HomeView is Apple’s latest bet on Siri AI

Apple's new HomeView home device. (Courtesy Apple)


Apple CEO John Ternus presided over his second major product launch on Tuesday, introducing new home devices that include Apple’s first smart home display.

The gadgets offer more ways to generate hardware sales. More importantly, they’re ideal hosts for Apple’s upgraded Siri, giving the company a new distribution channel as it plays catch-up in AI.

The biggest reveal in Tuesday’s product launch was HomeView, an entirely new Apple device. The device looks like a giant Apple Watch and resembles the 2002 iMac G4, which had a hemispherical white base topped with a flat-panel LCD screen. 

Apple also announced a new Apple TV 4K with an upgraded chip, the HomePod mini 2, and a collection of home accessories developed with LG and Schneider Electric, including a video doorbell, a smart thermostat, and a smart lock.

HomeView, which has a 7-inch display, costs $299 and is available Nov. 13. A wall-mounted version is also available.

Apple’s announcement prominently featured Siri AI, its upgraded assistant, which will be available in beta on HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K. HomePod mini 2 will receive the assistant through a future software update.

“This is them rebooting their entire approach to home,” Anshel Sag, an analyst at market research firm Moor Insights & Strategy, told Fortune. “If Siri’s that much better, then there’s an opportunity for them to reboot all the stuff that they weren’t successful with because Siri was not good. This is just the first phase.”

Siri has lagged well behind leading chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic. The new version, which relies on Google’s Gemini AI technology, is designed to understand what is on a user’s screen and act on it, help with writing, and search a user’s phone for context, among other features. 

Sag said one of the most noticeable differences is that Siri used to hand off queries to ChatGPT or elsewhere because it lacked intelligence, but it now gives the requested answer directly. Still, he said, the general public seems largely unaware that Apple has upgraded Siri, and the iPhone maker needs to change that quickly if it wants wider adoption. —Sebastian Herrera