. In Dakar, Abidjan or Douala, the devices will only arrive through imports, at European prices or higher: €169 is about 111,000 CFA francs, €349 nearly 229,000, before shipping and customs duties. And for French speakers, the new Siri does not yet speak their language.

That leaves Matter, the cross-brand standard. HomeView accepts accessories that support it and, like the HomePod mini, acts as a home hub. It is the best news for anyone without access to the LG and Schneider range: a Matter-compatible bulb, plug or sensor from any manufacturer can be controlled from Apple’s Home app as well as from Amazon’s or Google’s. Picking an assistant no longer means being locked into one brand of door lock.

A busy October

The home is just one chapter of a crowded autumn. The iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable iPhone, opens for pre-orders on October 16 and ships on the 23rd. According to MacRumors, citing rumours Apple has not confirmed, another launch is expected around October 27, with an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro, an iMac and an iPad mini with an OLED display. The 27.2 software updates, which the new HomePod mini requires, are due by October 30.

In that line-up, HomeView is the riskiest product. The iPhone sells itself; a $299 kitchen screen has to win over households that often already own an Echo or a Nest, and it will only deliver if Siri AI answers correctly, quickly and for several people at once. Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said it “is designed to be shared by everyone in the home”. The first buyers in the US, Britain, India and South Africa will get it on November 13. Europeans will have to wait for Apple and Brussels to strike a deal.