HomeView: Apple just got serious about the smart home | Livestream

Apple just announced its long-rumored HomeView smart home hub. But that's not all... there are cameras, thermostats and a door lock co-developed with LG and Schneider Electric, refreshed HomePod Minis, even a new Apple TV 4K. The Verge's senior smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattinson Tuohy joined Nilay Patel and David Pierce LIVE to discuss and take your questions about Apple's massive play to take over your house. You have until Thursday to vote for us in the Signal Awards! Vote Decoder: Best Business Podcast Vote Vergecast: Best Technology Podcast Vote Version History: Best History Podcast Further reading: Apple launches HomeView, its first smart display for the home The new Apple Home Collection includes a video doorbell, smart lock, and more Apple announces the HomePod Mini 2, but it isn’t ready for Siri AI at launch The new Apple TV 4K has built-in microphones so you can talk to Siri AI Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from AWS AI. AWS AI is helping the world's leading organizations transform their industries in production at scale right now. From bringing fans inside every swing at the PGA Tour, to helping small businesses grow online with GoDaddy, to taking vehicles from concept to customer with Audi. AWS AI is how businesses innovate, lead and revolutionize. AWS AI is how. Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. Your work is scattered. A thread here, a DM there, docs everywhere. And it's not only your team searching for context. Your AI agents need it too.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Jira taps Atlassian's teamwork graph to bring that context together across Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub and more, and makes it easy to share with agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly or connect your agents through MCP. The result? Less token waste, more accuracy and more time moving forward. Learn more at jira.com. That's J-I-R-A dot com. Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models,

• 1:28Speaker 00

  different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI Control Tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of personal context, a thing that means everything and nothing in the Apple ecosystem. I'm your friend, David Pierce. I am joined by two of my colleagues, and I would say maybe one in two on the list of Verge smart home sickos. Number one with a bullet, Jen Tooe. Hi Jen, welcome.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Hello, hello.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  And my friend and yours, Neel Patel. Hello, sir.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  I'm just a dilettante, a smart home dilettante.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Are you okay with being number two to Jen? Jen is like-

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Oh, it's not even a question. It's like, it's like, are you okay with being number two to Michael Jordan? It's like, yes, I will be the, I will collect my rings and quietly go home and we'll all know what's true.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  And then in 30 years, you'll make a really saucy documentary about how Jen never could have done it without you.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  I know. Yes.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Very true, very true.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  We are here, we are live on YouTube. Apple just had its big welcome home. I hesitate to call it an event. Jen, I want to talk a little bit about the last sort of 24 hours of your life because the experience of this launch has been really interesting. But Apple just made its big, long awaited push into the smart home. We have a new device called the Home View that we're going to talk about a lot. We have a new HomePod Mini. We have a new Apple TV. We have a bunch of LG made sensors and devices.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Don't forget Schneider Electric. Come on, dog.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  I have been talking about Schneider Electric a lot and I keep getting people telling me, why are we talking about this before? Before today, now everyone cares. I actually had them install a smart home panel in my house, but that's a whole nother story.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  There you go. Shout out to Schneider Electric.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  When we're saying smart home sickos, I don't think you understand that Jen and I are smart home sickos. A lot of what we've been talking about for years just got thrust into the foreground.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  They're actually one of the original founders of Matter or like original early product companies in Matter. But anyway, I derailed you, I'm sorry.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Everyone.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  I will warn you, there are going to be several instances of a new game that I'm going to instigate on The Vergecast called, Should This Have Been an iPad? This is going to come up several times in this conversation, so get ready.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  I have strong feelings about that one.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I, so do I, and so do our commenters. Travis, our producer, is also going to be looking through all of your comments. We're looking at them too, but it's far away from me and my eyesight is not what it once was. So we're gonna, if you have comments, if you have questions, throw it all up. Travis is going to put a bunch on the screen and make us have feelings about them. Jen, let's start with you. Tell us, tell us about your day so far. This has been a strange Apple launch. We've all been to all flavors of Apple launches, but this was an unusual one. Just give us a sense of your day today.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  This is my first ever in-person Apple event, so yes. They don't normally invite me because they don't normally do anything with the smart home. So this was a big, this was a big moment for the smart home. Apple finally paying some attention after a decade of sort of it being a hobby project, it feels like. But yes, so I, so today, the event started at 9:00 AM this morning. And you're right, it's not in the, in the lexicon of Apple experiences. This is an experience is what they called it, not an event. So there wasn't a big onstage presentation, but there was a keynote with one of the sort of product leads from Apple Home

• 5:08Speaker 02

  talking about the new product, showing the video, which I think we will get to. And then we, and then they sort of, so it was in this Tribeca townhouse, which is something, I think Apple has several events there a year for different products. But it was a home environment, so everything was sort of set up in situ, although there was one demo area where it was all like put on plinths and looked like the crown jewels kind of thing. And I was taken through like different experiences. It was very similar. I think you both came to the Amazon event a couple of years ago where they had little rooms set up with different experiences. It was very much like that. But the key difference here was that Apple hired an interior designer

• 5:51Speaker 02

  to completely design the home space and to make it look more authentic, not, not, not made by a tech company, which I have to say, I actually appreciated because it really was a nice space. All of the, all of the rooms were very well done because they were turned by a professional. And then, you know, the, the home devices were sort of interspersed. They were so well interspersed that you kind of missed them. Like, oh, hang on, I need to go back there. There was one there. So yeah, that was, so I went through a few different experiences in that space for all the new products. And then they had a sort of, like I said, the sort of the room where everything's just on, on displays. But all of that stuff was not, you couldn't control it. It was all in demo mode.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  So I did, but I got to do some actual hands-on in the, the house space, the apartment, the very expensive New York City loft apartment that I would love to move into if, if they're looking for anyone.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  That place is spectacular.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Would you like me to break your smart home? Where are they?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  I know, I'm like, I could, I could definitely, you know, torture test this for you.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  So I'm, I'm actually curious about the demos that they did for you because I think the, the big question that has shown up everywhere as this launch has been happening. Obviously, this is a, a controller for your home. I'm almost hesitant to call it a smart home device, which is a thing I want to talk about and I think is a thing that you're struggling with too. But the, the question of what does Apple perceive this thing to be? It's a seven inch screen that you can, you can mount it on the wall. You can put it on a table. You can plug it in. You can, you can, whatever. It is, it is a home device that is supposed to do lots of things for lots of people. And I want to get into all of those things. But I'm fascinated by the way that Apple decided to explain to you what this thing is for. Like what, what were the demos that you actually got to see?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I probably should, I didn't really get into it, but obviously there were a lot of products announced. So there was the Home View, which is the smart display. And then there was the new Apple TV, the new HomePod Mini, and also lots of smart home accessories as part of a new Apple Home collection from LG and Schneider. So that was like door locks and thermos bags.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Schneider Electric paying you, Jen? Just be honest. This is the time to say it.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  But yeah, they're a great company. You know, if you have, and if you, they probably made the in-wall breaker box in your house. That's what they make. Anyway, yes, I'm, I'm being diverted. So this was billed, interestingly, and they, Apple always has a script. So everyone who talked to you sort of said the same thing. It's billed as both a entertainment device, a personal device and a home.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Apple has to stop doing this. They're, they've become a cover band. Like in, in like a very important way, Apple's like, we've had a big hit and we're going to do that hit again. And it's like, it was an internet communicator and a widescreen iPod. And this one's like, it's an entertainment device and this other thing, that third thing. Can I just play the role of the smart home sicko in the audience watching this all over down?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  And I, last night at like midnight, I was looking at Jen's coverage. It was about to go up. And I, all I could say was, is this just weird and complicated and a little bit confusing? Because all of it seems weird and complicated and a little bit confusing. And I think your question about should it be an iPad? The idea that I have to go buy new cameras for the outside of my house to use the new Apple device, when the cameras on my house already have an iOS app, is just like the disconnect in my brain is just monumental.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  I did specifically ask them, I said, so can I like, download the Ring app and view my Ring cameras? They didn't actually say no, but they just went on with another question. They were like, so, but you can view HomeKit Secure Video cameras through the Home app.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Usually the most complicated way to do any cameras ever. Someone, was it, Amjid300, great name, says, interesting, it'll have CarPlay apps. It won't have CarPlay apps.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  There will be another class of apps using the CarPlay frameworks.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yes, right.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  So you have to make, you have to make an app for the phone, you have to make a CarPlay app for that phone, you have to redo that app for the iPhone 2O now, and then you have to make a second thing that is based on the CarPlay framework for this thing.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Well, so, yeah, and I didn't, I didn't get into deep details around that. They did say that basically, it uses the CarPlay architecture, so any of the current audio device, audio apps that work in CarPlay should work, although, so like, they mentioned Audible, and I assume Spotify, because that's one that does, but no video, because right now, no video services are on CarPlay. I don't know, because I don't use CarPlay, but I'm guessing you don't watch Netflix while you're driving down the interstate, so I can see why there's a dearth of...

• 10:49Speaker 03

  There's, there's, there's a path to video in CarPlay, but that's just to go, why should I know about that, as a consumer of this device, that is meant to be plugged into my kitchen?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  I think the idea behind the CarPlay is it's curated apps, so not every, so the way it works is when you, it's like the Apple Watch in the early days, when you added any device, any app you had on your phone that was compatible with the Apple Watch, could automatically show up on the Apple Watch.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  We have a smart home sicko in the comments who says that it's scripted. I'm just shouting you out. Like, that's how deep we are, or we've, we've talked about this little Apple Watch on a, on a, on a hockey puck for five minutes, and we've mentioned Schneider Electric, we've mentioned scripted, we've gotten our other, the HomeKit Secure Video, and whether or not we're forking CarPlay.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Wait, can I, let me, can I just play devil's advocate?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Just to plug it in and make it work.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Let, let me just, let me just swing all the way the other way and point out that almost no one has smart home stuff. The smart home is bad, it is full of products that don't work together, and most people...

• 11:48Speaker 03

  You shut your mouth when you talk.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Most people, at most, at most, have a doorbell camera, like, or Hue lights. Those are the two things that like, real people have in their lives.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  That is where Apple is coming from here.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is what I was gonna ask, is like, I, I think, I expected this to be like, Apple launching itself into the smart home universe, and this to me felt like Apple more or less pretending that the smart home doesn't exist, and that Apple is about to invent the smart home. And, and that's a very Apple-y thing to do, in a way that is kind of annoying, but is also like, maybe not completely wrong for something like this. Like, most people don't have these devices, and if you have them all, the idea of like, I need to drop this into my Home Assistant, like, no you don't, don't buy this thing.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  But like... Wait, let me just push back on this, and I want Jen to answer, because she is by, far and away the expert. When you say most people might have a Ring doorbell, lots and lots and lots of people have Ring doorbells. You can go get a Ring doorbell for $99 that you install by peeling the tape off the back and sticking it to the wall, right? And like, millions of people have those things. So there's a part where Apple gets to reinvent the ecosystem, and there's a part where you just have to stare at reality, and be like, in order to make this thing work in your home, the home you already have today, you have to get a new doorbell.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  That's, I just think that's weird.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Ring is a difficult one, because it was supposed to support HomeKit, if anyone remembers. All the way back, I'm sure the commenters remember. And Ring is notoriously closed. A lot of the other doorbell manufacturers, I think, could potentially work with this device if Apple Home supported Matter cameras. They don't yet. So yes, it's all HomeKit Secure Video. I don't think Ring is ever gonna support Matter cameras, not with Jamie Simonoff as the CEO, but Sidewalk they will. And I do, so, but, but to David's point, that I think Apple does, I was, I was all

• 13:53Speaker 02

  excited that Apple could come in and like, actually do something really cool and fun with this device, and make, and bring Siri AI, and bring some really good capabilities. I've been testing Home Assistant AI's, Smart Home Assistant's AI for the last year, and I can see so much potential here. But I'm up here, in the smart home, in terms of what I want it to do, and how advanced I'd love to see, and Apple is coming in, right down in the basement, and like, okay, we're gonna say, we have people that use our devices, they're gonna see this device and think it's a nice extension of their iPhone in the home, which is essentially what I feel like it is. And then, oh, it's gonna be really easy to add a doorbell, because there's one that

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Apple recommends. They said to me, we get people asking us what we should buy all the time, now we have things we can say, this is what you should buy. So yeah, and, and then, I was talking, I had an interview with two execs today, and one of the things they were saying was, yeah, we see this, yes, we know there are a lot of people that are deeply invested in the smart home, but most people aren't, and this, but what gets them in there is one device, and they're like, oh, this works, and, oh, it works quite well, maybe I'll try something else. The problem is, when they start with one device and it doesn't work well, and it's a bad experience, and then they're like, I'm done with this, why would I even wanna waste my time? So they, that's the whole sort of point of the Home Collection with these, these partnerships,

• 15:23Speaker 02

  is they're much easier, in theory, to set up. They set up just like your AirPods do, is the idea. You just come, you can tap with NFC and it recognizes the device. So they're going for simplicity and ease of use, and my hope is that, that, that then they'll build on that, but right now, this is very much tailored to Smart Home 101. And the device itself is, you know, first and foremost, they talk about it as being a, a way to sort of communicate with loved ones, so the FaceTime, like, the iPhone experience is part of it. Then, enjoy entertainment, so music is the one they mainly pushed, because there is no,

• 16:05Speaker 02

  or, no obvious, um, third-party video yet, but they said that it will come.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Jen, did you just say enjoy entertainment?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Enjoy.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  You spent too long at an Apple event.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  I'm about, I want to read the phrase. So this is what they said, enjoy entertainment, connect with loved ones.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  I hate entertainment, I never enjoy entertainment.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  So why is it created in iPod or touch controls?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And control your smart home. So the smart home was third. And, and yeah, that was, that, that's the sort of, that's the sales pitch that they were, that they were giving for this device. And yeah, it's not targeted at the person, it's really not even targeted at the person like I was, that carved a hole in their wall and stuck an iPad in it, and figured out somehow, some way to plug it in. It does have PoE though, so yay. And it's not targeted at that person, it's just, it's targeted at someone that is really deeply in the Apple ecosystem, and might start to move into the smart home. Not to say that you wouldn't find it useful.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Can I just, can I just, can I just take those two ideas? And, and once again, the swirl of confusion in my brain that they have created. It's targeted someone who doesn't have a smart home, who's in the Apple ecosystem, and might wanna begin with the LG camera, or, or doorbell. But also, if you know what power over Ethernet is, and you have that shit in your walls, they made one for you. And it's like, well, that's a different guy. Like, you know, that's Jen, it's Jen is the person I know with power over Ethernet.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  So they're not throwing the power users under the bus here, there's still a few touches for us.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  But then you're like, you're gonna have this thing in your wall, and you're like, you know what I'd love to do is put Home Assistant on it? By the way, someone just shouted out that Home Assistant has a CarPlay app, like, where, what are we doing? There's just so much about this where it's, in order to make it interesting...

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Audio and video.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. In order to make it interesting, everything in the smart home is an edge case. I think I've heard you say that, Jen.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Right? Everything is a weird, special corner case of weirdness, and Apple is trying to do the thing where they're, they're simplifying it.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  And actually, the thing to do in a world where you have a, an AI system in the background is embrace how complicated it is.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Yes, and I asked them this question too, I said, you know, you harped on a lot about how Siri AI, it was, the reason that they'd launch this now is because Siri AI was ready, and Siri AI brought capabilities to the home, to the home environment, that they could leverage. And I said, but you've already said how powerful this AI is, could you do something good with it? Could you do something fun? Could you get it to like, make my smart home work better and have, I said, you know, I love all this personal context, but how about some home context? Could that be part of this device?

• 18:50Speaker 03

  How is the user switching? Here's, here's actually, I feel like we should, we've gotten so into being smart homes that goes, but that's like, what happens when you, when you talk about the smart home for five seconds. But, right, the idea is, okay, it's sitting in your kitchen, maybe we should just watch this video, but the idea is, it's sitting in the kitchen.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I didn't get to try the user switching, because obviously, I'm not a registered user. So yeah, the video shows it quite well, I think, and they said that that's very true to life.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Let's actually, yeah, let's, so there's this, let me just set this up real fast. So the, Apple put this out with this, like, three-minute-long video showing a, a family of five navigating this thing. And I think this video essentially tells you everything you need to know, good and bad and impossible, about what the home view is, actually. So the way we're gonna do this is, we're just gonna start this video, and anybody say pause at any time, and then we can talk about it. Sound good?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  All right.

• 19:42Speaker 04

  I need a bathroom. There's one downstairs. Fine.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Who keeps touching this?

• 19:48Speaker 05

  You promised French toast, bro.

• 19:50Speaker 06

  I'm not your bro, bruh.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  Promise says we're made, Vincent.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  Fine.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  Hey Siri, find the French toast recipe that mom sent.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Okay, pause.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, right there. Where is it?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Where is this device?

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Oh, I know where it is.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Okay, well, also, importantly, the immediate assumption here that becomes very important to this entire thing is that this device not only understood the request, but understood who is making the request. And this goes back to, I think, the single feature that makes this thing succeed or fail is the multi-user support. And the idea, as I understand it, is that you, it's able to recognize up to six people and it uses the camera to recognize and switch between users.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  As long as those users have iOS devices.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Correct. But importantly, this dude who was just talking to Siri was not looking at it, was not close to it. I don't know if he was in range or not. So now I'm at the point where like, does at this moment Siri care who is talking to it? Or is this considered like a group project?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  No, because that is a message. So the message is personal context. So that had to have recognized him. So, yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  How? Jen, how?

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Well, and that was one of the things I said in my piece. I'm like, I don't, having to stand in front of a device and stick your face in it to get it to react is not a good experience. I've tried that with the Echo shows have that.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  This comes up a bunch in this video. Actually, let's just keep going here. This is, you bring up one of the things I want to talk about. Let's just keep playing here.

• 21:18Speaker 07

  I found a message from mom with a link to a French toast recipe from Taste of Home.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Okay, stop.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I was gonna do it too.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Stop. Stop. Okay.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Every recipe blogger on the internet just exploded with the kitchen.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  We were just looking at a story from five years ago from developers who put out an app called Recipesly, where they scraped all the recipes and didn't show the, you know, the SEO content at the top that gets people traffic. Like, Apple's like, well, the web's dead. We're just gonna scrape what's left of it for French toast recipes. And no one will react to that. I'm just gonna tell you, we have already assigned that story because it's wild that Apple got here. Continue.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Bet you didn't know that French toast isn't actually French. Yeah, right. Then why is it called French, genius? Fine, live in England.

• 22:01Speaker 06

  Hold please. Siri, French toast, French.

• 22:04Speaker 07

  No, French toast is not originally from France.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Where's the power cable?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Now he's standing in front of it. So I sort of understand.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Okay, so the power cable has been drilled into the counter.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Into the counter.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Just point that out.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  As one does when you buy a new piece of gadgetry.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Who with children has not put a hole into their kitchen counter?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  All right, keep going. Sorry.

• 22:23Speaker 08

  It's literally in the paint. Whatever, Bruno.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, there, pause.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Do you, Jen, this is what you're talking about. So the-

• 22:31Speaker 02

  So she's right in front of it, getting her.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  The mom and the family just had to walk up to it, swivel it 90 degrees, and have it look at her. And this, I think, is like, this is the behavior. And this is where I come to the first, shouldn't this just be an iPad? Like, wouldn't it make a lot more sense if I could hand you a thing that you could then hold and look at instead of everyone having to crowd around your kitchen island and literally spin, like, people are gonna put this thing on like a lazy stool and just spin around to it.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  When I got my mom her first iPad, like a first generation iPad, the first accessory we got for it was a mount that like mounted on the top cabinets of the kitchen. So she could put it there and like scroll through recipes on it. And this thing was like the biggest thing. It's just this. It's a stand. It's fine.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  So you're saying, yes, this could have been an iPad.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  I'm defending the home view in this case.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  This could, you just said it could have been an iPad.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  I'm just defending the mounting dynamic.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  This is why there's gonna be one with a rotating arm, though, right?

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  But that's the next, that's the next.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  This is fine. The idea that it's a little display on a stand that lives in your kitchen, totally in the realm of every other device of this.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I don't know. Well, we should keep playing this, but there is something to the like chaos of them all swiveling this thing around towards themselves to get their information that just does not-

• 23:48Speaker 03

  None of them has their phone.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Well, this is my favorite thing about this, is that no one does have their phone. And it's the most unrealistic aspect of this video, but also the most optimistic. Because if I, honestly, if you promised me that if I got this device five years ago, my kids would not be using their phone at breakfast with, or even though I tell them they can't, but still sneaking it, I would have bought it. Because it's like, having, oh no, you don't need your phone because it's all right here. I mean, this is something that smart displays have been trying to do for a long time, is replace your phone. So you don't need them to control your home. You don't need them to, like, I would try and use Google Nest Hub so that my kids could watch like Teen Titans Go. But unfortunately, it would only play in Spanish for some reason. So it's never worked well.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Jen, your children are older than ours. Am I meant to believe that as teenagers, are my children will only argue about French toast and the problems they're in? Because I'm looking forward to that. All right. Let's keep going.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  Hey, who canceled Harper's Bread? Uh, I canceled it. Oh? I'm gonna walk today. Poor friend. What? Sorry. Something I threw up.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  It's for you.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Pause.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Hello?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  This I just think is really interesting. It gets a FaceTime call and it says underneath it who it's for.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  So there's just all these little multi-user questions that it's like, when you get an incoming call, how do you communicate who is supposed to answer it? Is anyone able to answer it? It's just a button. Like, so many questions.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  No, no, so I will complicate this further. So I already have this device in my home because I have an old iPhone on one of those Belkin MagSafe stands that sits by the door. And it just has HomeKit scenes on standby mode. Yep. And it just, whatever. You can turn lights on and off using the buttons on that thing. And if someone calls me, that phone always rings. I cannot make it not ring. In the way that, you know, Apple devices are like, oh, a phone call. Like, we have a panic. And so I already have this problem that I'm not at home and the thing is ringing.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  And my daughter, if she sees that it's my mom, my daughter will pick it up and be like, hi. And it's fine, because at least they're having a conversation. But I'm very curious how that works with this. Because so much of this device is tied to your iPhone being at home, running iOS 27, for some features to work and some features not to work.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  And I'm dying, like, that dynamic is just like ever-present here.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Right. And it's such a sliding scale, right? There are some things that should obviously be accessible to everybody. There are some things that should obviously only be accessible to you. And then there's just a vast ocean of stuff in the middle that this stuff is just going to have to sort out. And I think a lot of this will probably become very obvious as we get to live with these in our house, which ones worked and which one didn't. But all I see in this entire ad is just questions about who is supposed to answer this call and who is supposed to be able to even see that they're getting a call.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  And that, and getting your kids to put their profiles on this will be very hard. I don't know many kids that are gonna want their text messages showing up on the screen and at the kitchen table. And I've tried to get my kids to use, because Amazon Echoes have Face ID and Voice Match. And it was a frustrating experience. So Apple promises this is a much smaller, seamless, like, it should happen really fast. But yeah, that extra friction makes the smart display less useful. And it should be more of a communal device, I feel like. I feel like making it a personal device, is there differentiation here, though, from the other products on the market right now?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  I will say, shout out, we're like one minute into this three-minute video. We've already talked about 500 things. And the idea that these people are living a life written by Aaron Sorkin is very, very prevalent. Like, everyone is talking as fast as they can and they all have got business.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, about French toast. All right, keep going. Let's play through this.

• 27:41Speaker 06

  It's not over, big time? It's- Dad, we're a bit busy now. What's with the beer? We don't like the beer. Never did.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Hey, has anyone seen my keys? Uh, nope. Haven't seen them. He looks like that actual we hate.

• 27:52Speaker 06

  Hey, good pep talk.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  Guys?

• 27:54Speaker 06

  I'll call you from the car. Love ya.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Hey, bye.

• 27:56Speaker 06

  Bye.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Carlos, lady. Siri, ping my keys. Ping me your keys.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  So, just pause. First of all, I mean, classic. But she has a phone. Right? Like, he's on the device talking to grandpa. And she has to wait.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  This is like, it's just a weird dynamic there.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, because he was, he was the user and now then she has to switch. And also, she wasn't close enough for it to know it was her because it doesn't use just the voice. It uses the face. And so that was a little, a little, it felt a little disingenuous there.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, we, we don't know how fast the user switching is either. Right. This is the number one question I have for this device is when no one's in front of it. What is the user? Does it have a generic user that can do some things and control some?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  So the answer is yes, because it, there's some, there's some mentions in even the press release about like guests being able to access stuff. So I have to assume that there is a base level. We have no idea who you are.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Sure, but in the Apple ecosystem, there are, there's no generic user. There's no base level of access that a device can have. Everything is user based.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  You're called an unrecognized user.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  So this is a new user in the Apple ecosystem. So I mean, like their architecture does not have that category in it. Everything is a user. Everything is an iCloud account. Everything is permissioned. So they've invented a new unrecognized user that has some capabilities, some permissions.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Anything that doesn't require personal context or that doesn't control security devices in your home can be accessed by anyone without being recognized. So you are the unrecognized user. So you can turn lights on and off. You can control thermostats. You can ask questions, the general knowledge, play music, anything. And you can watch live streams from videos. You just can't rewind and see recordings. And yeah, it's very much a, it's a guest mode, but you are, you're an unrecognized user. You can also tailor it. So if you have a, a device in a guest room, you can just give them control of their devices in their home, in their room, rather than the whole house, that kind of stuff. So yeah, it has some control.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  A post about the, the multi-user stuff. And one of the things he said is that Apple told him that there is a presumption that just by the fact that it's in your house, whoever is talking to it is reasonably allowed to do so. And I think that's fine, right? And some of that exists on the Apple TV. Some of you like you just, if you are in range of this thing, you should be able to do some things on it. I think is fine.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  And so that this is, that's my question. So they've, I, I'm guessing that they did not re-architect their entire user account system. Just to, I'll just, I might be wrong. Right. Well, we're going to get the device, we'll ask them a lot of questions, we'll find out. But I'm, I'm guessing that all of that is basically the same as it has been. So they've invented a new user. And I know the Apple TV, if you don't have to set up users, but the Apple TV still needs you to have an Apple account in order to download apps. Like their entire user model is predicated around Apple accounts, just in the realist way. So then they made a new user that needs to be logged into something to get access to HomeKit. So is that a variant of the, your account?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Like I, I'm just dying to know because the thing that needs to happen is then you show up. David, you show up and it sees your face and it switches to your account with your permissions. And then you hang up the call, you turn it, Jen's there to ask for her keys and needs to switch to her account and go into her devices and ping her Find My. And I have no idea how quickly those users will switch. If they're all active at the same time and the device is just quickly like, I mean, RAM's expensive. So is everything active at the same time? Like this is the core promise of this device in a real way. And how it works to me is still kind of a mystery. And this video is not making it clear.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  That said, if it works the way it is depicted, it would be incredible. Like this, this is the kind of thing, that sort of simultaneous, multi-person, multi-use device would be unbelievable and is something that nothing in the home for any system like this does a good job of right now. And it is actually exactly what we need. So the idea of that is like the foundation of my smart home.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Right. So we have, what's it, Jordi Lopez 1175 is like, it's an extension of your phone, not a replay. Great.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  I think that's right.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  It's an extension of six people's phones.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  That is just a new operating model for the whole deal. Yep. Right. Is it's, this thing is six phones at once. Okay. Which one is active? How does it know? What if two people fight? Like there's a lot of questions and it's an extension of your phone.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And this is the multi-user issue is exactly the reason why an iPad has never fit into this role properly. It's been very hard to use it as a home control device because of that.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Just wants to sell all of your children.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Why, why, Jen, why couldn't Apple do every single thing it did here on an iPad? The, I like, one of the core brands of The Verge is that we have asked every person who works at Apple for a decade, why we can't do better multi-user support on iPads? And, and just, just a lot of like shrugging at us. And this is the idea, like again, this is, this is the correct idea about how this should work.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Maybe it's coming.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  It would be so funny if they, if they launched this and then like in two weeks, they're like, oh, all these same features are coming. But no, we will not cancel your preorder. We're so sorry. All right. We, we need to get off of this. We have a lot of testing left to do. This thing is coming out, I think in a month, we will, we will get one at some point.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Finish the video.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  We didn't even finish the video. We are, we are too deep in this. But Jen, I do want to know, there's been a lot of talk about the hardware. Some people are mad about the bezels. There, there are a lot of questions about the, the size and shape of the thing. You, you're the only one of us who has actually looked at it and touched it, touched it. How do you feel about the hardware?

• 33:42Speaker 02

  I, I like the screen. I really like the screen. I mean, it's not a smartphone. I don't, the bezels don't bother me. It actually makes it look like more of a photo frame, which is, it, it does. It displays photos really beautifully. And I love the way it works. The clock kind of works around your photo. So it's not just sort of stuck over your face. The photo element is key here and you know, you always knew that it would be. I think the hardware feels very solid. The screen is really responsive. I was, it, it feels like using an iPad. A lot of swiping and it has the control center. You swipe up for the apps as well as the widgets. Obviously it looks an awful lot like Apple Watch faces.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  And they actually call these devices that they call the screens faces. And you can choose from multiple faces. You can actually easily swipe too. You don't have to do, like go to your iPhone and set them up. You can just do it all on the device and you can swipe through whichever faces you like. Many of the faces have widgets so that you can control different things. It's the sound was, was fairly impressive for the size. I was surprised at how small this was. Actually, the speaker itself is really quite compact. You barely see it behind the screen. The square form factor, I originally was a bit like, when obviously this has been leaked for months and years. And I thought the square form factor seemed a little odd. But actually it fits nicely in the home because it's not, it doesn't take up as much space.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  It feels like you can sort of slot it into, to areas a little easier than say like the Echo Show 11 or the Nest Hub Max, which are wide and long and they take up a lot of room. So I think form factor wise.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Doesn't look like a TV, which is important. Yeah. Like I think there, there are a lot of these devices that look like tiny TVs. And I think the aspect ratio is a big part of that. And so just the fact that it is a different shape from what it amounts to a television in your house, I think is, goes a long way here.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, and again, I think the, and the, the display is, is, is nice and bright, but also goes down to 0.3 nits, which they said is the dimmest they've ever done, which they, Apple said was a strange claim to fame for a screen. But you, you know, I know, um, Neela, you use the Google Nest Hub and that can get really dim and works actually quite well as a bedside table device because it gets so dim. Whereas the Echo Shows are too bright. So I'm interested, they didn't have a dim room for me to test it out, but I'm very interested to see if this is going to be able to be dim enough to have in a, in your bedroom, because it could make a nice bedside table display for controlling, you know, smart devices and, you know, setting an alarm, those types of things.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  I could see, it seems like it has for me, two core places where it would fit well. The bedroom and the kitchen in your home. And then potentially in like your entryway, if you're going to use it for controlling smart devices.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Uh, Yellow Mellow asked in our comments, Jen, can you watch movies and TV shows on it? Did, a lot of people asking this, like people want the tiny kitchen TV. Can this be the tiny kitchen?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  So they said it will depend on devices, on apps supporting the CarPlay framework that we discussed earlier. Whether you get Netflix or Hulu. But they're, they are open to it. There is a path to that. It will be up to the apps, the app makers to develop for it.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Look, I'm not going to try to, try to stand for my Google Home app very much. It is at this point, just a confused and lost device. But Google owns YouTube TV and a thing you can do is you can just ask it to play the Packers game and it will just do it. Do you know what I mean? Like that, that ecosystem exists. And there's just a part of this where Apple being like, it was all bad. Actually is, it's working against this product in real ways. Right? If you can't just put the YouTube TV app on this thing and run it, like what are we, what are we doing?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you think Google will, will develop YouTube TV?

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Will Google develop a CarPlay variant of the YouTube TV app? But only for this device because it's actually not CarPlay. Like, do you know, like there's just something about this that is like, it, it's too in a bubble when can we watch the Odyssey on it as Nolan intended? It's an amazing question. Christopher Nolan doesn't give a shit how you watch his movies. This is a real thing.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  He's, he's like, watch it on a phone. Never have a home view.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  No, he wouldn't. He doesn't have a phone.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. He doesn't even know how you're watching his movies. He's not worried about it.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  I have so many more questions about this device. We obviously have to get it and review it. You can tell I'm like, I'm fascinated by it in like 10,000 different ways. But just to come all the way back around to the Schneider electric of it. Just, just to point this out.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  You too Patel.

• 38:25Speaker 03

  I, there's Schneider devices in this house. They don't just make the panels. They make really nice light switches. They bought a company called Shelly, which makes relays and can hide behind real light switches. Like real smart home nerds know that this is, this company is a force because they make all the stuff. And all I'm pointing out is, yes, it's, it's kind of funny that Apple went to LG, the privacy company, to make a bunch of cameras so they can send that data to, to LG servers too. Who knows? But they had to go to Schneider because they make all the other stuff. Right? If you want a whole bunch of Matter light switches and, and devices, like Schneider is the company that makes them. And so that little concession to the reality of the smart home

• 39:07Speaker 03

  is to me like the most revealing part of this whole exercise. That if you want this thing to work and you want it to be the Siri AI device that they're, you know, they waited for it to be real before they launched this hardware. The reality is there, right? The reality is that lots of people have EcoBee thermostats that are on HomeKit. And now you're going to put another screen next to those EcoBee thermostats, right? Like, the reality is lots of people have doorbells and smart locks. And they're incredibly popular and they may or may not work with this. Lots of people, I'm staring at my Homebridge on the, it's over there. My little Raspberry Pi Tamagotchi of a Homebridge is over there. That is a popular thing.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  It's so popular that people have commercialized Tombridge and made companies out of it. And there's like scandals and controversies about that. Like, I know you think it's small, but-

• 39:58Speaker 01

  All I hear at the end of every one of these sentences is parentheses and vastly more people do not.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Right, but if you want to sell this device, this is why I'm bringing up Schneider Electric. If you want to sell this device into anyone's house, you will just run into the brutal reality that everyone's house is different.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  And so everyone needs different things in different ways. Everyone has weird electricity in their house. David, I believe you just had to rewire your entire house-

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Sure did.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Because you had weird electricity in your-

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Sure did.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Right, like, everyone just has these crazy problems. Some people just are renters and they can't screw things into the wall the way that Apple appears. You don't want to drill holes in your furniture to make this product work. And I, the reason I just come back to Snyder Electric is like, that is the concession here. They needed the partner that makes all of this stuff.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  The other concession is they're partnering with ADT to install it. So you go to the Apple Store and you buy this stuff, you're like, I don't have anyone to put it in. They will send ADT to your house. Do you know what the least Apple experience you can have in the entire world is? Is dealing with ADT. Like, the number of people who are going to get upsold to an ADT security system that does not work with Apple Home, but does in fact work with the Google ecosystem, because Google is an investor in ADT, but boggles the mind.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. This is, this is, this is a good segue into the, the Apple Home collection of products with Schneider Electric, the Vergecast's favorite company, apparently. LG made a bunch of stuff. We should talk about all these products.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Thank you, Siri.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Siri just failed. Like, it literally failed as we're live streaming.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  We, we're going to talk about the, the Apple TV and the HomePod Mini in a little bit. And spoiler alert, everybody, I'm going to make Neelai try to justify a $300 Apple TV 4K. So we will get to that. But first, we, we need to, we need to make some money so we can all go buy these weird things. So we're going to take a really quick eye break and then we're going to come, we're going to get into the Home Collection. We're back.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Upwork. Business owners know that you kind of need to become a jack of all trades to grow. But as you do, situations arise where you end up wishing you could simply hire a jack or a Jill of a very particular trade. In those cases, you'll be glad to have Upwork. Upwork gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise. With their help, you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to a full-time headcount. There's also Business Plus, which lets you access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. And when it comes to the operational stuff, such as contracts and payments, Upwork takes care of it all.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  With over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting someone with a verified track record of applied expertise. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U.P.W.O.R.K. com. Upwork.com.

• 43:05Speaker 09

  This is advertiser content from Comcast Business. As cyber threats become more and more machine-based and driven by AI agents, those of us in the cyber defense space were having to invest at the same pace. Hi, I'm Chris McFarlane, Chief Development Officer at Comcast Business. So when we think about the threat of cybersecurity attacks to businesses, they're just a lot more automated, they have the ability to think, they can scale literally anywhere from 100 to thousands of time faster than a human can. The reality is that today, you need to protect every device, every endpoint, every workload that's running on a server, whether it's your own server or in the cloud. This is an area that Comcast Business excels at.

• 43:49Speaker 09

  We're enabling intelligence-driven defense with integrated visibility, AI-powered threat detection, and automated response capabilities that prioritize, correlate, and contain risks before they escalate. And so it doesn't matter whether you're a small business or a medium-sized business or a really large enterprise. We've got this incredible portfolio of cybersecurity solutions and services to really enhance your cybersecurity posture. To learn more about how Comcast Business can help protect your business today, visit ComcastBusiness.com/cybersecurity.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Framer. The future of website building is seamlessly blending all the tools we have available. And you could use a platform that has it all and stays useful even after you launch. That's what Framer is. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. You're able to prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. On Framer, agents bring speed and scale while people bring taste, judgment, and control. And that all takes place in the same workspace where the real site is designed, managed, reviewed, and published. Everyone's ideas land on the canvas, stay editable, and can be published when the team is ready.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Thousands of businesses from early-stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer, where changes take minutes instead of days. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/verge for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/verge. Rules and restrictions may apply.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. So alongside all of Apple's stuff, they also announced a home collection of devices. And before we get into all of them, I just want to say, shout out to, I think it's Guardian64 in the comments, for pointing out one of the funniest Apple listings I've ever seen, which is for the LG temperature sensor. You go to Apple's website and it just has a picture that is just like a white circle on a white background. It's just like, they're just, what if, what if this device was nothing? It's, it's-

• 46:14Speaker 03

  That's how it's supposed to be.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Um, Neelai, we talked a little bit about this last week on the Vergecast in sort of looking ahead to what this was going to be. And you made the argument that partnering with a company like LG and Schneider Electric, our favorite, makes a lot of sense for a company like Apple if you're going to ship all these things. It's so good. What, tell me what is going on with the Home Collection here? Why, why do this if you're Apple?

• 46:42Speaker 03

  So I don't think Apple wants to make all these devices. But Apple's manufacturing is all about massive scale, like just huge scale. They got to make a billion iPhones this year. They're going to do that. If you want to make a bunch of cameras and get them through all of the certifications in all the countries, like, these are just, they're better suited to companies that manufacture lots and lots of different things. That's just the reality of it. And I also think Apple does not want to own the, like, customer relationship here in a really important way. Like, you bought an LG camera, too bad it sucks is like a great hedge for Apple. And the whole point of this ecosystem, I keep saying, is they're going to need a massive ecosystem to support everyone's house. There's someone in the chat who said, I'm just making up exaggerated hedge cases

• 47:27Speaker 03

  and I'm just going to defer to Jen and, and have her back me up. Everyone's house is crazy and this is the thing that kills everyone's smart home dreams. Is you cannot sell it as a product. You have to stand up integrators who come to your house and like, design a system for you.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Right, and that's, I mean, that speaks to the, the whole ADT partnership too. It's like, yeah, the idea here is that they're going to come and install this stuff for you. Because I remember when we were talking a while back about what all these rumors is like, is Apple really going to make a video doorbell? Are they going to have- Systems to help you install wiring into your home. And that doesn't seem like an Apple thing to do. And it isn't. So, yeah. And Google did this, too. They partnered with, was it ON Tech with their devices before the ADT partnership? To get these into people's homes. Because, yeah, most people, even though installing a smart lock actually isn't that hard, neither is installing a smart video doorbell. Most people just either aren't, don't want to consider it or are over, are put off by

• 48:28Speaker 02

  the prospect and having someone else do it for you makes a lot of sense. But the packaging of the smart home, I think, is one of the concerns I have about this. It's like a smart home in a box, to your point, Neelai, rarely works. Because it just, these things don't fit into your home. And like, who needs three, four security cameras from LG? Actually, I would rather have some door window sensors or a flood or a leak sensor, which is what we may end up seeing from the Schneider partnership. I did ask Apple if there was any more coming from these partnerships and they obviously didn't share.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Well, so they don't need them. This is, I think, one of the weirder things about this is HomeKit supports Matter just fine.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  I have leak sensors in my house. They're in HomeKit through Matter just fine. And then the list of devices here, and I'm curious where you take on the prices, right? It's LG is making a $200 indoor camera that automatically tilts down to provide privacy when you return home. Cool. $300 outdoor security camera with optional floodlights that raise the price to $400.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  That's a bit of a bum.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  And a $250 video doorbell.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  And it's HomeKit Secure Video, which you have to buy some complicated additional iCloud plan to get like cloud recording operating on it. All of that is more expensive than anything else.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  And that's not even including a $40 temperature sensor and a $200 thermostat and a $350 smart deadbolt lock. Like, every one of these is vastly more expensive than you could find in lots of other ecosystems.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  They do look cool. I will say they look very cool.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  The smart lock is sort of on par because of the UWB. But, yeah, the rest, the rest of them are high end. They're not out of the park expensive, but they're definitely high end. And most of, especially around video doorbells and security cameras, prices have been coming way down over the years.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Because they're all subsidized by subscriptions.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Much, yeah, a lot of, well, and to your point, right? The basic HomeKit Secure Video subscription is relatively inexpensive. You can get it with the sort of 50GB iCloud plan. But if you want the new Apple intelligence features, you're going to be paying a lot more money. In fact, I think the highest tier is $60 a month. And that covers five HomeKit Secure Video cameras, which there's a subscription money to be had in the smart home. This is probably really why Apple is moving this way.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  But just to put this in the context of Ring, I know there's lots and lots of other brands out there and the market is actually staggeringly competitive for, for cameras like this because they are cheap to make, right? I mean, we're just talking about the smartphone supply chain.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Like, if you want to buy a five-year-old camera sensor and stick it on the wall with a Wi-Fi chip, like, you can just get those. And that is a lot of what has enabled the smart home market. But one of our Ring cameras just died. And I was like, I should buy a new one. And then I thought to myself, I will wait until any holiday or Prime Day when Amazon will just give me one for free because I'm a subscriber. Right? And that is just the reality of that market. That is a subscription. They know it's going to pay off over time. And Apple is not competitive with that. Now, you can have a lot of feelings about Ring. You can have a lot of feelings about, I don't know, the security and police and that whole model. But Apple is going to charge you money for a subscription and that subscription is not going to subsidize one of these devices at all. And I think a lot of people just look at the dollars and cents.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Like, straightforwardly look at the dollars and cents.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but also there, there is something to what we were talking about earlier that there is, there is a power just in being the products that Apple has decided to bless.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  And, and my question for you in this case, Jen, is looking at this list of products, did Apple go out and work with these companies to make like the best smart home stuff that exists? Or is this just overpriced versions of things that already exist that Apple is going to sell in the Apple Store and make a lot of money off of? Because we have seen Apple do both of those things in the past.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I would say this is a list of the most popular smart home devices that people use. They're the ones that have, that solve single point solutions. So, you know, you want to know if you have a package, you want to be able to get into your house.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  The floodlight camera is actually my recommendation. If you're going, if you want a smart security camera, they're one of the best solutions for one because you have the lights and the motion activated light is a nice safety feature, like just walking around your house, not, not security wise. But, yeah, these are the most popular devices, thermostats as well. But I think in terms of the best products, what, what the selling point here isn't that they've done anything special and created new products that no one else has. It's that Apple integration. It's the setup I mentioned earlier where you just tap, you can just tap these devices and they will pair like a home, like a, like your AirPods. So the idea is to be a lot simpler.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  And whilst the design was base.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Look at David's face. Neelai, say Matter, say Matter, say Matter fixes this.

• 53:25Speaker 03

  You just have to scan a QR code.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true, except for, but one, but the advantage here of the Apple integration, specifically to your point about LG sending your video off to China, is that all of the devices work with Apple devices in your home. And they do not use any LG servers. They do not use an LG app. It's all going through your Apple devices, your Home Hub, your Home View, your Apple TV, potentially through your phone. It's all controlled by you. So that's the security and privacy angle is the big one. And that's why HomeKit Secure Video has always sort of had an edge. And the Matter standard for cameras hasn't really filled that gap yet because someone needs to take it and run with it and no one really has.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  But it, that's what Apple's selling here is that these are products that we guarantee the security and privacy of, and you don't have to worry about downloading apps. You can't do that with any other security camera yet because they don't work with Matter. Other devices do work with Matter. So, yes, you, you don't have to download the app.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  But I'm just saying, the reason for that, the ice cold business reason for that is cameras are the device where you can charge a subscription fee for storage and AI recognition and security services.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  And so there's no way they're going to, anyone has any incentive to make Matter cameras.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  Because then you can decouple them from the subscription service. And you can see Apple is doing almost exactly the same thing here.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did say, you know, we're fully invested in Matter and we're interested in, in working on the Matter smart home camera standard. In fact, the lead of the Matter camera standard is an Apple engineer. So they are fully involved in that. But, yeah, at this, this point, they said, we're still sticking with HomeKit Secure Video. So, but you can, you can, you could use, a platform could use Matter and still add a subscription layer on top. It doesn't negate the, the ability to put a subscription layer on top if you add additional features like the AI text descriptions, which is that's what you have to pay $60 a month for if, if you want that on five cameras with HomeKit. So, yeah, there's, you, they could use Matter as the infrastructure and then add their

• 55:31Speaker 02

  services on top, which I think is, they may get to eventually, but they did just completely re-architect. A whole new spec for HomeKit Secure Video came out at WWDC this year. So, they're sort of, yeah, that would have been the moment to go to Matter.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  I would just say, all of this is, it's made so much easier if you have AI around, right? The whole point of this is that Siri AI is good now and it can do world knowledge and ask it any question you want. And that is all right next to a bunch of Apple's competitors are launching things that look like agents. And how many times have we covered, you know, someone built a dashboard in Claude Code that can run their home assistant? Like, this is a thing that exists in the world today. And all of these devices and all this configuration and all the automation that makes having this stuff really valuable is nowhere in this product.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  Why do you have a temperature sensor? To, to do stuff when it detects temperature changes, not just to look at it, like being like, I wonder what temperature it is in the basement, is not of enormous value.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  So I think, I'm hoping we'll see more. So Apple did launch the adaptive temperature feature and they didn't, I did not get confirmation. I haven't read the PR yet.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  But I didn't get confirmation whether, I'm assuming these two thermostats will work with adaptive temperature because very few smart thermostats that have come out to date work with that. And that is using some type of, it's geolocation predominantly, but I can, I'm hoping you kind of see that next level when they start to bring these sensors together with AI and bring that home context in to play, to, to start doing some of the more proactive things that the smart home could do. Because the adaptive temperature now, it will, like, it adjusts based on how far away you are from home so that your home will be, you know, this is what Nest's did for years, too. But Apple has it baked in to the OS system so that you don't have to buy a specific thermostat.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  You just have to, it just has to be, you don't have to buy a specific brand like Nest as long as it's compatible with Apple Home and supports Apple Home Adaptive Temperature, which, and these sensors, but would feed into, you can have these all around your house. So kind of get that eKobe experience, which is what eKobe sold, sold itself on for many years where, you know, it can adapt, adjust in different parts of your home. But that's all quite complicated to set up and to manage.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  It was complicated for you to just say.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Like, I love this stuff. And I'm just like, I, there's, this is what I, I, I'm just gonna keep coming back to this. The idea that they can ignore what exists and why it all exists, as complicated as it is.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  And just be like, buy these cameras, it's all gonna work great, is gonna, it, it, just my guess is, that's why, David, you called it out, is like, I wonder what they think this is?

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Right? There's like an inbuilt inherent confusion here, because you can't not gesture at all these weird edge cases.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think it's so funny to me, the way Apple's approaching this, because the bet here clearly is that people will start by buying a HomeView, that your first smart home gadget, for a lot of people, will be a HomeView, and then that will be the, the sun around which everything else rotates. And that is so the opposite of the dream of the smart home, which is that there are a million entry points, and the controller doesn't really matter, because all of the controllers all work.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  Because the logic lives on a server in your basement.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Right. You just buy all the things that you need, and they all figure out how to work together. And I, I, I would say I have been bearish on Matter's ability to pull any of this off. I think Amazon... Listen, history, history continues to prove me a little more right every single day, and it makes me sad every single time. But, but I do think, A- Apple is looking at this to say, the main thing you're gonna want is this main device. And, and this is like a, a generation old idea, right? Like, go all the way back to the original Amazon Echo. And there was this thing about...

• 59:32Speaker 03

  Do we know what processor this thing has in it? Do we know, do we know any of its specs? Does it have RAM?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Um, A, A18 is the chip. Um, so the Apple TV has the A19, but the A18 is what powers the, the Siri AI.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  The Apple TV has more processing power than the...

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  It's plenty of process. Both of them are going to be vastly overpowered for what you need on these devices.

• 59:54Speaker 03

  I'm just curious why you would make that choice. Sure.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  This thing is cheaper than the Apple TV. What are we doing here?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  They're the same price, aren't they?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Oh, you're right. They're the same price.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  Same price.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  Very confusing, all the way around.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would, I know. I was surprised. I was like, ooh, yeah. I was actually thinking this was gonna be $350.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  The Apple TV is a game console, you guys. Come on, get it to your heads.

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  I don't think the, this isn't the computer. Like, this is the other big smart home philosophical swirl, is where does the computer live in your house? So if you wanna have a bunch of automations, or you just want everything to connect to something, you have to make some choices. And I would, you know, these are abstractions, but like, in the Google ecosystem, kind of everything, like, lives in the cloud. Like, in a way, like, in a very Googly way. That's true somewhat of Alexa as well, although those devices are... Jen's just, I'm just looking at Jen to see if I'm getting this right. This is very much like taking a test live.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  They both have some local control, but the majority is through the cloud.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  Right. All the logic and all the automations live in the cloud. The Apple ecosystem is the most confusing ecosystem of them all. Like, sometimes, if your Apple Home breaks, the way to fix it is by restarting your iPhone.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Your iPhone.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  And I don't know why. And this device carries it through. They haven't been like, okay, this thing is in your house, it's a computer, it's gonna run all the logic.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  I was hoping it would have more. I asked, I was like, is, does it do something special as a home hub, or is it just like all the others?

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  Right. And, and if you leave your house with your phone, or you don't have a phone running iOS 27, this thing has different capabilities, which is bananas.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Apple doesn't acknowledge the existence of people who don't have iPhones running the latest version of iOS, which is fine.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  But, but what I'm saying is, like, if, again, the question is, like, where is the computer?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  I think this is the computer. I think, I think...

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  No, no, no. The computer is still your phone.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  No, it's, it, it, sure. Like, no, Neel, I love you, but no one actually cares where the computer is. People care where they get to the computer.

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Trust me, the second your Apple Home breaks, you'll be like, show me the fucking computer, because I need to unplug it and plug it back in. And then you will find yourself, like, restarting your Apple Watch, like, hopping up and down on one foot, and like, logging out of iCloud. You're like, just show me the computer.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Sure. I, I, all of that is true, but I think, I think Apple looks at this and says, this, for a lot of people, in their home, is the computer. It's, it is the central device that will manage everything. And, and how all of that works is abstract by design.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  No, I, yeah, it's abstract, but it's also, you, you, you are very confidently answering a different question, which is, where does HomeKit live? That's the question I'm asking. What is the device on which HomeKit operates? In, in Apple's case, it's all of them at once.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Which is, in the context of this being the first smart home device that you buy, is just, again, I have a million questions about how that will work for regular people.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Well, I wrote a whole piece about this, saying I wanted, um, Apple to launch, like, a home hub that was also a router, that's also a local AI processing, that does everything, like, that is your computer that runs your smart home. We saw these at IFA this year. There were two companies, Ufi and Ugreen, launched these kind of whole home computer NAS device storage systems for your home that run local AI. But that's, that's definitely, you know, that's the MacBook, that's the Mac Pro trashcan level of smart home, not, not the HomePad, HomeView level of smart home.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  I mean, we, I'm, we have people who have just full-on home webs in our comments here, right? Like, it's, like, there is, there's a big spectrum in the market, but...

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  And that's okay. This is the thing. So, I, I just...

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  Neil is mad that it's not for me.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Philosophically, this is one of the things about this device that is the most interesting. And, and like you said, for a company like Apple, that only makes things that are ostensibly for everybody, the Vision Pro threw people off because it was for nobody. And this is very much not for everybody. And I, I think, I think, and one of the things that I, I believe in my heart, is that this device would have made a hell of a lot more sense to a hell of a lot more people three years ago, which is probably when Apple wanted to launch it.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  When they were supposed to launch it.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Siri AI screwed the HomeView, because Siri AI wasn't any good when it was supposed to come out. And then it came out, and it is too late, and they have missed a lot of the people for whom this would have made sense, could have been the beginning of the smart home journey, like, would have brought a lot of people in. And instead, we just like...

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Those people bought Echo shows.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  We just let chaos reign for two more years. People built weird things, and this does not slot into any of those things.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  Wait, to be clear, Jen just wrote a piece about living with Alexa Plus for one year, and it's not like they solved it either. It's not like there's a whole, like, the market is done. Like, it's still pretty bad all around.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  The market is done in the sense that people are, people that are in it are fed up with it, and people that aren't in it are like, why would I get involved in that? It looks really...

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  If, if you're not already a person with a smart home device, do you want a smart home device is such an open question.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  I keep telling, when I talk, I was just at the Z-Wave Summit a couple of weeks ago, um, and I, I was talking to...

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  My, I just got the hard eyes. This is what I'm saying.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  That's where you go to enjoy entertainment.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  Is, was it, is the building the shape of a Z? Just answer...

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  They don't have a building anymore, though.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Silicon Labs sold them. But yes, um, I was at the Z-Wave Summit, and I was talking to, I did a little presentation about, like, what people want from the smart home. And I was like, we, we, the problem today is that we are not, a, manufacturers are not able to explain the benefits of the smart home. We need to tell the stories of the smart home. This is what I do, try and do in my reviews. It's like, how does this help me in my daily life? How does this work in my home? How does it help with my kids? You know, too many things are about protocols and, and plugs and, and hubs, and, and there's not enough about, like, this is what you can actually do. I think most people come to the smart home from a single-point solution.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  They have something they need to fix. They fix it with a device, a garage door controller, a video doorbell, a smart door lock. And then they start to see, oh, this is kinda neat, maybe I can try something else. But when that first experience is bad, that's where things start to fall apart. And this is, this is Apple's angle here, I think, is, we're gonna make that first experience good, hopefully, and then you'll buy more things.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Agreed. All right. We are, we're getting kicked out of, well, Jen is getting kicked out of the studio in 15 minutes, and we still need to listen to Neel. I tried to convince us all to buy $300 Apple TVs. But, before that, we need to...

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Get ready. I'm gonna sell you this...

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  It looks just like the old one. They didn't even, like, make it fancy.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  We're gonna take one more really quick break, and then we're gonna come back. We're gonna finish up. Be right back.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Bitwarden. October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and here's an upgrade that actually gives you something back: time. With fewer password resets, less typing thanks to autofill, and no more trying to remember which variation of your dog's name you used this time. Bitwarden is a trusted open-source solution for password, password, and secrets management. It makes secure password management available to everyone with a free forever plan for individuals. That way, all users have a reliable way to create, manage, and autofill strong and unique passwords across accounts and devices. Bitwarden uses end-to-end encryption to protect vault data, while secure autofill helps reduce phishing risk by matching credentials to the right sites,

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  giving users greater peace of mind when logging in. Bitwarden is trusted by over 15 million users and 80,000 businesses across 180 countries and 50-plus languages. Get started with a basic free plan for individuals, or protect your business today with a free trial. This Cyber Security Awareness Month, check out Bitwarden. Visit bitwarden.com to get started.

• 1:07:54Speaker 10

  What if we told you there was one thing you could eat to reduce your risk of death by about a quarter? Interested?

• 1:08:01Speaker 11

  And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, improve your mood, and keep your weight stable?

• 1:08:08Speaker 10

  No, it's not protein. It's actually fiber, the least sexy, most overlooked nutrient of all.

• 1:08:15Speaker 11

  But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you stir into some water gonna do it for you?

• 1:08:23Speaker 10

  All that, plus the strange tale of the gorilla poop-obsessed father of cornflakes in the latest episode of Gastropod. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:08:36Speaker 12

  Everyone's talking about the prospect of a democratic wave in the midterm elections. But here's something that matters just as much: the battle to control state legislatures.

• 1:08:46Speaker 13

  That's the most important thing we should be focusing on right now.

• 1:08:49Speaker 12

  The GOP has a trifecta in 23 states, which means they control the governorcy, plus the state house and the state senate. For Democrats, it's 16 states.

• 1:09:00Speaker 13

  Meaning that the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of our state supports, things like increasing minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion.

• 1:09:11Speaker 12

  If Democrats flip just a handful of state legislatures, the majority of Americans will now live in a state under full democratic control, which could have big policy implications.

• 1:09:23Speaker 13

  That's all on the table with the Democratic trifecta.

• 1:09:25Speaker 12

  This week on America Actually, we're in Wisconsin, and we talked to Francesca Hong.

• 1:09:30Speaker 13

  We have an opportunity through Wisconsin to actually start improving the brand for Democrats.

• 1:09:36Speaker 12

  Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Neelai Patel, it's your time to shine, baby. $299 Apple TV 4K, the first update in four years. Hit me.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  They added Siri AI. They did it. Look, I'm gonna say, is it RAM's expensive?

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  RAM's expensive. We live in a time. And people have these for 10 years. I think I legitimately have an Apple TV that is like eight years old.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And it was the last one. So, the two features basically are, there's some interesting surround sound stuff, but the big one is you can, there are far-field microphones, right? So you can talk to Siri AI without using the microphone. You can also, I think, ping the remote now directly to be able to find it.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  And it uses Bluetooth channel sounding, which is kind of neat.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Sure. Jen, what do you make of this thing?

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  It's a cheaper version of UWV.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Most of the time, our commenters, I think, like nice things. In this case, the overwhelming reaction has been, why on earth is this $299 and why would anyone buy it? Do you have a reasonable case for it against that argument?

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Why is it $299? I think they, well, the far-field microphones, I mean, they've added more hardware into this. I think the far-field microphones is a good move, because this is essentially a HomePod mini in your living room now, although you can also pair now, that's one of the other features, is you can pair up to four HomePods for surround sound. But I think having, being able to talk directly to the TV is, is it probably the best new feature here, along with being able to find your remote? But I was surprised when they sent over the price in. I was like, whoa. This is $50 more than the top-level one now, which has all the same features, except

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  for the far-field microphones and the Siri AI, so that does have the faster processor. So this is, it's kind of like buying the advice that we give when you buy a computer, right? Buy the most expensive one you can afford, because it'll last the longest. And this has the A19 chip, it has the 128 gig of RAM, it has the extra features.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Is this the only one?

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  And it has Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0, so it's like the top of, it's specced out. It's fully specced for streaming.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  For what? What does it do with any of that?

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  My Apple TV lives in a rack in the closet plugged into Ethernet. I don't need any of that stuff.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Like, not a little bit of it.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Neelai, we did get a comment that said in all caps, "Ask Neelai about HTMI pass-through on this thing." Your thoughts?

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Why does he need HTMI pass-through? Yes, you can plug your cable box directly into the Apple TV, recapitulating the doomed Xbox strategy.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Input one, baby.

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  From 2014. Oh my god. But like, I think the real answer here is that Apple knows that most people don't even buy these anymore, right? They use whatever software is on their TVs, it's undoubtedly spying on them with ACR. And then when their TV software gets slow, they go and buy a $39 Roku stick, which is also spying on them. And that is where they deliver Apple TV, the service, not the platform. And that is fine. Like, Apple doesn't want to be in this business. And there's some set of people that will just pay the money, whatever amount of money that is, for this device, and they'll have it for a long time.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  So it's the Mac Pro, is what you're saying?

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  No, it's not the Mac Pro. It's more like, if you're an expensive Apple customer, you, there's just pricey elasticity. You're like, I'll never buy a Roku. And then you're like, well, I don't care. Like, oh no, some doubloons fell out of my pocket, I guess I bought an Apple TV. Like, I think they're in the part of the market with this where they have no intention of being mass market, and like, Greg Joswiak is offended by the idea of having a Google TV.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Well, can I, can I just add one thing to that theory? I think most of that is right. I also think it is true that, deep inside of Apple Park, they believe that they are good at gaming, and that just, just around the corner, Apple is going to be a great gaming console, and the Apple TV is going to suddenly be that thing.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  We're like two turns from the whole point of Apple doing AI, being decompiling PC games and running them on M-series processors.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  No man's sky is coming to iPad in like two weeks. It's gonna change everything, Neelai.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  It's right there. They're like, finally, we've cracked PC gaming by doing the bleeding edge of copyright infringement. Like, whatever that is, it's fine. But yeah, some part of them believes that this is a game console, and that's fine. But I think they just need to have this device, and for the numbers of Apple TVs they sell, it does not matter how much they cost.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Okay, wait.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  The people who buy them do not care about money.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  I just want to shout out the comment that just came in, suggesting that GTA 6 is coming to Apple TV. Can you imagine? Next week, they're like, and it runs native, like, the world would explode. Immediate best $300 purchase offer.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Toadguy, my boy Toadguy in the chat, says he bought three Apple TVs, and the most he spent was a buck 39 on sale. Yeah, sure, that's when they had like two or three of them. There used to be a cheap one and an expensive one. Remember, you could buy one with like additional storage?

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Just for the hell of it?

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  Just like, why? Like, I need a, I need a terabyte of storage for my Apple TV.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  And they're all gone. This is the only one you can buy now.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  This is the only one. And that, I'm saying, I think they have recognized the reality of the TV market. In the way that I think the HomeView is disconnected from the reality of smart homes, I think the Apple TV is like right in the pocket of TVs.

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  Well, and it is also, for the smart home nerds, is the ideal Apple Home hub, because it has the Ethernet. It's the only way, and that, and most Apple Home users, super users, have an Apple TV because of the, being able to have that consistent hardwired connection. And Apple Home has this feature that selects your hub for you, and it will often not select the Apple TV with Ethernet. And people got so mad that they changed it so that you could go in and manually select it.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  It took like five years.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  It took a while.

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  By the way, this is a total, like, niche feature of Apple Home, but like, when it was announced, people celebrated.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  It's like, I'm gonna pick a default Home Hub for my app.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  I can finally, I can finally choose my TV.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  I think my frustration with this one is just that, there are basically only two good streaming boxes, and it's the Nvidia Shield, which Nvidia doesn't care about in any way, shape, or form. And there's the Apple TV, which Apple clearly doesn't care about in any way, shape, or form. And it is so obvious that if somebody was just actually interested in building a good product at a competitive price, it would probably work, and no one is willing to take a run at it in a real way.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  You can't, because the Roku model, we'll just use Roku, but this is the model for Amazon, it's the model for Google. They, they have done the Apple app model at scale on televisions. So if you buy a Roku, you can get a Roku for $39. Amazon will just like fire a, fire TV stick at you if you blink at Prime. They're not, they're obviously not making any money on the hardware. They, to every app on those devices, they say, if you run ads, if you have any advertising in your app, we get 30%. And it all has to come through our servers, and we have to see it, we're gonna track it into all the data. And so they're just sitting back, and being like, we gave away free cable boxes, and we are collecting fees on the advertising that runs on those cable boxes.

• 1:17:09Speaker 03

  And Apple won't do that, that, it's like too grimy for Apple. I think if they could do it, they would, in the sense that they love to pay fees on their platforms.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  I don't think anything is too grimy for Apple at this point.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  But that, like, that connected TV advertising market is like very grimy. Like, you can't imagine any Apple employees like being at those conferences. It's like, it's not, it's not acceptable to them. And so I think they're fine. They're like, fine, like LG is gonna do data collection, and Vizio is going to continue to relentlessly exist and sell 100-inch LCD TVs that don't look bad for $5. And everyone's like, man, TVs are cheap. Like, that's all fine. And then if you want to pay for privacy, and Apple's conception of privacy, you can pay $300 for this Apple TV. And there's no, there's no business model under it, except you subscribe to channels somewhere.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  And where else are you gonna go? It's, there, there just are not a lot of games in this particular town. Before we go, let's talk about the HomePod for just a second. I think this is actually a much more exciting upgrade with more.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  A lot of people shout out the Nvidia Shield in our chat, and I just want to tell you, I love you. Nvidia doesn't.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  I'm not sure Nvidia is aware that it still makes the Shield.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  They have, they are literally frying bigger fish.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  And in fact, I, I wrote, uh, let's see, it was four years ago now that, uh, the fact that the Nvidia Shield is still one of the best set-top boxes on the market is a truly damning fact about the state of the set-top box market, and it is ever more true now. Um, but let's talk about the HomePod Mini for just a second, because I think the, the-

• 1:18:43Speaker 03

  Wait, wait, wait, the Shield was discontinued, uh, 10 days ago, but the Shield Pro lives on with a 50% price hike.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Great job, everybody. Uh, the HomePod Mini 2, uh, $149, price went up a little bit, price went up on everything. It's, it's not a cheap little speaker. Um, two new things, basically. One is Sound Glow, which syncs it to AlbumArt, which I don't care about at all. Um, much more exciting is the fact that you can actually much more successfully put this into your Apple ecosystem now. Like Jen, you mentioned, you can now pair it with the new Apple TV and do surrounds on that way. You can make it your Mac's default speaker.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Other than the fact that this thing has to be plugged in, which I think it still has to be plugged in, right? Other than that, this is very close to being the thing we've always wanted the HomePod Mini to be.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  But it does not have Siri AI.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  This is...

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  So it has the faster, yes, but I mean, it's been six years since they did a proper refresh. And this, this was limping along on an S5 chip, um, which is an Apple Watch chip from like, I don't know, last decade. I mean, um, and this, this now has the S10. Um, they didn't do much more on the sort of hardware front. It's very much still the same speaker. Um, but the S10 is supposed to power Siri AI, but it's not launching with it. Um, it's coming in a later software update. And actually Siri AI on the Apple TV is in beta. So this Siri AI is finally ready for the smart home shtick seems to be actually maybe a little paper thin. Because just like we've seen with all the other platforms

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  as they've rolled out their AI-powered assistants, um, they hit some bumps in the road. Um, but in terms of the device, like what you might want to upgrade for to get this, if your Siri AI is not on your roadmap, um, I think being able to work as speakers for your, um, Mac is great. And actually stick, because you've always been able to like AirPlay, but they've, they've said they've sort of underlying, they've done an underlying audio architecture revamp to make this really latency-free, and you compare two side by side, and they color match with your iMac if you're-

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, just the fact that they can just, they can act like, like speakers. You don't have to point to them as a destination. They can just be your computer speakers.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Is a, a meaningful thing. They're still expensive. I wish they had gotten more of a sound upgrade. Uh, Neelai, are you a HomePod guy? What's your, what's your little speaker of choice?

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  Do we, we don't, we have speakers in the, we have fancy clip speakers in the ceiling all through this house.

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  Schneider Electric is in there doing something.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  We have Schneider Electric devices in this house. Uh, little speaker of choice. We have, um, we have old Sonos 1 SLs that don't have microphones.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  So no smart speakers, just smart displays?

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  We have one Sonos 1, uh, that it still has Google Assistant, because we're a Google family. And we're only a Google family because of the existence of Google Photos, which looks really good on the Home Hub. Right? And you start there and you kind of move through the rest of it. But our, the Sonos Ones, we don't, we didn't even upgrade to the AR300s. Like, those sound great. I have one that's been mounted outside on the back patio. These are not technically waterproof. It's just been outside for three years and it's fine.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Okay. We, we need to go, but here, here is my demand of both of you before we go. When, when you guys get your Home Views, I, I just want, I want to be there for the unboxing and the like incredible existential crisis it causes both of you of, am I going to literally rip things out of the walls of my house to support this device? Or am I just going to accept that the Home View is not for me and move on with my life?

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  A lot of people are going to buy this device and then very quickly buy a Raspberry Pi to run HomeBridge. I guarantee you that will be the next thing that happens, as a lot of people are going to under, figure out very quickly that you can actually bridge everything into HomeKit if you're willing to do one more turn of integration. And all of those companies that make the commercialized HomeBridge installs, there was one called Hoobz, which is Joanna Stern's favorite. I'm just going to throw that out there. She laughs every time I say it. Um, uh, there, this, the explosion of popularity, because you're going to want to bring everything into the screen.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  I already have holes in my walls where I have, I have one that I made for an iPad Mini. But the annoying thing about this is it's going to be too small. I'm still going to have, I'm going to have to do some filler around the sides. So it will be going in my wall and on my counter. I'd like to try, I'd like to try both. Because I do feel like there's two, two different use cases there. It's like the Echo Hub is their wall-mounted version, and then you have the, the tabletop device, which becomes more of a enjoyment, entertainment enjoyment experience.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 1:23:31Speaker 03

  We had a very old, I feel very dumb right now, because we had a very old, well, if you get really into smart home, you also get pretty good at drywall. This is like, these, these things go together. Um, we had a very old intercom system that I ripped out and I patched, but it was wired with Ethernet and the drop goes to the basement.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  This is what I'm saying. 19-hour Vergecast of just Neelai pacing around his house, trying to figure out what to do with the Home View.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  You know what I did in livestream, and I should have, and I think it would have put me, I would have been like a very rich Twitch streamer if I had livestreamed this. When we moved into this house, I ran around with an Ethernet toner, finding all the, all the drops for the, because we rewired the-

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Precisely Apple's target market, Neelai Patel.

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  All of the landlines, all of the landlines in this house were, were wired with RJ6, so we just did that.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  All right. We need to get out of here. That is it for this episode of Smart Home Sycos, uh, a podcast within a podcast of the Vergecast, which just continues to spawn new weird shows. Uh, thank you to both of you for being here. Um, I should say, all of these products are coming out kind of over the course of the next month, so we'll have lots more to say about all of it. We're, we're going to get one of these into Jen's house, and she's going to break everything with it, and I'm very excited to hear all about it. Thank you both for being here. Thank you to Travis and our whole team for producing. Thank you to all of you for being here, hanging out with us. It's been incredibly fun. We will see you next time. Neelai?