It has been widely rumored that Apple is developing an all-new smart home product that would have a built-in display and rely on Siri for everyday tasks/requests. Think of it as an “iPad and HomePod merged together.” Apple already had an event where they announced the iPhone 18 Pro, AirPods 5, Apple Watch Series 12/Ultra 4, and iPhone Duo, but we expected Apple to announce even more products for the rest of the season. In Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman’s latest edition of his weekly “Power On” newsletter, he expects Apple to unveil its supposedly “HomePad” next month with several new features.
First, the HomePad will feature an entirely new operating system, which Gurman says will largely resemble iOS, tvOS, and watchOS. In fact, the overall interface will feature design elements from each of the aforementioned operating systems, including a dedicated home screen, widgets, and clock faces akin to the watch faces you’d find on Apple Watch or even enhanced clock faces in the iPhone Duo’s standby mode.
The design will feature a display with a more square-ish aspect ratio (probably around 1.4:1, similar to that of the iPhone Duo), and it will come in two variants – one that will be wall-mounted and one that will be attached to a base (think iMac G4 design where the display floats in mid-air and it’s added to a hemispherical base).
As this will be a product from Apple, expect a very tight integration not only with other Apple devices, but also with HomeKit-enabled devices. The HomePad will certainly bring many home-essential features you come to know and love, including making video calls and accessing a plethora of content from Apple’s services and other apps. Of course, this HomePad will certainly be made for iPhone, especially when it comes to pairing and communicating. Gurman also expects the newly released Siri AI to be “the killer feature.”
Apple imagines people using Siri on the home hub to look up information across their devices and accounts. They could ask it to play a podcast or song someone sent them a while ago, find a particular image to display, or carry out more precise tasks in apps like Notes, Reminders and Calendar. The Siri AI app will also let them conduct more complex searches within an Apple interface. -Gurman
Since we also expect Apple to update both the Apple TV 4K and the HomePod mini soon, this HomePad will be among those home products that we will likely see next month.
