Apple Plans a Major Smart Home Push on October 13, Led by Its First Home Hub

September 30 (IT Home) — Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has just reported that Apple plans to make a major push into the smart home market on October 13 local time, when it will launch its first smart home control hub (Home Hub), along with a 2027 HomePod mini and a new Apple TV.

This will be a key product-line expansion under Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus. Apple hopes to use the next generation of Siri AI to connect smart home devices more closely with its existing ecosystem.

Apple’s first smart home hub will have a roughly 6-inch square display and can be either wall-mounted or placed on a desk.

The desktop version, codenamed J490, has a circular metal base, with the screen attached by a metal arm that lets users adjust the tilt angle by hand. The body has a grey aluminium casing and is powered through a USB-C port.

The wall-mounted version, codenamed J491, has a thinner square base below the screen that houses the speaker and microphones. Like the desktop version, it has no built-in battery and must be plugged in.

One of the device’s main features is support for recognising family members. It can identify who is using it by voice or face and, based on the corresponding Apple account, show contacts, messages, calendar, notes and a personalised app layout. When another family member comes near, the interface can switch automatically; in guest mode, personal information is hidden.

People familiar with the matter say its facial recognition is less accurate than the iPhone’s Face ID. If users turn on a second identity-confirmation option, the device can also ask them to complete a second authentication on their iPhone. When the device cannot identify a user accurately, an iPhone can serve as a backup method of verification.

In dim environments, the device lights up the area near the camera with a virtual white ring around the screen to help identify the user. Because the product is mainly meant to stay fixed indoors, it has only a single front-facing FaceTime camera and no rear camera.

Under Apple’s plan, users will be able to place several devices in different parts of the home to control smart home products such as thermostats and door locks, and also to make video calls, communicate around the house like a walkie-talkie, play music and show slideshows from iCloud.

The kitchen is expected to be an important setting for the device as well. Users can ask for recipes by voice, watch videos, or make FaceTime calls while cooking. The speaker and microphones sit in the base, and the whole device is said to be about as thick as an iPhone.

In terms of design, the desktop version has a rounded-square screen with a black bezel and multiple rings of speaker openings around the base. The overall shape resembles the 2002 iMac G4, whose display sat on a hemispherical base. The device has no power button and no volume buttons, and must stay plugged in at all times.

Gurman says the J490’s system interface blends design elements from the Apple Watch, Apple TV and iPad, including an iPad-like app layout, Apple Watch-style icons, and iPhone-style widgets for stocks, calendar and weather.

When idle, the device can show photo slideshows and clocks, some of them with a “lava lamp”-like visual effect in which the time is overlaid in numerals. Users can swipe up from the clock or photo screen to reach the app launcher, and long-press to rearrange wallpapers, apps and widgets.

Its preinstalled apps include Calendar, Messages, Photos, FaceTime, Notes, Reminders, Music and Podcasts. The Messages app uses a two-column design similar to the iPad’s: tapping a conversation on the left shows its contents on the right.

Apple will also launch a new HomePod mini. This will be the product’s first hardware update since it was released in 2020; the overall appearance is expected to stay the same, but it will use a new processor to support the next generation of Siri AI. The new HomePod mini is also said to add colours such as green and pink. Apple is additionally planning a larger HomePod refresh.

Apple TV will also get its first update since 2022. It is expected to keep its current appearance but switch to a faster processor to meet the needs of the next generation of Siri AI.

Clearly, the core capabilities of Apple’s new smart home products all come from the next generation of Siri AI. The system can answer questions using a user’s personal data, search the internet for information, and naturally control other Apple devices, smart home products and apps.

Because development of Siri AI was delayed several times, Apple had originally planned to launch this batch of smart home devices earlier, and the products were pushed back accordingly. Now that the new generation of Siri has arrived on iPhone, iPad, Mac and other devices, Apple finally has the conditions to ship the related hardware.

Beyond the hardware above, Apple is continuing to expand its smart home ecosystem, further improving HomeKit and working with third-party manufacturers to develop new connected devices suited to the Siri AI home platform. IT Home will keep following the story.

Apple is also developing a privacy-focused home security camera and sensors, codenamed J450, that can tell which room a person is in but will not record video.

Besides the J490, Apple is developing a more advanced version of the smart home hub with a larger 9-inch screen and a robotic arm that can move the screen, and may even rotate it 360 degrees. That product, however, is still at an early stage of development, and no release date has been set.