The delay to the new and smarter version of Siri has apparently had a knock-on effect on Apple’s hardware plans. The long-rumored smart home hub will now need a little longer in the oven as a result, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
“Because the device, to an extent, relies on the delayed Siri capabilities, it has been postponed,” Gurman writes in the latest issue of his Power On newsletter.
As such, an early version of the device exists, but only for “select employees” partaking in an internal testing program at Apple. These workers can take it home and “provide frequent feedback” about how it’s shaping up.
The smart home hub, codenamed J490, was described by Gurman back in November as a “command center for the home”. The device would be around the size of “two iPhones side by side” with a camera on top and internal speakers. He believes it can either be wall mounted or attached to optional speaker bases to make it work on countertops or bedside tables.
The pitch is a device that can control home appliances, facilitate chats with Siri, and human conversation via FaceTime, but it will also include a bunch of Apple apps for web browsing, music and news, with the ability to view notes and calendar information.
A device that can control home appliances, facilitate chats with Siri, and human conversation via FaceTime, but it will also include a bunch of Apple apps for web browsing, music and news, with the ability to view notes and calendar information.
Add in the fact it can show photos in a slideshow, and you have a device that sounds a lot like Apple’s answer to the Google Nest Hub, the Amazon Echo Show and — more ominously — the discontinued Meta Portal.
From what Gurman has reported before and reiterated in his latest newsletter, it sounds like the hardware is essentially complete. He writes that Apple had “hoped to announce this product in March” at one point, meaning the delay does appear to be entirely software-related.
A smart delay
In his original report, Gurman wrote that one of his sources described the product as “designed to bring Siri and Apple Intelligence to life in a way that hasn’t happened before”. With that in mind, it would be mad for Apple to bring the product to market before Siri 2.0 is ready to shine.
Even the biggest Apple fan around would concede that Apple’s existing Siri-based contributions to the smart home — the HomePod and HomePod mini — are better as music players than smart speakers, with Siri routinely outperformed by both Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa in the smarts department.
Releasing a smart home hub that relies — even temporarily — on the existing Siri framework would just be a recipe for underwhelming early adopters. Far better to wait until Siri 2.0 is up and running to showcase exactly what it can do when underpinned by Apple Intelligence.
Of course, Apple’s rivals aren’t standing still either. Just last month, Amazon announced Alexa Plus which could take Echo devices to a whole new level of smart.
But with Amazon set to charge $19.99 per month for non-Prime members, there’s a real opportunity for Apple to stake a claim in the still embryonic smart home market.
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