I covered this topic before launch, in a column where I said the main question would be: “What is it for?” I hoped that with the launch Apple would manage to explain the purpose of its latest foray into the smart home, or rather how that purpose is relevant to a general audience. Perhaps a full event would have given the company more room to explore the broader social changes it believes will make HomeView relevant to the average US homeowner, but I suspect the inevitable truth is that this simply isn’t a product with broad appeal.
What can you do with a HomeView? Of course, you can monitor and control a smart home, but I suspect Apple knows this is a niche concern; The clue is how far you have to go in the press release before you get to any mention of smart lights, locks, and thermostats (paragraph 17, by my calculations). In the future we may all have HomeKit-compatible smart homes, but for now most people don’t. And those that do tend to control them with their phones, while using a HomePod or Apple TV as a hub.
While Apple waits for the world to catch up with the smart home revolution (a process that will accelerate with the launch of HomeView, but still needs time), it has to turn to its other features. You can FaceTime and read recipes, talk to Siri AI, or play music with lyrics on the screen. You can use it as an electronic photo frame or as an alarm clock. With the exception of the superior audio, you’re basically getting an iPad that’s locked in one place, has a smaller screen, and can’t install third-party apps.
But HomeView is not an iPhone, the kind of chameleon device that will take the world by storm by being relevant and useful to virtually everyone. It’s not even an iPad, it’s versatile but less portable and stuck in the middle ground between phone and laptop. HomeView is a specialist: a product capable of providing a specific experience for various purposes. And in that sense it is closer to the first version of the Apple Watch or even, I’m sorry to say, the Vision Pro. It is a luxury; a want to have rather than a must have.
The saving grace of the HomeView is that at $299 it is relatively affordable for a luxury. It’s significantly cheaper than the cheapest iPad, a product that customers have historically been willing to buy for occasional use. (Though I suspect they were much more willing when it was closer to HomeView’s price earlier this year.) It’s significantly cheaper than an Apple Watch Series 12 and not much more expensive than an Apple Watch SE.
You can hardly call the HomeView a bargain or an impulse buy, but this is a price that customers are willing to be persuaded into. And when it’s a brand new Apple product, and you can add the hype factor of that alluring first impression, you can bet it’ll sell very well.
