Apple's "Welcome Home" Lineup Is Official: $299 HomeView Smart Display Debuts Alongside HomePod mini 2 and a New Apple TV 4K, All Built Around Siri AI
Cupertino/New York — Apple on Tuesday, October 13 formally unveiled its long-prepared smart-home product line through a press release combined with an in-person experience event in New York. GSM's October 11 preview covered the event, named 'Welcome home,' and outside expectations; the new developments in this report are that the actual specifications, pricing and launch dates of all three products are now set, and that the final lineup broadly matches earlier rumors while differing in many details — the official name is confirmed as HomeView, not the rumored 'HomePad.'
The headliner is HomeView, Apple's first smart-home hub with a screen. It carries the A18 chip and Siri AI, comes in a desktop version (with a metal speaker base) and a wall-mounted version, both priced at $299 in the U.S.; preorders opened October 13 in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, India and New Zealand, with launch on November 13. Because Siri AI is currently unavailable on iOS in the EU, HomeView will not enter the EU market at launch. The interface is the core of the device: it can recognize up to six household members and present each with a personalized home screen, with content automatically enlarging as a person approaches and simplifying as they move away; clock-style faces include photos, home-control shortcut panels and a camera panel that can show up to nine feeds on one screen; it also supports FaceTime and Center Stage video calls, turns web recipes into step-by-step cooking guidance, and broadcasts to the whole home via Intercom. On privacy architecture, camera and microphone processing is isolated in a secure zone on the chip, and Siri requests can be processed on device or via Private Cloud Compute. The dedicated mount for the wall version, made by Schneider Electric (Schneider Home), is sold separately starting at $59.95.
The second product is the HomePod mini 2, arriving after six years, priced at $149 in the U.S., with preorders from October 13 and availability on October 30, in five colors — pink, green, blue, white and midnight. It moves to the S10 chip, adds a new top light effect called Sound Glow that moves with the music and matches album-cover colors, and can recognize the voices of up to six household members; paired with the new Apple TV 4K, four HomePod mini 2 units can form a surround-sound home theater — Apple's most immersive living-room setup to date, the company says. Worth noting: its biggest selling point, Siri AI, does not ship with the hardware, but will arrive in a later software update, English first.
The third product is the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, priced at $299 in the U.S. — the most expensive ever, and kept to a single configuration: A19 chip, 128GB of storage, Wi-Fi 7 and a gigabit Ethernet port. The upgrades center on 'finding things': three far-field microphones are built into the box, so Siri can be spoken to directly without the remote; the new Siri Remote supports precision finding in the Find My app and can play a sound, so it will no longer vanish into sofa cushions. Siri AI is provided on tvOS in beta form at launch and can take content requests in natural language. Preorders opened October 13, with launch on November 13.
Launched alongside the hardware was the 'Apple Home Collection' accessory line: Apple is working with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric on smart doorbells, locks, thermostats, sensors and indoor and outdoor cameras, arriving in stages from December, some delayed to early 2027, starting at $39.95. Apple's smart-home play is thus expanding from 'selling a hub' to 'defining the ecosystem': hub, speakers, TV box and third-party accessories sharing a single Siri AI entry point.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 苹果 HomePod mini。Arne Müseler 摄，CC BY-SA 3.0，维基共享资源
