How Apple Can Win the Smart Home

Apple is finally taking the smart home seriously. This week, the company is hosting its first-ever dedicated smart home event, a clear signal that it wants to reshape how people interact with their homes. While Apple has not shared specific details about what it will reveal at the 'Welcome Home experience' in New York City on Tuesday, October 13, leaks and reports point to a major hardware push. The centerpiece is expected to be a new smart home display, alongside a refreshed HomePod Mini and an updated Apple TV. The display, which may be called HomeView, would be Apple's first dedicated Apple Home hardware since the HomeKit platform launched in 2014.

That alone would be notable. Apple has spent years watching rivals build out smart speakers, smart displays, and home hubs while its own HomePod and Apple TV remained more focused on entertainment than home automation. But the real story is not just the hardware. The real shift will be bringing Siri AI and Apple Intelligence into the home. Apple is years behind Google and Amazon in smart-home hardware, but success in the home depends far more on software. That is where Apple could leapfrog the competition.

Key Facts

• Apple is hosting its first dedicated smart home event in New York City on Tuesday, October 13.
• Expected hardware includes a smart home display, a refreshed HomePod Mini, and a new Apple TV.
• The smart display may be called HomeView and could cost around $350.
• The display is rumored to have a 6-inch square screen, facial recognition, touchscreen controls, and FaceTime/intercom support.
• Apple plans to launch a new homeOS built around Siri AI and Apple Intelligence.
• Apple is the last of the big three to bring generative AI to its home assistant.
• Apple Home still lacks support for some device types and advanced automations.
• Matter and Thread aim to improve interoperability, but platforms must deliver the software experience.
• Apple is reportedly partnering with LG and others for an 'Apple Home Collection'.

New home hardware is long overdue. Apple announced the HomePod Mini on October 13, 2020, exactly six years before this week's event. The newest Apple TV 4K is now four years old. And neither device was designed primarily as a smart home controller. They are content-consumption gadgets with a side of home automation. The new smart display is reportedly designed to be the heart of Apple Home, marking a complete reboot of the ecosystem. Apple Home users have wanted such a device for years.

The smart display category has a bumpy history. Amazon and Google have launched several generations of voice- and touchscreen-controlled smart speakers that can manage lights and locks, pull up doorbell camera feeds, and make video calls. But the category has seen very little innovation. For many people, the best use case has been serving as a digital photo frame. Based on leaks, Apple's product does not sound radically different from what has come before. Reports suggest it will have a 6-inch square display on a speaker base or a wall-mounted option, facial recognition to show personal messages and calendar entries, a minimalist touchscreen interface to control locks and thermostats, and FaceTime and intercom calls. Nothing groundbreaking, except the rumored price of around $350. The difference has to be in the software and the smart assistant that powers it.

According to reports, the smart display will launch with a brand-new homeOS built around Siri AI. Generative AI has breathed new life into the smart home voice assistant by making it easier to talk to and expanding its capabilities. Until now, Apple's new Siri AI has been missing from its HomePods and Apple TV. When you talk to those devices, the old Siri responds in its basic, functional way. Apple is the last of the big three to bring generative AI to its home assistant. Amazon and Google launched theirs last year, but Alexa Plus is only just starting to get it right, and Google's Gemini for Home, an underpowered version of Gemini, is a confusing mess of capabilities. Now it is Apple's turn. If the company can successfully merge its superpowered personal assistant on the iPhone with a superpowered assistant for the home, it may have a hit on its hands.

That is a very big if. So far, every company has hit significant roadblocks bringing a smarter assistant to the home. Apple announced Apple Intelligence in 2024, but Siri AI only arrived last month. A version of Alexa Plus was announced in 2023 but did not launch until 2025. Gemini for Home is still in an early access program and split into a weird hybrid model where its more capable version, Gemini Live, is restricted from interacting with the home. These cautious approaches are down to the fact that the home is a big, complicated, messy, multi-user environment that is hard to control. An agentic AI getting something wrong could have consequences far greater than accidentally sending an email. Smart home systems are connected to critical infrastructure like HVAC, locks, and security systems. Every home is different, with unique needs. There is no single plug-and-play solution.

Progress has been made toward solving one of the smart home's biggest challenges: interoperability. Open standards like Matter and Thread promise to make setting up and using a smart home easier. But these are protocols, not software. It is the platforms that have to make the smart home work. Here is where Apple may have the edge. Four years ago, after helping found Matter, Apple rebuilt HomeKit's underlying architecture and revamped the Home app, laying a strong foundation. That move also let Apple Home work with more devices from more manufacturers. Previously, it was limited to those willing to go through the often arduous HomeKit approval process.

However, a smart home is not just about the devices you put in it. It is about making them work together. That is where Siri AI and Apple Intelligence could play a major role. While Apple used Gemini models to build Siri AI, Google itself has struggled to deliver a compelling experience in the home. So Apple's opportunity lies in execution. Its more curated approach to third-party hardware has held it back, but it also means Apple arrives at this crucial moment with less technical debt and a cleaner foundation for building an AI-powered smart home.

This will be the next level for the smart home. With reliable data and context, your home could know who is in it, where they are, and what they need. Combined with knowing the status of every device, it could become proactive. For example, it could alert you that the oven is on and no one is home, suggest turning off the air conditioning when a window is left open, and route messages and notifications to the room you are in. That kind of ambient intelligence is the promise of a truly smart home.

But this is still a distant promise. Today, Apple Home has significant limitations. It does not support every type of home device, including fridges, washing machines, and EV chargers. It cannot control every feature of many device types. Its automations are limited compared to the competition, notably lacking conditional programming options inside the app. All this makes the Home app very easy to use, but extremely underpowered.

With Siri AI, Apple could unlock many of those capabilities via voice instead of building complicated menu interfaces. You could just tell Siri what you want your smart home to do. Alexa Plus offers this with the ability to create routines using your voice. Gemini for Home lets you use natural language in its Home app chatbot to set up automations. Many smart home companies are adopting AI in their apps to cut through UI complexity and make devices and features easier to use. Apple's advantage is that it already has a strong voice assistant foundation and a loyal user base deeply invested in its ecosystem.

A big question remains: do people really want a smart home? Many of us have spent years frustrated with systems that hold so much promise but routinely fail to deliver, leaving us spending weekends troubleshooting why the garage door will not open. The truly dedicated have turned to Home Assistant, a powerful platform that can do almost anything you want, if you are willing to do the work. But for most people, beyond a few solutions to specific problems, the smart home just is not worth it. Apple's challenge is to make the smart home feel less like a hobby and more like a natural extension of daily life.

To win in the smart home and bring the category mainstream, Apple needs more than just great hardware. It needs a superior software experience that makes the smart home easy to use. It needs to integrate seamlessly with third-party devices and deliver a consistent, reliable experience, relying on local control wherever possible and making sure products just work. Apple is reportedly partnering with LG and others to develop products for an 'Apple Home Collection' that will add a layer of Apple polish to the smart home experience. While this might sound like going back to the walled garden of the HomeKit days, Matter ensures interoperability with other platforms. Apple cannot make everything for the smart home, but it can make sure that everything works with its platform.

Most crucially, Apple will need to double down on its commitment to privacy and data security, especially as it opens the home to Apple Intelligence's cloud-based capabilities. If Apple can deliver on all of this, its highly anticipated smart home display might justify its price. But the real test will be whether Siri can make the smart home live up to its promise.

Source: The Verge News