The smart home has an interface problem. Searching for an app on your phone, fighting with a confused voice assistant, and fiddling with a “smart” display to turn off a light is enough to make anyone run back to the wall switch. But now, Apple is trying to solve the frustrations of smart home control and has a chance to make the smart home actually work.
Next year, the company will reportedly launch a “ai wall tablet for home control” and is said to be developing more devices for the home (including cameras, a tabletop robot, and maybe even a TV). Among other features such as video calling, this new wall tablet will be a hub for Apple's home automation platform, Apple Home, providing a common home interface to control smart devices such as lights, locks, security systems and cameras.
It's time for Apple to get serious about the smart home
It's about time Apple got serious about smart home, having let Apple Home/HomeKit largely languish in the decade since its launch. All signs point to a renewed interest here, driven by the company's involvement in Matter (a new smart home connectivity standard it helped develop) and spurred by the need to find your next big thing.
Apple's supposed first new home product jumps right into one of the trickiest categories: the smart display. Originally designed as a way to “show” you what the voice assistant on your smart speaker was doing, today's smart displays have become jacks of all trades and masters of none. It turns out that putting a smart home control panel, a video calling device, a camera surveillance system, a digital photo frame, a calendar, an alarm clock and even a kitchen TV on a touch screen with little power and programming, stuck to a voice activated speaker, has not been a solution. great success.
Can Apple do better? Last week, Mark Gurman reports in Bloomberg gave us our first real details about the long-rumored Apple Home device, the HomePad, as Gurman calls it. And it sounds like a pretty standard, albeit small, smart display.
According to Gurman, the product will be a six-inch square tablet shape that can be mounted on a wall (like amazon's Echo Hub) or attached to a speaker (like Google's Pixel tablet). It will have a built-in security camera (like the Nest Hub Max) and sensors that adjust the screen as you get closer to show a more detailed interface (like the Echo Show 8). And of course, it will play music, act as a video intercom, stream security camera footage, and control smart home devices (like all smart displays on the market).
The problem is, for all their many capabilities, today's smart displays are no better than smart speakers at controlling your home. The original smart displays, the Echo Show and Nest Hub, were designed as voice devices with slow touch control added as an afterthought.
While high-end smart home tablets running professionally installed automation systems like Crestron and Savant are more capable, they require hours of programming by a professional. The same goes for control. boards from powerful DIY platforms like Home Assistant, which require more time and experience than most homeowners. Recent consumer tablets such as the Echo Hub and Pixel Tablet have gone some way to addressing this interface issue, but they are still too complicated to set up and program for the average user.
Apple needs to bring its signature simplicity to this space: it needs to make it all work. To succeed, Apple needs to offer an intuitive user interface that effectively combines voice and touch in a way that no other smart display has done to date. This won't be easy, but developing new user interfaces that further boost existing device categories is a proven path for the company (see iOS, tvOS, watchOS).
While it's late to the game, Apple has a few things going for it. The company's HomeKit framework and Apple Home smart home platform take advantage of local control, meaning that, unlike its competitors amazon and Google, it doesn't rely on a cloud connection. The point is to reduce some of the barriers to entry for Apple Home: cost and availability of compatible products. So from day one, an Apple Home smart display could connect to and control smart devices like lights, locks, cameras, and appliances already in people's homes.
According to Gurman, the HomePad will run a new operating system called Pebble. It will be based on Apple TV's tvOS and will have a minimalist touch interface that incorporates elements of watchOS and the iPhone's StandBy mode. Gurman says Apple intends for most users to interact with the device using voice.
If Apple can find an effective interface that combines voice and touch, it can succeed here. Imagine a flow like saying, “Siri, turn on the lights” as you approach the device. The screen then changes to show relevant controls based on contextual input, giving you a way to easily adjust the wizard action with a single tap. It would be a big leap from where we are today, but the possibilities are much greater.
This is where I am worried and hopeful. Apple's biggest problem is Siri. While it is capable of performing basic tasks, it is far behind the competition, especially with smart home voice control. For this to work, Siri needs to get a lot smarter. Gurman reports that the HomePad hardware is designed around Application Intent“a system that allows ai to precisely control apps and tasks” and “will bring Siri and Apple Intelligence to life in a way that has never happened before.”
But it will take a lot more intelligence to move the voice assistant from simple command-and-control interactions (“Siri, set the thermostat to 68 degrees”) to understanding and interpreting context. For example, say “Siri, I'm cold” and the device knows how to adjust the heat of the room you're in. That's a much better user interface, if Apple can pull it off.
Although Apple said some form of Smarter Siri is comingIt looks like we'll be waiting a while for a truly capable assistant to manage our smart home. Gurman reports that Apple's more capable, LLM-powered conversational Siri won't be available until at least 2026. While both amazon and Google have also said they're working on similar capabilities for their voice assistants, neither appears to be anywhere near its launch.
Apple needs to bring its signature simplicity to the smart display – it needs to make it all work
It seems that combining the existing technology of a digital assistant with its new LLM-powered future is a complicated task. These companies face the obstacles of a decade of technical baggage in the code, millions of devices in customers' homes, and voice assistants that people already rely on for basic controls. We're still waiting for amazon's “new” Alexa to be released because apparently it can't control lights reliably. And, in all its hype about Apple Intelligence, Apple hasn't once mentioned that its smarter Siri could also control your Apple Home.
Apple has a history of a tortoise-and-hare approach to emerging categories, taking its time, “borrowing” ideas from successful products, and then adding its layer of innovation to seal the deal. In this case, Apple needs more than that. You have to define the interface and the voice assistant. It's a tall order, but the market is waiting for someone to make it all work.
