512 Pixels

Do you remember “Everything is a Remix,” the series of work by Kirby Ferguson? His main premise is that almost all the creative work we see in the world derives inspiration from what came before it.

I think Apple’s just-announced HomeView may be the latest entry in the list of things that prove Ferguson’s point.

To put it in another set of terms: the HomeView is “new but somehow familiar,” to borrow a Jony Ive phrase. I think it applies to just about every aspect of this product.

The HomeView’s existence is not a surprise, as it was rumored for ages. With it, Apple has moved into a space previously occupied mostly by products from Google (Nest?) and Amazon, albeit at a higher price point. What does that $299 price get you?

Hardware

Right off the bat, we have to address something — a bunch of people have compared it to the iMac G4:

I mean, come on. Sure, the HomeView’s 7-inch square display doesn’t move in all the ways the iMac’s display did, but I’ll take a hit of that sweet nostalgia. If the next version includes a larger display with more flexibility, I may pass out.

From the front, the HomeView strongly resembles an Apple Watch sized for a giant. The aluminum base looks right at home in Apple’s lineup, and should wear much better than the fabric-covered HomePods, especially in a kitchen.

I am very curious as to how it sounds. The base and its included woofer aren’t that big, and Apple has put some of the speakers in the display to compensate. I assume Apple has done a good job here, but I’m looking forward to hearing one myself.

Apps & Services

Here are the biggest remixes. The clock face looks a lot like Apple Watch faces¹ and iOS’ StandBy had a baby:

I love the customization here; I think finding a setup that matches your space will be totally doable.

Apple’s own apps follow this same trajectory. Reminders, Home, Music, Podcasts, and more look like themselves, just tweaked for the form factor. If your life is in these apps, the HomeView will be much more useful.

A lot of that comes down to the third-party app story, which is … weird. Unlike basically every other part of Apple’s ecosystem, the HomeView does not have an App Store. Instead, it has Apple’s built-in apps and “compatible third-party audio and video apps.”

Under the hood, it seems that some of these apps will be projected from the user’s iPhone, not unlike CarPlay apps. Here is a bit from Julian Chokkattu’s article at Wired:

It doesn’t have an App Store. Instead, Apple has a curated selection of apps, including FaceTime, Messages, and Safari. A handful of third-party media apps like Spotify are available, and developers can bring over existing CarPlay apps. If your iPhone already has one of these CarPlay apps installed, it can automatically appear on the HomeView after setup. (There are no video streaming apps like YouTube, Netflix, or Disney+, but if those companies choose to make their apps available on the CarPlay framework, they will show up on the HomeView; for now, you’ll have to consume videos by using the Safari browser.)

Will the HomeView become a carrot for developers to support CarPlay? I doubt it, but time will tell.

This may seem like it goes against my premise that the HomeView is a remix, but I don’t think it does. Instead of an App Store, HomeView relies on Apple’s first-party apps and the user’s iPhone — and the apps that are already on that device. The glue holding most of that together? A mix of iCloud and Continuity.

Whatever apps are available, they are all accessible on a scrolling screen intermixed with widgets. Apple hasn’t shared a lot of information about this — the HomeView isn’t even on the developer website as of this writing — but Apple has a couple of ways that widgets can show up across devices.

Back in macOS Sonoma, Apple added the ability to show iPhone widgets on the Mac. In iOS 26, CarPlay gained support for iPhone widgets as well. I fully expect that all third-party iOS widgets will be able to run on the HomeView, just as they do on the Mac.²

Then there’s Siri AI, which is at the heart of the product, and supposedly why it didn’t ship a year ago. The HomeView taps into your personal context, just like your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. That means it should be able to extract details from your messages, emails, notes, calendar, and more in response to a query. Siri AI can also pull from its world knowledge and will sync conversations back to the Siri app on your iPhone.

Smart Home Controls

In addition to Apple’s first-party apps making it more useful, the HomeView’s value also comes from Apple’s smart home platform, which has seen both ups and downs over the years, but this product is a clear message from Apple that it believes in HomeKit.

The HomeView can easily become a smart home controller, with controls for your favorites. In most of Apple’s press photos, these controls are front and center, like this one of the wall-mounted version.

I run Home Assistant behind the scenes, but my family interacts with things like smart plugs and the garage door³ using HomeKit, usually via one of the HomePod minis⁴ I have placed around the house.

This has led to some frustration over the years when a HomePod doesn’t hear them correctly. Tapping a button would certainly clear that up.

Multiple Users

We now have a mix of hardware and software and services, but the HomeView goes one step further than some of Apple’s other products with its support of up to six users. Here’s a bit from Apple’s press release:

HomeView recognizes up to six people and delivers a personalized experience for each one. Each user gets their own personalized Home Screen with apps and widgets. Personal content stays private from others, while shared photo albums and music can be easily enjoyed by everyone in a household, including guests.

This recognition can be via sight (with the HomeView’s built-in Center Stage camera) or by voice, as shown in Apple’s promo video:

The video shows this working in a lightning-fast way, and I hope that is true. Out of everything about this product, this is the feature I am most curious about. I have had very mixed results with personal requests on my HomePod minis.

The Apple Way

The HomeView doesn’t bring that much new to the table in terms of raw innovation. Instead, it’s like some product folks walked around Apple Park, picked some of the best parts of the company’s ecosystem, and baked them into one device.

That is by no means a complaint on my part. As someone steeped in Apple’s ecosystem, I love that my notes and tasks and bookmarks and messages and events are on all of my devices, all of the time. The HomeView is a new surface for that content and information, and a showcase of what Apple can do when its various teams work together on something new.

I’m a little surprised by this bit of news, and sad that my beloved orange model is gone.

Mojave Paint for Mac is a love letter to image editing programs of the past — a time before generative AI, infinitely customizable tool palettes, and online-required subscription access.

With familiar layer-based rendering and powerful typography tools, Mojave Paint works equally well for design or photography. Use masks on any filter or adjustment to get the right look on a photo, or make the best-looking flyer for a lost cat your neighborhood telephone pole has ever seen.

Sprinkled throughout, you’ll find nice touches you won’t find in competing products from the world’s billion-dollar companies. Keep an eye on the Mojave Paint blog for updates.

Mojave Paint is available on the Mac App Store with a 14-day free trial. After that, it’s normally $9.99, but this week it’s on sale for $4.99.

Mark Gurman, writing two days before Apple’s event this week:

The centerpiece is a new smart home hub called the HomeView. Equipped with a display and an A18 chip, the product essentially serves as the Siri command center for an Apple-powered household…

The HomeView comes in two versions: a countertop model with a metal speaker base and a wall-mounted version with a flat, square base that sits against the wall beneath the display. The countertop offering will come in four colors: space gray, silver, starlight and pink, while the wall-mounted version will be limited to space gray and silver.

I certainly like this name more than “HomePad.” This product is designed to give users a look into their personal information and smart home. HomeView totally works.

My thanks to NAS Reborn for sponsoring the site this week. It turns an iPhone 6s, iPad Air 2, or anything newer into a network drive for the Finder, the Files app and even Windows Explorer. Check out the TestFlight beta for iPhone, iPad and Mac at nasreborn.com.

Next week should be fun.

This week on the podcast:

Federico talks about pixels, Myke talks about Steve Jobs, and Stephen talks about scratches.

We just closed our annual St. Jude campaign and raised an amazing amount of money. Together, the Relay community donated $756,200.97 to assist St. Jude in understanding, treating, and defeating childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

That means that since 2019, the community has given just shy of $5.6 million for this noble cause. That number truly leaves me speechless.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Your donations mean that more families will have more tomorrows with their children, just like we have enjoyed with our son.

After my recent post about how Apple Maps butchers the Great American Pyramid, several readers sent in images of other pyramids Apple has rendered properly. One in particular is quite painful to see — Luxor Las Vegas.

Here is the hotel in satellite view, and then in Apple’s 3D rendered view:

It seems that Apple does have the technology to make smooth pyramids!

In a kitchen drawer, between a key that fitted no door and a knot of charging cables, lay an iPhone 6s. It had once been the newest phone in the house, and it had taken more pictures of the cat than anyone would ever look at. Then one Christmas a bigger phone arrived, the old one went into the drawer “for now,” and for now lasted nine years. “We are retired, you and I,” said the key. “I am resting,” said the iPhone.

One evening a hand took it out, plugged it in and installed NAS Reborn. It heard the Mac in the study — which had never once spoken to — ask for a folder, and the iPhone appeared in the Finder as if it had always belonged there.

Then the Mac wanted to hand over its Time Machine backups. “I have only sixteen gigabytes,” the iPhone whispered. So the hand brought a hard drive, a broad, quiet fellow who hummed to himself, and joined the two with Apple’s Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, which took the charger as well.

Soon it served a website over HTTPS, answered anyone who spoke S3 and took in Git repositories from Working Copy, all on a few watts. The things in the drawer did not believe a word, and the key still tells everyone that the iPhone is only resting.

NAS Reborn turns an iPhone 6s, iPad Air 2 or anything newer into a network drive for the Finder, the Files app and Windows Explorer. Join the TestFlight beta for iPhone, iPad and Mac at nasreborn.com.

Starting at noon Eastern, I’ll be live-streaming from the St. Jude campus with five of my favorite people in the world, raising money for one of the most incredible places in the world.

I expect we will hit our campaign goal while on the air, which is going to be magical. Tune in!

Mark Gurman, writing about Apple’s upcoming move into more smart home devices, which we may see as early as this month:

At the center of the strategy is a smart-home hub code-named J490, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple also plans to announce the first update to the HomePod mini since that device’s 2020 debut and its first new TV set-top box since 2022.

…

The hub’s defining feature will be its ability to serve multiple members of a household. It is designed to recognize who is speaking to it or approaching it, and then display personalized content and provide answers based on that person’s data and accounts.

When a user walks up, for example, the device will show that person’s contacts, messages, calendar appointments, notes and preferred app layout. The interface can then change automatically when another recognized household member approaches. It will also have a mode for visitors that hides personal information.

The device identifies users by their voices or through a facial-recognition system, though the latter is less reliable than Face ID on the iPhone. Users can require secondary authentication through an iPhone if they don’t want to rely solely on voice or facial recognition. The iPhone also serves as a fallback when the hub cannot identify someone correctly.

I really hope this works well, but that’s on Apple to prove. A lot of the company’s devices are shockingly single-user.¹

The HomePod can support multiple users, but my experience with that has been pretty rough. That’s not a big deal for a lot of people, but something with a screen is going to need to support families in a much deeper way.

Gurman’s reporting makes me optimistic about this being better, but I also have questions. Let me re-quote part of his article:

When a user walks up, for example, the device will show that person’s contacts, messages, calendar appointments, notes and preferred app layout. The interface can then change automatically when another recognized household member approaches. It will also have a mode for visitors that hides personal information.

We have a HomePod mini in our kitchen near the sink. The countertop in front of it is often used for food prep, and when things are busy, my wife, at least one of our kids, and I are all using that space. Is the HomePad just going to endlessly cycle between sets of information? What controls will I have to manage that from being a rotating billboard?

I can’t wait to see the details, because in a device like this, they really matter.