My First Impressions of Apple’s New Smart Home Display

NEW YORK—We’ve spent the last decade scrolling on iPhones. Apple’s AAPL 1.23%increase; green up pointing triangle newest smart home device offers a glimpse at a different future.

HomeView is a $299, seven-inch tablet and speaker powered by the recently revamped Siri AI personal assistant. And it has a major edge over competing devices from Amazon and Google: access to the data on your iPhone.

So when your hands are covered in dough, you can ask Siri to search the group chat for dinner plan details—and when you should leave to be on time. Or add all the ingredients from mom’s pumpkin pie recipe that someone, at some point, texted to you, to your shopping list.

I got to experience the HomeView up close in Apple’s lofty Tribeca showcase apartment, where one device sat on a marbled kitchen counter and another was mounted on the wall. It acted as a sort of CarPlay for the home, with an iPhone-like experience tailored to life inside and shared among multiple people.

After an Apple employee stepped in front of the screen’s camera to trigger facial recognition, a personalized array of apps and widgets appeared. Her pretend “roommate,” another employee, did the same, and the display changed to a different set of apps in a custom green tint.

Apple is playing catch-up to similar smart displays from Amazon and Google. As with many of its hit products, while the company may be late to the game, it is arriving with a product that offers more privacy and deep integration with other Apple devices.

Still, it comes with the usual trade-offs: a closed ecosystem that requires your whole household to be completely enmeshed in Apple’s universe.

Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub (both $100 and up) have sat in kitchens for years and recently got AI upgrades of their own. But those devices lack the ability to tap into the years of data on your iPhone.

HomeView allows you to tap on the touch screen or bring your iPhone close by to “hand off” content, such as a FaceTime call or a recipe from the Safari browser. The primary and most convenient way to interact with the display, however, is by activating Siri AI with your voice.

“Hey Siri, play that song Eric texted me about” prompted the assistant to sift through messages to find the requested track, then play the Bad Bunny song with lyrics highlighted on screen. The command turned HomeView into a little karaoke machine.

In another example, Siri AI handled a series of commands: “What time did Andrew say he’s getting in from JFK?” “How long will it take him to get to my place if he takes the train?” “Let’s turn on the coffee maker 15 minutes before he’ll arrive.”

The benefit of this system was best illustrated by a young girl viewing an iMessage thread with a potential romantic interest. When her brother tried to snoop, HomeView blurred the screen. But it could also cause too much friction: I currently ask my Amazon Echo Show what’s on my calendar from across the room. Having to walk over to scan my face would be a pain.

Apple says this system keeps up to six household members’ data separate and secure. Camera and audio data is processed in a secure container on the processor, so neither Apple nor apps can access it. HomeView also doesn’t store any personal content locally or on Apple servers.

The dream of ambient computing is to be able to walk around and utter any request into thin air, like the high-powered voice computer system in “Her.” The HomeView shows that Apple is, at the very least, thinking beyond the iPhone to fulfill that vision. But it’s a tricky privacy needle to thread. Plus, as far as Siri AI has come, it’s not yet smart enough to do all the things we need it to do to be truly useful.

Apple’s closed ecosystem is often called a “walled garden.” Most of the time, it’s a really pleasant garden, where accessories automatically pair to devices and data syncs seamlessly across your gadgets.

And launching alongside HomeView is a new collection of smart locks, video doorbells, thermostats and security cameras made by LG and Schneider Electric ($199 and up) that can be set up easily with an iPhone. A new HomePod Mini ($149) can be paired with a Mac as a speaker and a next-generation Apple TV 4K has a remote that’s ping-able from the Find My app should it get lost in couch cushions.

The HomeView can run third-party audio apps and, soon, video apps. But not third-party smart home apps if, say, you use a Ring camera or a garage opener that isn’t compatible with the company’s HomeKit platform.

Apple’s privacy obsession limits the device’s functionality, too. You can’t view a live feed from the HomeView’s built-in camera like you can on Amazon’s Echo Show or Google’s Nest Hub, which turns the devices into an indoor security camera. And I would like to fully put my iPhone down at home and set HomeView to show my notifications, but the device can’t do that.

I use the Amazon Echo Show device daily, sometimes to play music, but mostly to set timers and turn off all the lights before bedtime. But I’m sick of the screen showing me ads.