From their page:
"Additional apps. HomeView supports compatible third-party audio and video apps from your iPhone for a familiar experience across devices"
This implies that Plexamp could be supported, and possibly Messenger and Snapchat calls, but it's too early to tell.
> My house has a bunch of spots on the wall where an old intercom system used to live: it'd obviously be a budget buster to buy a bunch of these to fit in those slots but even if you did, you'd need Apple to provide an intercom solution (a la the Watch's Walkie-Talkie?) or you're...out of luck.
Apple Home already provides this. It's not a full voice chat, but you can tap a thing and say something and it'll broadcast it to the rest of the house; in my case, that's two HomePods Mini, but it's easy to assume it will include this as well.
If you're just looking to say "Hey kids, dinner's ready" or "We have to leave in 15 minutes" to the entire house then that circumstance is handled already; if you want to have a back-and-forth conversation with someone in another room, though, it doesn't do that (yet?).
Maybe it's a bet on LLMs/Siri AI as well: all of the not-iPhone devices become more useful if you can control them well with your voice.
I think people do feel some tension about staring at their phones all day and like the idea that the phone can stay in the pocket or on a desk while stuff like the Watch and maybe a HomeView or a HomePod could cover a lot of the little usages along the way. (I'm not sure people would ACTUALLY use them that way, but I could see it driving some sales.)
That, plus the crowd who would want or like to hack on a device like this, or at least use a non-Apple app or service, is probably far outnumbered by people who don’t care what (and whose) software can run on their screen in the home as long as it looks nice and works well, which is typically the case for Apple.
They talk about it more but very few (low enough to not effectively not matter) actually do anything about it. If you want to spend less time on your phone you can... just do it. Setup screen time and practice an ounce of self-discipline.
It's the same as when people say "People hate their phones so that's why we created <AI Pendant>", uh people _love_ their phones, some to an unhealthy degree but I've never bought into the idea that people are actually pinning for a way to use their phones less. That's why it's going to be a massive uphill battle for OpenAI to break into the hardware space IMHO.
Apple wasn't wrong in their Keynote about how the perfect "AI" device is already in your pocket. Now, it's more limited than it should be due to the locked down nature of Apple's phones but if you could build anything without restriction on the iPhone platform then yes, it would be a great AI platform.
I really hope this is just something that was all packaged up to release and didn't make sense to kill it. I mean, I still think they picked wrong and they should have shelved it and the LG device integrations. I really hope it's not a sign of what's to come with Ternus.
Apple wants to design the best UI for everything and be the front-end to everything their users interact with.
Home automation is a good place to gain market share among their upper income clientele.
I use an iPhone, but I have a lamp, a shaver, and sunglasses from Xiaomi.
But the requirement for everyone to have an ipad or iphone on 27.2 or later (for full functionality) seems more of a showstopper. I would have been in the market for one but haven’t even bothered to upgrade past iOS 18 yet.
This is what irritates me about Parental Controls in 27. Everyone has to be on 27 or nobody gets the new controls. So, we still have a mini 5 that we let the littlest one on. It works, there's not reason to get a new one, but sure would be nice to have the newer Parental Controls for the older kids.
Disclosure: I work at Apple. But that’s also my honest opinion.
Part of Apple's whole appeal is that you get OS patches for a really long time. Outside of tech enthusiast circles, it's not that common to YOLO into bleeding-edge OS updates
Anyway, I'm not criticizing. Run what you like! I just don't expect the overlap between "buys Apple device in entirely new category" and "running OS version from two years ago" to be very large.
So I wouldn’t expect a HomeView App Store soon. I’d expect iPhone-hosted extensions first (widgets, Live Activities, CarPlay-style templates for audio and video), probably at WWDC. That also spares developers who are already scrambling to support the Duo.
Everyone in our family who sould have access to calendars/facetime/messages/etc. already does. It's overkill for just a smart speaker.
I guess maybe the kids who are too young to have their own device could more easily call their grandparents?
Cool hardware and a surprisingly affordable price, I just don't have a use case for it.
EDIT: The wall mounted version seems like a better form-factor though. Doesn't take up counter/table space at least.
What a novel idea.
Because while yes, that's true, this apparently recognises the different users. So presumably if a child is using it, that will be under managed parameters set by a parent - meaning that it's much harder for the child to circumvent.
We're old school and use a dry erase board on the fridge for our calendar, so a centralized device would be nice. We tried using an old iPad, but it was more clunky to turn it on, click on the app each time. We did try kiosk mode, but it was terrible when we needed the device for something else.
It’s not surprising they made it cheap
They’re trying to compete with all the other creepy Flock-at-Home brands
Its only purpose is to disrupt competitors
This was one of the stumbling blocks that really put the final nail in Meta's Portal. You could call your friends on messenger or WhatsApp, but no 3rd party story for FaceTime, Zoom, Google... was a real problem for most folks
According to Wired, “a handful of third-party media apps like Spotify are available, and developers can bring over existing CarPlay apps.”
Also, I believe that form factor was tried by both Meta and Google and didn't really click with people - who has so much free space near a power socket... in the kitchen ... in the morning ... lol.
I’m curious about the wall mounted option, and how that gets power without an electrician running a line to the middle of the wall. It looked like there might be a PoE option, but that also needs cable run. It seems like a bit of a project.
“Power Mount PoE Wired” is an option that will be available in early 2027. I can already see this being a decent option for kitchens that had a wall phone plate (that, hopefully, was wired with Cat 5e…).
Paired with some yet-to-be-released homeOS VoIP app… chefs kiss.
Like FaceTime?
People wall-mount flat screen TVs without an electrician all the time, and it's no big deal. Because of its size, this should be even simpler.
I live in a concrete building, and only the exterior walls and one or two interior walls are concrete. The rest is normal walls that for some reason you refer to as "paper." I guess they don't have lumber in your country.
You're just inventing problems where none exist.
What's also crazy is that they can detect fire alarms, will alert your iPhone, and then can pipe both sound and voice to the HomePod. It announces that it's going to do so, so it's not a privacy nightmare.
Pretty cool. I didn't know it existed until it happened. (Thankfully nothing bad.)
I was surprised when I tried using Plexamp with Siri in my car and it worked (this was with the old Siri, not even the new one).
Apps Available from iPhone:
- Audiobooks
- Classical Music
- News
- TV
Underneath that it says "Supported third-party audio and video apps". I'm not sure what that means.
But yeah! Plexamp works fine with Siri on my phone.
As much as I like Apple hardware I know unless I'm willing to go full Apple on hardware and services (eg. Apple Music in this example) I'm always going to have a mid experience trying to be on the fence of their walled garden.
Do you live in a former schoolhouse, or Uma Thurman's place from pulp fiction?