I love my iMac. I’m a big fan of iPads. I own a HomePod. And I eventually came round to the Apple Watch and wear one every day. “Great,” said an imaginary person at Apple, “so how about a smart display that’s like we’ve mashed all those things together with a fork and made it run CarPlay apps?” At which point, frankly, I’m intrigued and baffled. But mostly baffled. Because HomeView is Apple’s latest new doohickey for the home – and it’s really weird.
Rumours suggested the device would resemble an iMac G4, which, of course, is the best-looking Mac Apple ever made. That alone might have been enough to sway me. But in the event, HomeView is more the offspring of at least two generations of iMac, a HomePod, an iPad and a gigantic Apple Watch.
In some ways, it’s unlike anything Apple’s ever released before. Yet it’s also like a whole bunch of things Apple has released before, squeezed into an adorable package that’s about 80% Pixar and only 20% cold futuristic robot AI machine that wants to KILL ALL HUMANS IN THE FACE. That’s not a bad balance.
Point of HomeView
Aside from looking cool, though, my big question about HomeView is: why? This device has a wild list of benefits and limitations. You can lob phone calls, personal content and media at it, but third-party apps are limited to CarPlay ones. (I am 99% certain, though, that you cannot attach a Mac Pro Wheels Kit to a HomeView and zoom about as if in a real-life Mario Kart. But don’t quote me on that.) You can wiggle its ‘neck’ up and down but not detach the screen and use it like a little iPad. In fact, the USB-C power requirement kills any semblance of portability.
If you can’t take HomeView to people, they can at least come to it. Using facial recognition, HomeView will automatically load the personalised screen of apps and widgets that belong to whoever’s gawping at it, echoing similar multi-user functionality on Apple TV and Mac. (That’s sure to ‘please’ everyone patiently waiting for something similar to arrive on iPad and iPhone.)
There’s goodness in how Handoff can let you fling a FaceTime call from your iPhone to HomeView’s bigger screen, or squirt recipes across from Safari that are neatly reformatted to help even the most ham-fisted chef avoid burning the lettuce. And, of course, Siri AI is baked in, because there’s no escaping AI these days.
Tech out
As a tech magpie who spends their life surrounded by screens, I won’t deny an Apple smart display of this ilk is tempting. I can imagine one on my desk, looking cute and being vaguely useful. Although at that point, the iPad right next to me, sitting in a clamp stand might offer its thoughts. Something along the lines of: don’t you already have quite enough devices, and maybe should get more use out of those before buying a new one?
That’s where HomeView lands for me. It looks fab. I get the use cases. But it’s, for me, also the very definition of unnecessary hardware. I don’t really need one. That also makes it hard to square with Apple’s green credentials, given that we’re again being encouraged to buy more, more, more – new devices for an ecosystem with so much overlap that the Venn diagram is starting to look like a circle.
Add to that the $299/£299 price (one Apple appears rather fond of right now) and the suggestion you sprinkle multiple HomeViews about your home and… well. I’d probably enjoy the view across my sea of shiny devices but less so the one of my bank balance.
