713: I Have Medium Hopes

So With That In Mind I Think We're Going To Eschew No Let Me Reboot That Because I Realized I Don't Know How To Pronounce That Properly Oh You Got It Right That's What I Thought And Then It Sounded Wrong All right No You Had It No We're Going to Try it Again And You Because I Just Pick a Different Word To No We're Going to Reboot It We're You Follow Up Yes Chew I Needed To Swear So Marco Wouldn't Use It All right And That's Not A Challenge Not A Challenge Oh Yeah Because He Never Uses The Audio When You Curse Yeah Right

We Never Keep Those Parts Of The Show Don't We're Not A Challenge All right Let Me Reboot That Hello And Goodbye Future Marco I'm Totally Using That All right With That In Mind We Are Going To Eschew Follow Up For This Episode We Will Keep It Askew If You Will Wow But We're Going To Go Straight Into The Not Event Event And We're Going To Talk About Apple's New Home Products And We're Going To Start With Home View Which Is A Name That Doesn't Offend Me But Doesn't Rev My Engine

Either HomePod With A Screen Is What We've Been Calling It For Years Right Because The Rumors From Years And Years Ago It's Like It's Like A HomePod But It Has A Screen And You Know That's It's Distinguishing Characteristic As The Date Approached To Like When You Know This Was Supposed Going To Be Announced I Started To See More People Saying Home Pad Which Makes Some Am Amount Of Sense But If You're Listening To This You're Like They Would Never Call It Home Pad Because They Already Have Home Pod And Who Would Make Two Products With Such

Confusingly Similar Names Well If You're New To Apple They Used To Have A Product Called The iPod And Then At Some Part In The Future They Were Gonna Make A Tablet And Everyone Was Like What Are They Going To Call The Tablet The I Slate Certainly They're Not Going To Call It iPad They Called It iPad So They Made The iPod And They Made The iPad They Made The Home Pod They Did Not Make The Home Pad They Called It Home View Which You Know It's Got A Screen So You View It Makes Sense

Apple Is Really Not You Know If You Think You Know What Apple Is Going To Do With Names They Usually Zig When You Think They're Going To Zag I Think Home View Is Better Than Home Pad But It's Not A Great Name I Think One Of The Challenges With Home View Is That It Doesn't Have Any Unique Or Interesting Words Apple Product Naming Strategy For A Long Time Has Been Just Putting Apple In Front Of A Generic Word Apple TV

Apple Watch Apple Music Apple Music Apple Was The Brand But These Were All Pretty Boringly Named And They For A Little While Could Have A Little Bit More Of A Trademark Unique Name iPhone I Mean Obviously Back When Everything Was I Something Those All Had Those iPod And That Led To Home Pod But Still It's like Generic Word But Pod So That Helped iPad You know Again Like The Pad Was

Kind Of Both Of Those But I Feel Like Home View It's Like No Part Of This Name Is Interesting Or Unique To Apple It's Just Like When You're Filing A Trademark Forgive me I'm not A Trademark Lawyer But I Filed A Bunch Of Them And So I Know The Gist Of It

You Generally Can't Get A Strong Trademark On It Or Even Maybe Any Trademark On It And I Feel Like Home View Is Like It's Almost That Boring Like It's Not Quite To That Level Like I'm Sure They Secure The Trademark But It's Just Describing With Two Boring Words Glued Together What This Is Like Okay It's Fine I Do Wish There Was A Little Bit More Personality In The Name But What The Hell It's Not A Bad Name It's Just A Name That

We Even As Apple Nerds Are Going To Almost Immediately Have Trouble Remembering And Civilians Aren't Going To Stand A Chance Ask Anyone Who's Not An Apple Nerd What This Product Is Called In Six Months Nobody Will Know I Guarantee It That's The Interesting Thing About HomePod Because Pod Exists Because Of The iPod And The iPod Was Very Popular At The Time And People Latched On To It Pretty Well And I Feel Like The Only reason HomePod Makes Any Kind Of Sense With Consumers Is Because

The iPod Existed And They're Like Yeah Whatever Apple Makes Pods And You Know I Wonder How How People Call The HomePod An iPod Just Because You Know Pod Is In The Name But Practically Speaking What Is Pod About The HomePod It Is Pod Shaped I Mean Like A lot Of Things Apple Makes Are Arguably Pod Shaped What Is A Pod And It's A Home Pod I Mean It Doesn't Even Have Anything To Do With Sound In There Like It Is A Big Speaker But There's Nothing To do With Audio Sound Like Nothing In That Vein Is In

There It's Almost Like They Said We Made The iPod People Know We Made The iPod It Was Really Popular Stick Home In Front Done At At At At At Home So It's Like A Thing For Your Home And You Look At It Which Okay But I Do Think It Makes More Sense Than Home Pod But It Is A Worst Name For The Reasons You Just Said Mark It Was Like Home Is Not A Thing That Apple Owns In Any Particular Way And View Is Definitely Not A Thing That Apple Owns So When You Stick Them Together It Doesn't Really Say Apple But Like All These Names Like I Hated Mac Book And Still Don't Particularly Like It But Eventually You Just Get Used

To It Even iPad Was Ridiculed When It First Came Out Because People Were So Attached With Slate And All Their Rumors That Were Going Around That When They Called It Pad Everyone Was Like Ugh But You Just Get used To It You Do But I Hope That Apple Starts Adding More Terms That Kind Of Say Apple Like They Kind Of I Think Neo And Duo Are Small Steps In That Direction Not Like You Know They're Not Super Strong Because They're Not Super Unique Neo I Think Better Than Duo Well I Mean Duo Has Got Two Screens So It Makes Perfect

Sense And Neo Because It's New I Don't Yeah I Think Again I Think Neo Is A Better Step In That Direction So Maybe This Is Just Like A Boring Name Product That We Know Hopefully This Is The Anomaly But Hopefully New Products Get Like A Little More Interesting Names Either Way We Should Talk About What The Heck This Is So This Is A $300 Which I'm Going To Come Back To That In A Second A $300 Thing That Vaguely Looks Like The How Would You

Describe That IMac John The One That Was On Like A Cantilevered Yeah The IMac G4 And All The Rumored This For So Long Supposedly The Hardware Has Been Done For So Long But It Didn't Actually This Hardware It Didn't Actually Leak Picture Wise Everyone Knew It's Got a Square Screen It's Got a Dome On Top Like It Looks Like The iMac G4 People Don't Know What The Hell Is The G4 It's The One With The Arm And The Flat Screen Was On An Adjustable Arm And The Base Of It Was A Hemisphere Right And So Every

Single Fake Rendering Based On

Because You Know All The Rumors Were Like Oh It's Kind Of Like That Flat Screen iMac That Had The Thing On The Arm Every Drawing I saw Of This Every Rendering Everything Looked Like That That's Not What The Product Looks Like That Sitting On Top Of A Cylinder Yeah I Would Almost Say And I Say This Not As An Insult It Looks Like What An AI Rendering Of An Imagined Apple Product Would Look Like In The Sense That It Just Looks Like Modern

Apple Low Priority Product You Know And I Think It Looks Decent Like At At Least From The Pictures And From The Reviews That I Saw A Couple Of Video Reviews I Saw Or Video Captures From The Hands On Stuff It Looks Decent It Looks Nice And I Think It's What It Needs To Look Like There's Two Versions There's One With The Base And There's One That Just Wall Mounts And Again This Was All Been Rumored For A While So We're Kind Of Not Too Surprised But The Wall Mount

One You Want That To Be As Minimal As Possible And I Think It Is And The Base Seems Like It's To Put On Your Counter Or Whatever And It Looks Good For That It Looks Like It's Going To Be You Know It's Proportionally It Looks Like It's Going To Be Stable Nice And Heavy With That Big Base Woofer On The Bottom I Think It's Going To Look Nice And Normal On A Countertop Or On A Side Table Or Something So I Think It Is A

Aluminum And Have Holes In Them For Sound To Come Out Of And Like That's Exactly What It Looks Like Here's The Thing That Surprised Me Maybe It's Because I've Seen So Many Of Those Images So Long I Was Really Surprised At How Tall And Skinny The Base Was The Fact That It Wasn't A Hemisphere The Fact That It Is Essentially An R2D2 Or A Top Of A Rounded Trash Can It Is A Cylinder With A Hemisphere Stuck On It And It Is Way Taller Than I Thought It Would Be Now Looking At The Product I'm Like Okay It Doesn't Actually Have An Like An Arm Adjustable Arm Like The Flat

Panel iMac Did It Instead Has A Solid Piece Of Metal That Hinges Up And Down In One Dimension As As I Can Tell It's Not That And Remember There's Rumors Surrounding This Product As Well About A Version Of This With A Robotic Arm Or That Rotates By It To Face People And So On And So Forth That's Not This Product But You Can See How A Product Like That Could Be Made From These Pieces Differently Assembled With A Different Kind Of Arm And

So On And So Forth The Base Is Tall Like Again When I Look At The Product Like Okay I See Why It's Tall Now Because When You Look At It From The Front You Don't Want The Square Screen To To Be Touching The Table You Want To To To Be To So You Have The Stand Has To Be Taller Otherwise To Try To Slowly Increase The Hemisphere You End Having To Increase The Base By A Lot There's Probably Some Ratio For Those Two Things You Could Figure Out Anyway So It So It's An R2D2 Head It's Half R2D2 With The

Screen Sticking Out Of It And It Looks A Little Bit More Unganely From The The Renderings Did And The Arm Is Less An Arm And This Is How The Attaches But In The End Like You Said It Does Look Like An Apple Product And The Rumors About Those Are Wild I Can't Wait Until People Start Getting These Things Because Like The Rumor Is That This Thing Was Done So Long Ago And Let's Rewind Slightly To The First Thing Casey said $300 I Have To Admit That Is Way Less Than I Thought This Thing Would Cost And Could Not Agree More We'll Get To

Pricing Stuff In A Little Bit But I Look At It And I'm Like Is This $300 Because They Built Them All In 2024 When Things Were Cheap You Know What I Mean When Every Aspect Of This Was Cheaper Is That Why It's $300 Because They Built Literally Millions Of Them And They're Sitting In A Warehouse Waiting For You

And Has Well We'll Get To The Specs In A Second But Like It's Got A Lot Of Metal It's Got A Lot Of Pieces It Does Like It's Just Mind Bogglingly Inexpensive I Haven't Heard Anyone Complain About The Price Of This Thing Well I Think One Thing That Helps The Price Angle A Lot Is What Is Expensive Right Now It's Not Metal And Speakers It's Not Even Screens What's Expensive Right Now Is High End Chips And This Doesn't Really Appear To Have Any Of Those It's Five Nanometer Right Like Maybe But It's It's It's It's

It's It's Like Yeah There's Not Much In There Presumably There's Not A Huge Amount Of Storage Presumably There's This Sock Amount Of RAM The A18 Comes With Which I Didn't Bother To Look Up Right But Like Still Just Apple Doesn't Sell You Anything Made Of Anything For $300 When Has Apple Sold You Something With A Screen For 300 Bucks It's Hard To Get Apple Watches For That Much And They Have Much Wimpier SoCs Everything About The Apple Watches The Screen Is Small The SoC Is Small The

Battery Small There's Just Less There's Literally Less Aluminum In The Watch Less Everything In The Watch $300 This Is Not A Terrible Deal I'm Going To Say Well But I Think Also They Are Entering Into A Market That Like You Know Obviously We're All Going To Buy One Because We're Apple Nerds And We're Stupid With Money But I Think Oh Really Okay Casey's Allergic To This Product Category We'll Get There Okay But I Will Say If You Look At This Product Category From Other Makers Namely Amazon Probably Is The Most The

Biggest Player Google Has A Thing And I Think This Is More Than Both Of Those Yeah They're Like $270 Right Or $250 So It's Still In The Ballpark Of course The Apple One Is Going To Be More Expensive But Normally The Apple One Is Hilariously More Expensive Not Just Like Oh It's $30 More Than The Amazon One Like $30 More Than The Amazon One Is A Price Area That Apple Never Touches Well But I Think Sometimes They Do Just Usually Not And Usually Only Their Lowest End Product So For I Think Before Today The Home

The The Cheap Echo Dots And The Full Size Echo In Terms Of Sound Quality But It Was Between Them And Price And I Think For For Its Size Especially And Secondarily For Its Price I Think The HomePod Mini Was A Fantastic Deal For What You Get For 100 Bucks Again Not Anymore But And In The Full Size HomePod Apple Always Struggled To Move Those And I Think

HomePod And They Priced It As Such And They They Kind Of Aren't Competing With Sonos Like The Full Size HomePod I Think Was Competing A Little More With Just Like Higher End Amazon Like The Big Echo Speakers Or The Big Google Home Speakers Yeah Which Are Usually $180 $200 Something Like So I Think The $300 Full HomePod Or $350 At First I Think It Just It Was Always Well Above That Market So I Think Maybe Apple Has Learned From That A Little Bit And Maybe They Have Learned Like Hey We Really Can't Push

This Too High Because This Is Not Like A Must Have Product For A Lot Of People And All The Other Options Out There Are Going To Be Cheaper Than It So It Can't Be Too Excessive And I Think If The Way They Do That Is By Basically Offloading All Of The Expensive Operations To Your Expensive iPhone In Your Pocket Which Seems Like That's What They're Doing That's A Good Strategy For Them Because They Can Still Sell This Hardware At What Is Pretty Healthy Margins And

Still Be

I Think The Thing That's Striking To Me About This Is Whenever I See A Screen And I Think I Conceptually Understand That The Screen Is Smaller Than I Think It Is It Looks To Me To Be Like Ten Plus Inches And It's Not But I See A Screen And I Just Assume Oh That's Expensive Especially With An Apple Screen Because Generally Speaking Apple Devices Have Really Nice Screens And So I Assume Oh This Is Like A $500 Plus Product And Then I See The Price Of $300 And The Two Explanations That Make The Most Sense To Me Genuinely Is That Hey This Probably Doesn't Have A

Whole Lot Of RAM And A lot Of The Things That Are The Actual Cost These Days Because Screens The Problem But Now Arguably They're Not And Actually John I Really Think You're On To Something I Really Think These May Have Been Manufactured I I Still Think The Screen Is Probably The Most Expensive Component In This Maybe The Case I Don't Know Like But It's It's Like A Six Inch Square Screen Or At The That's The The What Do They Call It They You'll Get To It When You Read The Specs But I'm Trying To Look Up How Much RAM The A18 Had But I'm Sure It Has The Amount Of RAM That The A18 Had When It

Was In A phone Because I Don't Think They Would You Know They're Can Make A One Of These For That So Anyway And In Any Case Let's Keep Three Nanometer The 18 Is Three Nanometer So They Released A Couple Of Videos I'm Going To Talk About There's One That's The New Apple Home View That's Basically Just a Standard TV Ad It's Like 90 Seconds Or Something Like That That One Was Fine It's Exactly What You Expect They Released A Different One That I Think Was Three And A Half Minutes And It's Called A Welcome Apple Home View Designed For Life At

Slamming This Here's The Pitch If You Haven't Seen It It's A Family Getting Ready To Leave In The Morning It's Like A Brother And A Sister And A Mom And A Dad And The Hectic Morning Of Getting Out Of The Way And They're Trying To Show How The Home View Fits Into These People's Lives And It's Very Difficult To Do This Without Embarrassing Yourself

But You're Also Supposed To Show The Family Interacting With Each Other In A Realistic Way That Is A Really High Deegree Of Difficulty Because It's So Easy To Be Like Embarrassingly Corny Or Unrealistic Or Whatever And In The End We All Know There Is Artifice We're Not I Don't Think This Is Like No Real Family Is Like This Everyone Is Too Well Spoken The Timings Are Too Perfect It Is Clearly A Script Piece Of Narrative Fiction But Once You're Willing To Accept That The Goal Of This Is To Show How Semi Realistic Archetypes Of

Mom Dad Kid And Brother And Sister Would Use This Product To Fit Into Their Life And I Thought They Did Not Embarrass Themselves With The Script Writing So Whoever Wrote This Script You Did Not Embarrass Yourself Now Did You Write Something Amazing No It's Not There's No Groundbreaking Stuff Here It's Not Like Oh It Brought A Tear To My Eye Emotional It's Not The Think Different Ad Campaign Inspiring The Masses It's Just A Little Tiny Family Skit To Advertise A Product But I Was Shocked By How Little I Was Cringing While

Watching This And I I've Heard A lot Of The People Talk To This And Say Only Parents Understand This Thing Like That It Speaks To Parents But If You're Not A Parent It Just Seems Like Some Dumb Corny Family Sitcom That You Don't Want To Watch Because It's An In Formersial For A Product Like I Get It And I'm Not Saying It's Like A Tear Jerker Or Attaching To My Emotions Because I'm A Parent And I Didn't See This Ad When I Wasn't A Parent So I Don't Know But I Think There Is Something To That Because I I Have A lot A lot Of People Looking At This And Saying It's The most The most thing They've Seen And I'm Mostly With Casey I Didn't Think It Was That

Embarrassing But It Is Supposed To Tell You This Is How The Product Fits Into Your Life And Boy This Was The First Thing I Watched This Immediately Raised Tons Of Questions To Me The Second The Ad Starts It's Like A Family In A Kitchen And There's A Kitchen Island And The Family Is Rotating Around The Kitchen Island Dealing

Your Boyfriend Like It's Whole Little Skit They Fit Into This Thing Here And There's The Home View In The Center Of The Kitchen Island And Immediately I Said Okay What I Know About This Product Is That It's Not Battery Powered Like There Is No Battery inside It You Must Be Plugged In For It To Be Used Where Is That Thing Plugged In Because You Know In An Apple Ad They Are Not Going To Show A Cord Snaking From The Center Of The Kitchen Island Draping Over The Edge Of The Kitchen Island And Plugging Into A Plug That's Probably Against Code In Lots Of Regions Now On The

Side Of Their Kitchen Island So They Drilled The Hole In The Middle Of The In Island And Snake The USB C C C Through The hole That They Drilled

Gonna Have Plug It In And Maybe Connect It To A Video Source But Yeah That's Just Like Okay I'm I'm Mostly Willing To Give That A Pass Because Like Oh It's An Ad And You Know And Realistically It Would Be Shoved Into A Nook Somewhere But That Does Factor Into Their Pitch For The Product Which Is At One Point They Show Someone You Can Rotate It So

This is An Immediate Ding For Me The Second Bit Is They Show You Know And I Was Very Curious About This When I Saw This In The Ad And We'll Get To It In a Bit They Show People Using It It's Like Oh When You Look At You see Your Junk And when Dad Looks At He See His Junk And when The Daughter Looks At She

When He Looks At It It's Like Sorry You're Not You Know The Sister We Won't Show You The Text And He Shows That He's Disappointed They're Showing The Security Thing About It And That Brings Me To The Final And I Feel Like Most Important Question And The Thing I Heard Everyone Bring Up About This Video Which Is Wouldn't Every Person Be Doing All This On Their Phone Certainly The Kids Would That Is The Question Home View Has To Answer Why Should I Use This And Not My Phone Because If This Was Not An Ad For Home View You Can Bet The Girl Would Texting Her Potential Boyfriend On Her Phone

Not On The Communal Home Pod In The Middle Of The Island Regardless Of The Security Features And Don't Let Let Her See It He Shoulder Surf That Crap She Is The Dad Going To Do It On The Island For The Recipe Maybe But Then If Someone Comes And Yanks The Home View And Starts Doing Their Things They I Don't Think This In The Question And Everybody I Saw Looked At This Ad The Reason Why It Was Unrealistic Depiction Of A Family Is That There Was No One On Their Phone And That Is A Problem For This Product

Absolutely And I Think That's Like Phones Have Gotten So Good Now That Many People Don't Even Use Countertop Speakers Anymore They Just Play Crap Out Of Their Phone Speakers As They Go Around The House Doing Stuff Many People Use Their Phone For The Timers Especially Young Kids Teenagers Are Going To Use Their Phone For All Of These Tasks Teenagers Care Even Less About Sound Quality And Big Screens And Teenagers Care Way More About Privacy And The Whole Family Not

Seeing What They're Doing Yeah But I Think This Is I Think It's Going To Have A Reasonably Small Market I Don't Think It's Going To Be No Market I Think It Will Sell I Mean I Think It's Going Sell Better Than Some Other Platforms Apple Might Have Launched In The Last Few Years But I Think It's Going To Be Probably About The Same Size As The Market For The Home Pod Which Is Not Big It's Not Nothing And It's Not A Bad Product It's Just Not A

Big Market And That's Okay And I Think This Is Leading Into We'll Get To The Larger View Later On About I Think This Is Like A Flagship Device For People Who Are Already In That Apple Home Ecosystem Already I Don't Think This Is Going To Bring That Many New People Into It But For Those Of Us Who Are In It This Is Probably Going To Be Pretty Nice I Do Wonder If It's Going To

Live And Die Based On It's Audio Quality Because The Main Appeal I Can See For This Is Like I've Seen A lot Of People Who Bounce Off Home Home Smart Speakers Because You Have To Talk To Them And People Find That Uncomfortable And They Don't Know How To Do It And We All Know That It Can Be Unreliable And Weird Whereas If You Got A A Speaker With A A A

Doing And A Thing That You Can Touch I Think That Makes People Feel More Comfortable So I'm Still Thinking Of This Kind Of As The Home Pod With A Screen For Most People And That Like So Maybe You Didn't Want A Home Pod Mini Because You're A Big Home Pod Certainly Because You're Like Well I Like The Idea Of A Speaker I Don't Need I Don't To To

But A Couple People Say That It Wasn't As Loud As They Thought It Would Be And That Is Maybe A Problem Maybe It's A Little

Again

Put Off By I Think It Was A Little Long I Mean It Is An Infomercial Yes And I Think I Think Like They Can Get A Little Too Cute You Know But Like It's Fine It Was Exactly What It Needed To Be Everyone Was A Little Bit Too Well Spoken And Clever And They You Know In the In the End They're Demonstrating Features Of A Product So There's No Getting Around That Yep I Think The only Thing That Turned Me Off Personally The only Thing That Turned Me Off About It Other Than Yeah Where Are all The Phones But Of course It's Contrived But This Is A Tangent I Really

Don't Want To Go Down So Please Do Not Engage Gentlemen But I Actually Don't Think New Series That Great And It's Certainly Not As Fast As They Showed In This Commercial Oh Yes I Not That Immediately To Bring Up The Final Point That A lot Of People Were Pointing Out Like Oh We Were Lauding Them For Showing Siri AI In When It

They Did They They They They They Don't Need To Do That Because This Is Clearly Narrative Fiction With Edits And Every Time There's An Edit There Might As Well Be Infinite Potential Time Between The Edits Like It Is An Media Understanding Of When We See Something Edited Like This If There's A Cut We're Not Saying That This Happened And Immediately That Happened There Could Be Any Amount Of Time Between Those Cuts And So I Don't Think They

Have To Say You Know Professional Driver Close Course Sequences Shortened Because It's Not One Continuous Shot They Put That In There When They When It's Like A TV Ed Where They're Showing A phone And They They hear Someone Tapping And Tapping On The phone And They Never Cut Away And Things Happened Way Too Fast You

Such A Relief After The Non AI Series But Compared To Other Competing Products That Are More Mature And Have Always Been More Responsive They Still Are Yeah All Right So There Is The Tabletop One Which Is Mostly What We've Been Talking About There's Also A Wall Mounted One Which I Think John Mentioned In Passing Earlier The Tabletop One Has I Believe A Downward Facing Subwoofer If I'm Not Mistaken Downward Facing Dog We'll Get To The Specs Of The Two Things But For Now It's Suffice It To Say The Wall Mount

One Is The Non Wall Mount One Without The R2D2 In The Arm Yep That's It And You You Don't Need Any Of That Stuff Because You Can Put It On The Wall The The The The The Arm Connects It To The R2D2 And The R2D2 Contains Speakers Indeed Yes But The Wall Mount One Does Also Have Speakers And Apple Has Made A Point In The Releases That They've Made The You know Newsroom Stuff That They

Have Tuned The Speakers For The Wall Mount Version To Accommodate For The Fact That It's Mounted Against A Wall And Obviously The Wall Mount Speakers Will Be

The display With Bezel Is A Little Less Than Six Inches Across I Forget What They're Calling It Corner To Corner But It's Fine The Colors For The R2D2 Version Are Silver Starlight Rose Pink And Space Gray Which I Would Describe As Gray Gold Pink And Darker Gray For The Wall Mount One You Get Gray Or Darker Gray And I Think That's Smart Because Anything You're Going You Want To Be Neutral I Know People Complaining About This Why Can't I Get The Pink One On My Wall You Probably Don't Want The Pink One On Your Wall Fair Enough

So Yeah It's An A18 Which We've Already Covered The Screen 8 Gigs Of RAM By The A18 The Screen Is 7 Diagonal IPS LCD It's 1088 By 1088 At 220 Points Per It Is True Tone It Is As Bright As 500 Knits But Interestingly As Dark As Three Tenths Of A Knit This Is The Lowest Minimum Brightness Ever The Previous Low Was One Knit John Could We Get Any Lower Well So Here I Look At The Screen

People Were Lauding The Fact It Can Get Down To 0.3 Knits It's Like What If It's In A Home To Home To Be Dark It's Really Annoying To Have A Dark Room And This Bright Screen In It So Getting Really Dim Is Useful Like Imagine If You Want To Put This In A Bedroom Or Use It As Your Alarm Clock Or Whatever Who Knows What People Use It's Nice That It It Goes Down But Here's The Thing It Drives Up All About All These Like For For

Backlight Is On All The Time They Close The Liquid Crystals Trying Not To Let Any Light Out But Guess What Some Light Gets Through Which Means In A Dark Room Your LCD Screen Even When The Screen Is Entirely Black Is Glowing You know What Doesn't Do That Self Immissive Technologies Like OLED I Know OLED Would Have Made This Super Expensive But Like For My Ecobee Where The Screen Is The Size Of An Apple Watch Oh My God I Would Pay Like A hundred Dollars Extra For An OLED Screen Just So The Black Can Black Most Of The Time

It's Black With Some White Numerals Showing The Temperature Or Whatever OLED Is Perfect For Home Devices Because The Black Parts Of The Screen You Always Want To Be Black And Only Self Emissive Stuff Like OLED Can Do That LCD Can't So This Thing It's Great That It Gets Dim It's Not So Great That Even When The Screen Is Black With White Letters On It Even Though The White Part Can Get Down To 0.3 Nits I Wonder If The Black Part Will Be 0.03 Nits

So Yeah I'm Not Arguing For Like The Sooner Self Emissive Per Pixel Lighting Can Reduce In Price Enough That It's In Home Devices The Better Because That Is The Ideal Application Well Also I Mean It Wouldn't Image Retention Be A Pretty Significant Concern On This Kind Of Device I Mean They Got To Solve That Problem Too It's True But Yeah Like You Get Image Attention On LCD As Well As We've All Seen By Looking At Like A Big Old LCD Flat Screen TV As A

Menu In Some Like Restaurant Right These Are Problems To Be Solved So Just For Home Devices In Particular Since We're Talking About Getting Dim Any Screen In A Black Room You're Going to Know The Technology Is That An LCD Or Not I Can Tell So Yeah The Camera Is 12 Megapixel Center Stage Camera F 2.4 Aperture It Is In The Bezel There's No Notch Or Dynamic Island For The Regular And And The Wall Mounted Versions There Are Two Custom Full Range Driver Speakers For The

R2T2 Version Only There's A Custom Down Firing Woofer And Dual Force Canceling Marco Passive Radiators Interesting Yeah So They Shove A Speakers In That Dome Yeah I mean So A Passive Radiator In This Case They've Been Doing Those Recently In A Bunch Of Their Devices That The Passive Radiator Is The Only Kind Of Base Sort Of Driver That The HomePod Mini Has And I Think They Even Put Them In Some Of The Laptops Recently Or At Least Maybe The IMAX I Forget But It It Actually

Helps Somewhat With Base Response It's Not As Good As Having A Real Driver But It's Good Now In This Case They Have Both They Have What Sounds Like Probably A Big Downward Facing Woofer Which Is How Home Pods Have Always Been Built It Looks Like That's Kind Of What The Base Mainly Is The Good Thing Is Those Tend To Be Really Freaking Heavy So It Kind Of Gives You What

The Top And Bottom Edges Are There Holes In Top So On The Left And Right Sides It Appears To Just Be Microphones Yeah I Can't Tell Where The Speakers Are I Haven't Seen My One Company Is Open Yet Yeah I Think It Might Just Be The Bottom For The Mid And Treble So That That Like So The Bottom Of

The Screen Like That You You're Just You're Just You're Just You're Just You're Just bouncing off a hard Surface Like That Would Be Incorporated Into It Kind Of Like How The IMAX Used Have Down Firing And It Will But Like That's That's A tough Design To Make Sound Good If You Don't Need To So We'll See How It Sounds Full Size Home Pods Which This Seems To Be Basically Replacing Sound Pretty Good So I Don't Know I'm A little Skeptical That This Will Sound As Good As They Do But We'll See Oh It's Not Going To Sound As Good As Full Size HomePod And By The Rumors Are That They Are Going To

Eventually Make A new Full Size HomePod But Yeah This Is Not Close To The Sound Quality Full Home I I

They Put A Camera Back In The Bezel Like I'm So Sick Of Notches And Dynamic Islands And I Was Like Could They Have Done This With A Notch Or Dynamic Island Yeah They Could Have You We Don't Like Any Bezels On Our Screen Why Because We Don't Like We Don't So We're Not Going To Have Them Like So You Can Grab The Move Yeah That Applies The iPads Too We Used To Grab Those By A Giant One Inch Rim Around The Outside And They Just Shrunk That Up Until It Was Totally Gone And Now We Get Notches In The Dynamic Islands And Stuff Love A Screen Without A Notch Or Dynamic Island Just

Put A Bezel On It It's Fine It Still Looks Nice Thank God Yeah I Actually Think These Proportions Of The

Sound Apple Says It's Powered By Apple Silicon And Real Time System Sensors Advanced Computational Audio Continuously Optimizes Loudness And Bass Response At Any Volume It Does Have Spatial Audio With Dolby Atmos For Music And Video Computational Audio For Real Time Tuning And For Microphone Design For Far Field SIRI And Sound Recognition For Smoke And Carbon Monoxide Alarm Sounds So I've Thrown A lot Of Computation In The End There's No Getting Around The What Are Your Drivers And Where Are They Positioned But

They'll Throw The Computers At To Try To Make It All Sound Better And I Do Like The Fact That Like Most Of Their Home Speaker Products It's Trying To Like Wherever You Put Me I'll Try To Figure Out How To Not Sound Terrible In This Position You Know I'm Not sure If That's The Same In In The Home Pod Of Knowing When to Do That They're Going Do As As Sound Processing As They Possibly Can To Make This Sound Better For Wireless It's Wi-Fi 6E Simultaneous Dual Band Peer-to-peer Discovery For Easy Guest Access Bluetooth 6 And Thread

It Has Ambient Light Sensors Temperature And Humidity Sensors And Accelerometer Where Things Get A Little Bit Dodgy Is Power So I Believe It Requires 20 Watts There Is A 30 Watt Adapter With A Meter And A Half Long Cable Included For The R2D2 Version You Get Nothing If You Get The Wall Mounted Version But Interestingly And In The Defense Of Apple There's Like Three Or Four Different Options For Wall Mounts And I Forgot To Put Them In Our Internal Show Notes I Don't Have In Front Of

Me But Interestingly They're In There You're Looking On Right Now Cool That's What I Totally Said Three Prices At The Bottom Yes I'm Sorry That's What I Totally Said We're Going To Leave It In There's A USB Wall Mount For $60 And AC Wall Mount For $80 And Interestingly And I Really Do No Snark I Commend Apple For This Schneider Home Is Apparently Going To Do A Poe Wall Mount Which Is Great I Genuinely Mean That I Think That's Awesome That For Power Over Ethernet People Which If You're

A Ubiquity Person You Implicitly Become A Power Over Ethernet Person I'm Genuinely Happy That They're Doing Something With Poe Now I Suspect That

I still appreciate that it's a thing. And from a press release from Schneider, it says Schneider Homes Power Mount, designed exclusively for Apple's new HomeView wall mounted, Power Mount's design is purpose-built for Apple HomeView, offering an elegant wall-mounted installation in three configurations, USB-C wall connector, AC wired, and power over Ethernet wired.

All three power mounts feature precision magnets to securely hold Apple HomeView against the wall to stay powered. For a seamless professional installation with no visible wires, the AC-powered wall mount connects to electrical wiring through a single wall box,

and the P-W. And the P-W. And the P-W. And the P-W-mount.

Another HomeView with the R2-D2 part chopped off. But it's the same price as that other one. So they took a piece, a piece of the other product, granted , probably the most expensive piece because it's the screen and has the SOC in it, clearly, or whatever. But they removed all, like, the down-firing woofer, that aluminum case, the passive radiators, the arm, all that is gone.

Is it cheaper than the non-wall mount? No, exactly the same price. And then, in some injury is, oh, and if you want to connect it to power over Ethernet, take your thing that doesn't have an R2-D2 across the same price as one that does, and it had 43% of the price for a power Ethernet. Now, the good thing about that is, look, these are, in the end, these are, like, it's a physical problem.

How do you mount this thing to the wall? Third parties are going to be all over this with, like, I mean, you could 3D print something. I'm going to do this. Like, in the end, you just have to get some way to get a USB-C cable into the thing. Or some kind of, you know, whatever you have to do, it is a physical problem, not a computer problem.

If you don't want to pay $130 for a power over Ethernet thing, I'm sure you could take a power over Ethernet to USB-C thing or whatever. Maybe you won't get data through it. Like, I don't know what the details of that are. Maybe that's why it's $130. But, like, these are solvable problems for people.

Maybe you're not going to have the precision magnets, maybe , although you can 3D print those, too. Not the magnets, but the places where the magnets go. You can buy magnets on Amazon that fit into 3D printed things really cheaply. Yeah, this is like the wall mount one is clearly like, look , if you're going to wall mount this, you're the kind of person who is putting smart things on your walls, and so we're going to charge you more money for it, I guess .

But, like, it really does feel a little bit punitive to me to make the wall mount one not be cheaper than the regular one. Because let's face it, it costs less for them to make. It just does. Yeah, I mean, what this... What the wall mount product is, or at least what they're hoping it will be, is there's this whole market...

First of all, businesses will, you know, if for some reason a business wants to install one of these. Now, I don't know what kind of business that would be that would want this. Yeah, why would they do it? A six-person company? But I think what this is really for is custom installers doing high-end installs for nice houses and rich people.

There's this whole world out there of, you know, the same people who wall mount TVs, you know, and, you know, a lot of times, like, people will have, like , centralized audio systems that, like, play through ceiling speakers all over the house, and they'll have, like, a closet full of Sonos amps and a rack.

Like, it's that market. Custom-installed, nice things for high-end houses. That is what this is for. And that market, it's like when you sell to the enterprise or to people having weddings. These are just words that you can put in front of things that make the prices go up.

Why? Because they can. And because those customers will usually pay the premium because they can. So it's not, like, it is, like, I don't like when people use the term money grab, when they accuse developers of software of money grabs for things like charging money for anything.

However, that's kind of what this type of product, like, when you have, like, the version of it that comes with less stuff, and costs more, that's just market segmentation. They're selling to a market that will pay more, and they will happily make them pay more.

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There are built-in apps. Alarms, Calendar, FaceTime, Find My Home, Intercom, Mess ages, Music, Podcasts, Reminders, Safari Settings, Timers, Weather, and World Clock. There are apps also available from iPhone, which is audiobooks, classical music, news, and TV. Then it apparently, quote, supported.

It will also have supported third-party audio and video apps, quote. This requires iOS and iPadOS 27.2. There has been a lot of confusion to which I don't think I can bring final answers, but there's been a lot of confusion with regard to, okay, how does third-party stuff work?

Chakatu at Wired says, 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. What? Hey, it's on boats. All right, it's on boats.

It's not on Rivians, but it's on boats. 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. Julian continues, 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 in HomeView.

For now, you'll have to consume videos by using the Safari browser, which raises something that John beat me to and put in our internal show notes, which we will also put in your show notes. There was something about this at WWDC this year, which I immediately thought of, and apparently so did John. John, what is this?

Yeah, at CarPlay, WWDC 2026, they were like, hey, now we support video apps for CarPlay, and they were very cautious , saying, oh, you should watch them when you're parked. Maybe you're charging your EV. It's a good time. Like, this is not for when you're driving, but, you know, just so you know, we now have support for video apps for CarPlay, and it's like, all right, sure, I guess.

Secret, preparing for a product that was already done by then. Hey, why would you make a CarPlay video app? Well, now, if you did make a CarPlay video app, boom, automatically works on the HomeView. Yeah, it turns out it wasn't just for when you're parked charging your EV. Yeah, I mean, it is for that.

Like, that is a valid place for it, but also for this. But again, people who were parked charging their EVs usually use their phones or go into the travel plaza, you know. But anyway, yeah. Yeah, I know. Like, look, a lot of cars do this. Like, you know, Teslas do it. A lot of them have a way for when you are stationary in your car and it's turned off or charging, you can watch video content on the dashboard.

How many people use it? I bet it doesn't get a lot of use for exactly the reason you said, but a lot of people do it. So when Apple did it, no one really raised an eyebrow. They're like, okay, other people do it. Apple will too. Continuing, we'll quote from Apple's latest developer agreement, which just came out, I think, earlier today as we record.

6.4.1, iOS application widgets on CarPlay and Apple Home View. You agree that your iOS application widget may be available on CarPlay and Apple Home View. 6.4.2, availability of iOS applications for CarPlay on Apple Home View. If your application includes a CarPlay entitlement profile in a category identified by Apple in the documentation, you agree Apple may provide access to such application on Apple Home View while it is running on a paired iOS device.

So it's not like Vision OS where you can opt in and opt out . It's not like iPad apps on Mac OS where you can opt in and opt out. They're like, look, if you made a CarPlay thing, you now agree we can make that appear on this device. Like, you are opted into it and you have no choice, which is probably fine, but it's just it is a change in attitude towards Apple's things.

And again, we'll get more into this with the next item, but like, is this really a platform? But just FYI, it seems like, Marco, Overcast will be on this device and you have no say. I mean, first of all, like, good. Like, I want Overcast to be on this device. And you don't have to do more work because you already have a CarPlay version, right?

Yeah. So my one wish for this, and this is totally unrelated to the Home View. I had to think about that name for a second. CarPlay, the APIs to write CarPlay interfaces are very old style, like create CP template row, set properties.

You know, when things update, you have to go find the instance of the CP update row and update its properties. Or, like, you know, generate a new one. And then it makes the whole screen blink. And, like, there's so many. It's so cumbersome. Is it like WatchKit where it's entirely data driven? Where are you just sending, like, data over the wire and then the data rehydrates into a thing?

Sort of, except that I'm pretty sure the phone is rendering the whole UI and just sending it over like a video AirPlay kind of link. But, like, what the apps see is you just create, like, Car Play list template, CarPlay row, CarPlay media row. And you say this one is now playing.

This one's title is this. This one's description is this. You know, put this at index one or whatever. You know, like, that's what you're doing. It is so difficult to make anything good using that. Because it's, first of all, it's full of bugs. Second of all, like, it's so cumbersome to go.

You basically have to, like, manually diff and update your data model into the interface. Swift UI has this amazing power where, like, you know, the declarative structure of it is, like, you basically declare the interface using these wonderful result builders. And, you know, you kind of bind your data to various parts of it such that when your data updates, the UI updates for you.

It does its own diffing. It kind of does, like, efficient updates, only updating what it needs to update. I really, really hope that every day or every year, WVDC, what I hope Apple releases is a Swift UI style declarative result builder based interface for CarPlay apps to use.

They haven't yet done it. I'm hoping maybe this will help push them to do that sooner rather than later. Maybe next year, WVDC, maybe there's a chance of something like that. Like, some kind of redo of the CarPlay APIs because it's not for, like, six apps anymore.

There's a lot of CarPlay apps out there, as we always talk about whenever we talk about Ruby. But there's a lot of CarPlay apps out there. And writing them is so unbelievably cumbersome. And they have this amazing data diffing system with Swift UI.

Just use that. Make that. Like, it's one of my projects, like, I fantasize sometimes about, like, I wonder if I could make AI build me a shim that does that. Like, just build me that layer so that I never have to use the ancient CarPlay APIs again. Because, again, it's just so difficult to write a CarPlay UI that is correct, efficient, and good.

And a result builder one would do that so much more easily. I think we may get email from Swift UI experts saying that Swift UI does not actually do React style tree diffing. But we get conceptually what you're saying. Thank you. All right.

With regard to the name, Joe Rosignal at MacRumors writes, MacRumors was the first to reveal the name HomeView last week after discovering a trademark filing from a secretive shell company that we correctly suspected was linked to Apple. Apple was likely behind a HomeOS trademark filing as well.

But the company ultimately decided to stick with generic HomeView software naming, just like it refers to HomePod's operating system as HomePod software. For example, the device will ship with HomeView software version 27.2. So this does actually explain what Apple's stance is on this.

Is it a platform or is it not? Apple's platforms have names like tvOS and iOS and iPadOS and macOS and so on and so forth. Apple's platforms that aren't really platforms don't have names. The HomePod runs, I believe, currently AudioOS.

But nobody knows that name. It was not a developer because it's not a platform that you develop for. It is just simply what the operating system is called under the covers because it's got to have a name, right? HomeOS would have been publicized if there was, for example , an app store for HomeView. But there's not.

So instead, it's like when it was like iPhone software, iPhone firmware before it was christened iOS or whatever. It's just the software for your HomeView. HomeView software version 27.2. It's nice that they sync the version of this totally un branded, nameless, don't call it an operating system, operating system, with everybody else.

So it is also 27.2. What is 27.2? HomeView software. And under the covers, maybe it is called HomeOS. When someone cracks one of these opens and looks at what your name pulls out or whatever, it probably is actually called HomeOS or maybe what the code name was. Like Vision, what do you call it? The Vision Pro is still called XROS under the cover, I believe.

But yeah, they didn't brand it as a platform because it's not. It is. I've heard some people refer to it and we'll talk about like the UI and a little bit like it's like a big Apple watch kind of, but also kind of like a big CarPlay screen, but also its own thing.

It is a weird hybrid because you can project stuff onto it because CarPlay, that's what CarPlay does. And it can delegate stuff to your phone, which is more powerful and has all your data. And we'll get to that in a minute, too. But also it seems like it has things that run directly on it, too, like, you know, the HomePod has stuff that runs directly on it as well.

But this has a screen and everything. So this is in a weird middle place, but it's clear that Apple is starting this cautiously and not trying to say kind of like they did with TVOS of like this is just an all new platform. Like everything we make is a platform and everything has an app store.

And that's like the watch. Watch has its own app store and its own apps. And it's like some things lend themselves better to that approach than others. This one, they're not even trying. They're saying this is fits into our ecosystem, but it is not yet a platform you develop for. I just had someone ask me and I asked it on earlier is like , is this a deployed ployable target in Xcode?

I don't think it is. I don't know the answer to this, but I don't think it is like, you know, you can't like write apps for it and target it and deploy it on it. I think you add CarPlay support for your app and you use the CarPlay video player APIs if you want to do that and so on and so forth. But I think that's it. Like we'll find out more in the coming days.

But yeah, it may be running home OS under the covers, but it is not a new platform, at least not yet. Yeah, it definitely seems like from a developer point of view, it's basically like CarPlay and widgets. Like it almost like standby mode on the phone where like you can offer a widget and the user can put it there.

It's probably going to be very similar to that. And, you know, we don't make home view OS, whatever. We don't make. Home OS. Yeah, we don't make home OS apps. We make iOS apps that can optionally project something onto the home view.

There are some requirements if you want to use this. Julian at Wired writes, to get the most out of home view, you need an iPhone with Apple intelligence support, which is an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. You can't set it up with an iPad. Apple says you can still set it up with the older iPhone and access some of Siri AI smarts like broad world knowledge.

But smarter app actions and personal context queries require an iPhone with Apple intelligence. I mean, that makes sense because like it's just doing them on your phone. So if your phone doesn't support personal context, then Apple is Siri AI. You can't delegate it to like that stuff's not going to happen on the home view. It happens on your phone. That's right.

And again, Julian writes, you can add up to six iCloud accounts. John has made a couple of mentions of that earlier. And the user interface will adapt to each person. John, I believe you would like to take a moment to climb up on your high horse. My immediate snark about this was, I wonder if it will cancel your AppleCare one plan every time a different person uses it.

Because historically speaking, products that are in your home, they can be used by more than one Apple account simultaneously or an alternation will, in fact, cancel your AppleCare one plan. And I'm speaking, of course, about a Mac with multiple accounts. If anybody signs into an account on that Mac with an Apple account that is not part of your Apple family, yoink, off your AppleCare one family plan it goes.

And by the way, I did confirm this with a long phone call with Apple support the other day. I think I mentioned in the last episode, but I'll just reiterate it again. AppleCare one family. What they told me is if you do that, even if you have Apple Care one family, if you use any Apple account that's not part of your AppleCare one family, even if you're still logged into that Mac with one of your Apple family accounts , doesn't matter.

They will yank it off AppleCare one family. So that sucks. But don't worry about it, because as far as I can tell, this is not like Mac OS, where it's like there are multiple users on the system and they have accounts and it switches accounts. That's not what this is doing as far as I can tell.

We'll find out when we get closer. This is all speculation, but I would bet a substantial amount of money that what this is actually doing is always running one big monolithic application that simply does different things depending on who the current authenticated user is.

And we'll get to that in a second. It is not, oh, it's running as a different user. It's switching to a different account. It's none of that. It's just it's always running as I don't know if it's always running as root, but it's always running as the same user. It's a single monolithic application. And it's just multiplexing whose phone it's talking to. And in that way, yes, six people can use it at the same time, because that's the problem of any kind of like thing in a home with a screen.

If you're not living alone with it and multiple people want to use it, it has to be useful to all of them. So, yeah, I guess you could put a family calendar on a shared thing or whatever. But ideally, when you are using it, it will tell you your stuff like, well, we'll get to it in a bit. But I have a Google device that is similar and I can figure out who's talking to it and show them their stuff in response to that.

So to be a registered user of the HomeView, you need an iPhone, an Apple account, and you need to be a member of the home that the HomeView is a part of. That's an interesting list of requirements, because first of all, hey, kid, are you a little kid and you don't have an iPhone? Tough luck. You don't get any customization for the HomeView.

It doesn't show you your stuff. It doesn't know who you are. It doesn't care. If you don't have an iPhone, you're not a person. Second, you need an Apple account, which that makes sense. And then being a member of the Home, that's different than being a member of the Apple family thing, I think, because I think you can add anyone to your home, like your Apple Home.

It's like, who do you want to be a member of this home? But most people, it's probably the same thing. If they're a member of your Apple family, they're probably a member of your Apple Home, but it doesn't require you to be a member of the Apple family. In any case, HomeView does not have Face ID. Recognition just uses the camera.

There's no, like, depth sensors or anything like that. You will only be recognized by HomeView if your iPhone is at home on the same Wi-Fi and has been recently unlocked. Apple Watch is not enough to serve as your I'm Home personal device. There is no IR, so, you know, there's limited to no functionality in the dark, and there's no voice recognition , we don't think.

Yeah, so I didn't say anything about it, but, like, my Google Home does voice recognition. When I talk to it, it knows that it's me because my voice sounds different than my wife. All this, this is another fascinating part of the multi- user thing, aspect of it. So it doesn't have Face ID. I don't quite know why because it's plenty thick, but, again, 300 bucks, whatever.

It's fine. It just uses cameras, but as we all know, I can just print out a picture of your face and hold it up. But there's more that is required, the other things that you read. You have to have your iPhone. It has to be on the home Wi-Fi, and you have to have recently unlocked it, and that iPhone has to be signed in with the Apple account that it thinks is you.

So you could still do this, like, if I'm sitting on the couch and I recently unlocked my iPhone and you walk over to HomeView and hold up a printout of my face, you're in. So it's not super-duper security, but remember, when I say you're in, it's not like you suddenly have access to my phone on the HomeView. You just can see, I guess, my events for the day, and you could ask it questions that would go to my phone and get personal contact.

It is still, like, it is still potentially a side door security hole because this is probably the weakest security Apple has ever had in modern times for accessing someone's personal information. But from what I've heard of people who are there in person asking Apple these questions, Apple's basically saying that , like, we are considering your home to be a security domain that, like, if someone's inside your home and you don't want them to be, you know, there's a follow-up item that we 'll probably have in the thing next week saying, you know, for a lot of people,

being in the same home doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who's also in that home is a safe person, right? So keep this in mind when you are considering this product because I feel like it does give people in your home one of the easiest possible ways to get at your stuff without being you.

I mean, obviously, I can just wait till your shower and steal your phone or whatever, but, like, a lot of people are in home situations where they can't trust everyone who 's with them. This product is designed in a way that you mostly trust the people who you're in the house with. Now, the stinky little brother trying to see his sister's texts, he could print out a picture of her face and do that because you know she's going to be nearby with her phone and you know she's going to have unlocked it recently and you know she's going to be on the home Wi-Fi and a picture will fool the camera.

So I do wonder how this is going to play out. But in the end, if you don't put a face ID sensor on this thing, this is basically your only choice to make it a useful product for multiple people. Arguably, Google's voice recognition is weaker because you can just make a deep voice and it will probably think you 're me or whatever.

But I do worry about this aspect of the product. I'm not quite sure what they could have done otherwise. Again, because if you want to sell it for 300 bucks, maybe you can't afford to put face ID, but it does worry me a bit . You know, I could have sworn during the commercial, the three-minute commercial, not the one-and-a-half-minute commercial, I could have sworn they implied that there was voice recognition.

So we might have that wrong. Yeah, there might be. But again, voice recognition is also like you just record the person's voice and my voice is my passport. Verify me. Like we know. That's not. That's acknowledged. Marco gets it now. I get it. All right. Also, John, you have a question in the show notes, which I concur with.

Why doesn't the iPhone Duo, which also does not have face ID, do something similar where the home location is like a second factor? Yeah. I mean, I think that's the reason why it doesn't do it. Like the Duo doesn't have face ID because it's not thick enough. Okay. But it has cameras. Why doesn't it just use them just like the home view does?

Well, hopefully I explained that with the home view thing. Like that is incredibly less secure than face ID because you can just hold up a picture of yourself. And you could say, well, why doesn't the iPhone Duo just do that when I'm at home? Maybe that's arguable. But I do feel like getting like unlocking your phone is still more invasive access than unlocking a home view, which can talk to your phone.

You know what I mean? Like the phone is where all your stuff is once you've unlocked it. So I wouldn't want to say even like a dual mode of like, oh , geofenced when you're only at your home location, you can unlock your iPhone, do it with just your face and no face ID. Like I don't think Apple would do that because the phone for everybody is like, that's the keys to the kingdom at this point for people in terms of security.

Whereas I feel like the home view is not depending on how much access you have to people's personal data from home view, maybe via Siri AI. Well, again, we'll see when people get this because I'm sure somebody will try the experiment. What if I hold up a picture of you, unlock home view, how much stuff can I exfiltrate from home view while you sit on the couch without you knowing it?

By asking Siri AI questions like, what did they say to this person? Or show me this message, this conversation. Or, you know, what is the password to this website? Something like that. So we'll see how that goes. I wonder if it'll like, you know, tap the phone of the person like as it's responding or like somehow use the phone to notify you like, hey, I'm talking about you.

For some reason, you're not using me. Hey. Yeah, yeah. Or like, I mean, I don't, I don't, it's just sort of been good if we were like, does it use ultra wideband to do like you have to be next to the thing? I don't think they said that, but like, yeah, we'll, we'll see when people get this and start trying to break it, what the actual security barriers are.

But again, with the followup item, I'll be next week. There is always a tradeoff between convenience and security , and you have to try to figure out where that balance is. And for products like this, it's really difficult, especially when you're confined to a size and a price that doesn't allow you to pull out all the security stops that you have for your fancier devices.

With regard to AI, as we mentioned, personal contacts requests require a paired Apple intelligence enabled iPhone or iPad running the latest software version with Siri AI turned on and set to this to a supported language for installation. They've said, particularly for the Walmart mount stuff that you can have ADT, which is an American like alarm company, do professional installation.

You can receive more information and self-service support content with your order confirmation, says Apple. I really would love to know how much this is going to cost. Again, it may be more than double the price of the thing that you buy, but yeah, someone will come to your house and help you install it for a lot of money, I'm sure. Finally, availability.

You can pre-order right now. It is in store on the 13th of November. Apple says HomeView is not available for sale in the European Union, as Siri AI is currently unavailable in iOS and the EU. Apple's working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward.

Steve Trouten-Smith was cranking online today saying that, you know, Europe didn't get the HomePod either until like a long time after it was released. And even then it was only in five countries. So a lot of these home products are apparently not going to Europe, even before the whole Siri AI, DMA business.

But yeah, software is a hold up on a lot of these. Also, people are asking like, why do we have to wait till November 13th to get this? I thought you said they were manufactured in 2024. It's been done forever. I think it needs like the 27.2 OSs to be out everywhere. So this product is still waiting on software. Even at this late date, even though they've announced it, you still have to wait till I assume 27.2 to be out everywhere.

All right. Anything else for HomeView? Actually, let me let me finish this up, perhaps by asking, have either of you ordered one? Of course. I didn't think Marco was going to get one because you're so down on HomePods. Well, I'm down on HomePods, but I still have them all over my house.

The only person I've ever seen who has more HomePods in their house is John Gruber. Like his house, they might as well be like, you know, holding up benches and stuff like they're just everywhere. But no, I have a lot of HomePods because they are very good at certain things and they're just really crappy in lots of other ways.

Like almost every workout we do, at some point, the HomePod in TIFF Studio says, hmm? Like they're just so mediocre in so many ways. It's like having little pets around that talk to you sometimes. Right.

That always think they're being talked to and say, hmm? Yes? Anyway, but I also use one like to play music while I'm in the shower every day. So like I do like HomePods sometimes in some cases. They're very good sometimes.

And I think this, if it is good and if it holds up to the promises and if it is anything like the commercial they made for it, that will actually be really useful in our kitchen. Not necessarily because of all the like, you know, family asking about their text from their boyfriends.

Much more about just it being a nice speaker with a screen to show timers and the time and the weather and stuff. Yeah. All that other stuff, like I don't think we're actually, we would actually use that stuff that much. But just being what this was rumored to be, a HomePod with a screen.

That's actually pretty interesting and pretty compelling if it works. But here's the problem with that. The HomePod doesn't work that well at a lot of this stuff. It never has. Siri, as Casey breezed by earlier, it has gotten better.

Siri AI now is a totally different beast than old Siri. It is way more capable. It can do way more stuff. It is significantly improved in most ways. However, it is slow.

It's really slow. Sure is. When I was developing Unforgetful over the spring, I thought I had one thing in mind for it. And then when I started using the iOS 27 betas in the summer and Mac OS 27 betas, but especially iOS, I started using Siri AI in beta.

And I noticed how incredibly slow and cumbersome it was to create reminders with Siri. And at first I thought, crap. Here I am making an app that's all about how useful it is to capture reminders from Siri.

And I was relying on this thing that was fine for a long time. And this summer, I think it got way, way worse because there's two huge problems with using Siri AI for reminders. Number one, it's very, very, very slow.

Number two, it constantly asks, like, you know, buy milk. Did you say try silk or buy? I said buy milk. Did you say try silk or no, I said buy milk. Did you say, ah, and then you eventually just give up and do something else.

I remember it also asked you which app you want to use. Yes. Well, apparently it will eventually learn and stop asking. Ask me again today. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know why. I always give it the same answer. And God forbid there be a UI somewhere to just let you pick , you know. Yeah, just let me think. It's always going to be reminders.

Just do it. You know, they're very conservative with their settings screen and the settings app, John. They don't like to put that much there. They can nag me. You know, I think it's over 50% of the time it asks me now. It's madness. Yeah. Anyway, so what I turned that into a positive for Unforget ful because I'm like, well, now I'm going to build in fast dictation.

And that's why, like, Unforgetful didn't have dictation until like July. The reason I added that, like, almost at the last minute was because I'm like, there's an opportunity here because Siri in 27 is going to be so incredibly slow for everyone. Dictating into Unforgetful with its little microphone buttons that I let you put all over your system, you know, lock screen, control center, widgets , everything.

It's so much faster. And that's what I've been doing. Like, all summer, whenever Siri would frustrate me and ask me over and over and over again with huge long delays between each one, what I actually meant by a phrase that I said all the time that worked fine before Siri AI. I just tap the Unforgetful thing and I say, you know, tomorrow, buy milk.

Done. And it's so fast. It created, like, I saw that as a huge opportunity for me. The rest of the world, I don't think, has discovered Unfor getful's wonderfulness in this regard yet. But I assure you. Anyway, the home view, I'm getting there.

The home view is going to have that same problem in that it 's relying on Siri AI, which is very capable most of the time. And it does have a lot more that it can tell you eventually .

And it can take more actions and apps. And it is very impressive often. But it's so slow. And this has always been the problem that the HomePod had. You know, the original HomePod with, you know, original Siri and, you know, and the version two and everything. Siri has always been, like, able to do things that are fairly impressive for its time, but it just never did them quickly or reliably.

Will this be any different? Is this also going to be slow and unreliable? I don't think we can really say with confidence that this is going to blow us away in that regard. And will it consistently do it?

And then also, Apple has a history of making home products, like, you know, both HomeKit and the Home app itself, and also HomePods. Both of those, Apple kind of puts something out there and then neglects it for years.

It just withers and dies of neglect because Apple just can 't be bothered to do anything to improve it. Why would this be any different? This is HomeKit and a HomePod combined. So this product, the way it looks in the video, the way it is sold on Apple's website, the way, like, the promise of this product is strong.

I think if this product works well and Apple keeps supporting it and it actually doesn't have, you know, a lot of bugs and Siri gets fast and is responsive and has a high success rate with what you ask it, this could be really great.

But Apple has not shown a strong track record in any of those areas. So I have a really hard time believing in it long term. I think the slowness is actually slightly more tolerable for a thing you're not, like, taking out of your pocket or your phone.

Like, because it's ambient, you can just kind of shout it. And if it takes a little while, as long as I hear the confirmation, I mean, I do this with my, like, Google Home thing. As long as I hear the confirmation says, OK, timer is set for 20 minutes starting now. Like, as long as I hear that within a few seconds, yeah, it is slow, but I'm OK with it.

Whereas when I do it on my phone and I'm watching those stupid little white, little leafy things rotate in a circle, I'm like, come on, come on, come on. So maybe the speed will be more tolerable. And in terms of speed, like, what is the what does the big HomePod have? It has some like ancient watch chip in it or something. I think it has like an like an S7 or something.

I mean, this has got an A18 in it, which should be a big step up from the other things that we used to talk to the HomePod mini and the big HomePod, which are just massively underpowered. I mean, eight gigs isn't a lot, but still an A18 gives me some hope that this will approach the speed of your phone, which, again, to your point, Marco , the phone is slower now, right?

So if my iPhone 18 Pro is slow when I talk to it, this thing sure as hell isn't going to be faster. But I do feel like my tolerance for slowness, as long as it eventually gets the job done, is higher for a thing that is not my phone that's in my hand now because I can do it as I wander around. As for getting one of these, yeah, I got one.

I mean, if it wasn't three, if it was like $599, I wouldn't have got one. But $300, definitely. It was like, I have a place for this to go where my other things or where my other little robots are or my other little R2-D2 things. I have an Amazon Echo thing.

I have a Google Home thing. And this is going to be right next to it. It's going to be the only one with a screen because I heard from everybody's horror stories about buying the Amazon Echo. And I was just festoon with ads. And it's disgusting. And my home is not I don't have a lot of home automation stuff. So I didn't really want to get a Google Home one that has a screen on it or whatever.

But this thing, yeah, I'm going to give it a try. Like everyone in my house has an Apple account. I'll put them all on the thing. They all have iPhones. You know what I mean? I have a place where it's going to go. Yeah, I have, I mean, I have medium hopes for this product. What color did you get, by the way, Marco?

I got pink because where I'm going to put it in our kitchen , pink would be the best color to fit in with our kitchen decor. Nice. And honestly, I kind of do wish they would have had like a little bit better colors. Like, you know, silver, space gray, pink and beige are Apple's like most old, boring, default aluminum.

Like those are that's at this point. That's the penalty colors for like a low end crappy product and Apple's lineup. That's like, you know, if the Apple Watch SE gets an update , that's what you'd expect. A low end iPad. That's what you'd expect. Like it's that's like that's Apple's low end colors. So I was kind of disappointed by those.

Well, I mean, I think this thing is just physically larger. Like I know they do really bold colors in the HomePod mini as like a fashion type thing. But that is I feel like that's less physically imposing than this thing with the it's upright nature in the screen. So like I kind of understand why they went with, you know, various dim shades of silver for this.

But why not use like like more of an iMac treatment on it? Like the iMacs look decent. Yeah. I mean, it might stand out too much. I just got the space gray one because I don't even remember . I either got the silver or the space gray. I got one of those two to fit in with neutral stuff. Yeah. Casey, you continue to be boycotting this entire product category.

I guess you're just so so wed to Sonos that like Sonos is my thing around the house that makes sound that I talk to and you don't have a place for anything else like that in your life. I think it's yeah, it's a little bit of both. I'm not I'm anti HomePod because that does things or trying to say like seven different things.

It conflicts with the Sonos stuff. It conflicts with the Sonos stuff because I generally play things using the Sonos app. Obviously, I could airplay and I could mix and match, you know, Sonos and HomePods. But I just I don't personally really get anything out of the HomePods like they don't really do anything for me.

And I really like my Sonos stuff. With regard to HomeView, I have never, ever, ever had a screen thing in the kitchen. I just haven't. And it's just not something I feel like our family needs or wants. At $300, I consider this within the realm of not an impulse purchase.

That's a bit dramatic, but like something I could give it a whirl and it would not be financially ruinous to do so. But I literally do not know where I would physically put this in my house. My house is... That's the big thing about these products. Like I did actually think about that before I just immediately ordered this.

Like, do I have a place to put this? Because you do need that. Otherwise, like what are you going to drill a hole in the middle of your table? Right. Exactly. And I mean, I'm sure we could stick it on like the edge of the kitchen counter. But in my house, I think by square footage... Some people knock it over. Right. And my house by square footage, I think is a bit bigger than John's. But it's not a particularly large house.

And I just don't feel like we have extra space for this, nor do we have a particular need for it. I'm not opposed to it. I think it's a cool product. It looks neat. I can see how one would enjoy it. But it's just... I don't think it's for me. And... I think you'd be more likely to get one of these if you ever like went all in on HomeKit and then you'd get the wall mounted one.

Potentially. And I did think about that because with Home Assistant... Ooh, you could have Stephen Hackett wired into your wall for you. You already volunteered that. Right, right, right. No, I've... I have pretty much everything that's in Home Assistant. Not echoed, but like presented in HomeKit as well.

And I actually... I would say me personally, 50-50. I, you know, half the time I'm using Home Assistant to control things and half the time I'm using the Home app. For Aaron or occasionally the children, it's 100% the Home app. So it is potentially useful.

But I don't know. I just... I do have a space in the kitchen actually just above and slightly to the left, annoyingly, of my status board where I could hypothetically put this. We have a not used RJ11 telephone box in the wall.

It's not centered on the wall, annoyingly. So that would be a little weird. But I just... I don't personally feel like this is something I need. And with regard to audio, our kitchen kind of blends in with the living room. Again, don't...

I'm making this sound like we have some freaking mansion. It's not... It's like 2,200 square foot house. It's really unremarkable. But anyways, the Sonos Arc Ultra that's in the living room is plenty of oomph to get music into the kitchen. So I don't feel like I need an additional speaker there. If I did, I would get a Sonos speaker anyway.

So it's just... It's not something for me. I'm not saying it's a bad product. I think it's a very clever product. And I think it is very appealing and very cute looking, be it wall-mounted or R2-D2. There's a lot to like about it. I just don't feel like I have a place for it in my life. Yeah, I think for audio purposes, one of the...

I think one of the biggest downsides of this for audio is that if you are filling even a modestly sized room... Like, look, if it's going in your bathroom, put whatever. But this is not a bathroom product. Although it would be nice to see the times. Anyway... I don't think it's waterproof. Don't put it in your bathroom.

Well, none of them are waterproof. But if you're filling like a modestly sized or large room, historically with the HomePods, you really want a stereo pair. Even if you just get two minis, that's still way better than one of anything.

And you space them out a little bit on the countertop or on a table or whatever. A stereo pair is very, very good for any of these speakers. I don't think this can do that. Did they say anywhere? I don't think it would make sense to have a left screen and a right screen.

Two screens looking at you. Yeah, right. So I think straight up for audio purposes, this is probably wrong. But also, I think for audio purposes, that's more like a living room situation. Whereas this seems really like a kitchen device. This should go on your kitchen counter or wherever is the hub of your house.

Maybe it's your entryway. If you have a hallway that everyone comes and goes through. I don't know. But to me, this is a kitchen device. We are sponsored this week by Tailscale. I adore Tailscale. I'm not paid to say that.

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All right, let's move on and let's talk about the actual star of the show. The Apple TV 4K Generation 4, I think, something like that.

This is a brand new Apple TV and I want to get this out of the way and be done with it so we can talk about happy things. How the f*** is this thing $300? I mean, it makes perfect sense, but it is such an amazing contrast.

We just got done talking about a product with exactly the same price and we're like, wow, look how affordable this is. It's much less than we thought it was going to be. Now we're going to go to another product. Same exact price. Everyone hates it. Now here's the thing. I had to look this up because I hadn't been keeping up with Apple TV prices because why would I? I was waiting for the new one just like Casey.

But the previous Apple TV 4K, it is annoying they all have the same name, but they do have that generation and whatever in parentheses. The previous Apple TV 4K had been increased in price to 200 bucks for the one with 64 gigs and Wi-Fi and 250 for the 128 gig and Wi-Fi plus Ethernet.

So already while I was not paying attention because of, you know, the world and AI absorbing everything, all RAM and inflation and whatever. The biggest Apple TV was already 250 bucks. And so now when this one is 300, it's like, how is this 300 bucks?

It was already 250. Now people are complaining because like, well, no one buys that one. Why would only stupid people buy that one? Who needs Ethernet on their Apple TV and who the hell needs storage? What the hell is it even used for? Everyone buys this cheaper one. And the cheaper one was 100 bucks less. It was 200. Like I get that. But how is this 300 bucks?

Because as we'll see in a second, they decided to only make one and it's the big one and it's got Wi-Fi and Ethernet 128 gigs. And so that's what they've done. Like they're clearly choosing their market for this. Hey, are you in the market for an affordable streaming box?

Apple TV was never it. And no, it's really not it. Remember like, do you want to, you know, an affordable thing that you can stream on your TV? Don't even come into the store. We have nothing for you. This is not the product for you. On the flip side of that, did they make it into like a modern replacement for the Nvidia Shield?

No, they did not. It is not a super massive, powerful thing that does high frame rate and has all these amazing features and has audio pass through. That is also not this. So everyone is pissed. The high end people are pissed, not because it's 300 bucks, but because. It doesn't have features befitting a 300 bucks streaming box.

And everyone else is pissed because like I never would buy an Apple TV 300 bucks. Who the hell buys an Apple TV 300 bucks? And so, yeah, much sadness about the price from all sides. It's it's real bad. Like I bought one. I'll tell you right now. I bought one. I bought one too. That's the thing about the price.

I said it the last time we talked about this as overpriced as the Apple TV is because it is the way I watch. Like I would sadly, I would pay hundreds more. To avoid having to use a fire TV stick or a Google TV stick or anything because they're worse.

It doesn't make this one any better. To be clear. I'm not saying, oh, it's worth it. But this one is so good. It just happens to be the best of a very bad bunch. And if they ever stopped making this product, like what would we all do? Would we go try to find the most expensive Google TV thing filled with ads and crap?

Like and to be clear, Apple's TV product is also becoming filled with ads. The other day I paused something on my Apple TV and it put an ad up on the pause screen. So Apple is getting worse here too. But still among all the players, Apple TV is still with the possible exception of the ancient what seven year old Nvidia shield, which is like Nvidia string box they made back in the day that has a ton of features.

I'm glad they're still making this. And I bought one even though it's 300 bucks. I don't like the price, but I would still rather have this than any other product. And so I think Apple kind of knows they have us over a barrel because it's like, if you appreciate the few remaining good things about this product as we continue to put ads all over it, it's 300 bucks now.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. I really hate how expensive it is in part because I'm comparing it to all of the like $40 devices, which is unfair. Or free with your TV. Or free with your TV. It's just not, I don't know, it's just not a good choice.

But I get that, you know, if you're going to have 128 gigs of storage, which I'm not really clear why we need all that, but if you need it. They said there's going to be one and it's going to be the high end one. So there you have it. Yeah, I mean, I suppose. But one way or another, I do like, genuinely, I do like that there's only one of them now.

It always seemed arbitrary last generation that there was like the 64 gig Wi-Fi only and then the 128 gig Wi-Fi and Ethernet. It seems silly to me. I get that almost nobody uses Ethernet but John and I anymore. But I don't know. It still seems dumb to have two of them.

So I'm glad we're down to one. But woof, 300 bones. My goodness. I think it's fine, by the way. Like I think for what the Apple TV is, it has never been price competitive with anything else in its market.

The Apple TV is not a mass market device. It never has been a mass market device. The mass market device now is just the built-in apps on everyone's TVs that suck. The mass market device before TVs all had the apps were cheap Roku sticks and Amazon Fire sticks.

This is not a mass market device. This is like, you know, it's like the Sonos of set-top boxes. Like this is for the Apple TV is for people who value a high quality experience and are willing to pay a premium for it. You know, that sucks for those of us who, you know, balk at this price.

Like that sucks. But that's what this product is. And it is, as you're saying, it is a premium experience. The other options are really mediocre. They're full of paper cuts. And most people don't care or tolerate it because it's cheap. But we do care.

And we have money. And Apple's happy to take that money. And here's one way they do it. Like that's what this product is. I am happy they updated the Apple TV. I also recognize that in this environment of component cost , there was no way it wasn't going to go up. Because, you know, you think about like, you know, we were just saying the home view.

We were surprised that it wasn't more expensive. But it also doesn't have significant computation, memory, or storage. The Apple TV has no display, no speakers, but significant computation, memory, and storage. It's just got one higher number. It's got an A19 instead of an A18.

I mean, granted, the storage, 128 gigs versus whatever the heck the home view has, which I imagine is piddling. But, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if the home view had 64. We'll see what it ends up having. But yeah, like it is. That's the other thing is because you look at this and it's like the featureless black box that it's been for many years now.

No, no down firing subwoofers, no passive radiators, no twe eters, no camera, no screen, no arm, no nothing. 300 bucks. It is kind of bananas. But at least, at least there's no longer two different versions of it, weirdly. Yeah, like I said. People wish that, but people wish that there was one version of it and it was 200 bucks and it had 64 gigs and only Wi-Fi.

Because like Casey said, nobody cares about Ethernet but us . Like, I'm glad that it has Ethernet. Don't get me wrong. But like most people don't. Yeah, fair. But I'm glad they... I'm glad they simplified because that was always a weird decision. And, you know, look, it's fine.

Like, I think this is... It's like we wanted a new Apple TV for a long time. They gave us one. And it's exactly what you'd expect out of a 2026 hardware release. And we bought it. Yeah. And I will point out, though, as for the premium experience , in addition to me complaining about the fact that ads appear when I hit pause on a thing, which is just like really over a line for me and I'm very upset about it.

Another aspect of a premium experience, I feel like, is just basically reliability. And I believe twice in the last five days I've had this experience while watching a television show on Apple TV with my wife. You know, hit play.

Episodes that we were watching Ted Lasso. So it's an Apple show and Apple's app. Like, it's Apple, Apple, Apple. Okay. On my Apple TV. It's the latest before this one. Apple TV 4K. Hit play. Episode starts playing. Oh, she wants to go and get a snack. I hit pause. She comes back into the room. She sits back down. She's ready for the show to start again.

I hit the button and the video does not resume playing. That's fine. Nothing I can do. Hit the button again. Again, nothing happens. I have to force quit the app, relaunch it, and then resume from where I left off. Two times in five days. That's not a premium experience. How many times has my TiVo ever done that?

Where I hit pause. Oh, here we go. Hit pause. Got up to get something. Came back in. Hit unpause. And the video did not resume playing. I don't know what the problem is. I don't care what the problem is. This is like a straight up the middle watching an Apple show on an Apple TV 4K. Latest everything. Everything's working. Hardware is not broken.

I'm sure it's some stupid software problem, but this to me is unacceptable. And it's going to hurt much worse when my $300 box does the same thing. Sure is. For the record, by the way, as per the Mac Rumors Buyer's Guide, 1,456 days since the last update, which was October 2022.

Absolutely bananas. So yeah. So like we said, just one model, A19, 128 gig storage, Wi- Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, thread. The physical form factor is almost identical, except that the light is now in the center.

Not an improvement in my opinion, but fine. I don't think I care one way or the other, to be honest. The remote is basically the same, but there's some important exceptions there. We'll get there in a second. Again, HDMI 2.1 and gigabit Ethernet. Here's where things get a little bit interesting. The actual box itself has built-in far-field microphones.

There's a three-microphone array with voice isolation, and it's on the box itself. Additionally, for output, you can pair Apple TV 4K with four HomePod speakers for three-dimensional sound. So you'd have two fronts and two rears. There was a, I think, marketing photo somewhere that showed two full-size HomePods near the TV, if I recall correctly, and two minis behind the couch as rears, which I thought was very interesting.

On this feature, by the way, the two things you just read are, as we'll get to in a little bit, the only things besides the A19 that distinguish this Apple TV from its predecessors. It's got an A19, microphones on the box, four HomePods.

Everything else about this is available in some number of previous iterations of this product, including the remote, as we'll get to. So that's worth considering. The other thing is, they just say, oh, now you can pair four HomePods with it. Well, the market for many, many, many years has been filled with various products that let you pair some number of speakers more than two with your television, not pair, but like connect some number of speakers more than two to your television and have something somewhere

figure out how to make sound come out of those more than two speakers in a way that provides some kind of experience based on programs that are may or may not be mastered for multiple speakers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lots of products do this. It is essentially it's computational audio.

Sony makes sort of like medium to high end prosumer models that do this of various things. I forget what the old one was called. The new one, I think it's called the Sony Quad. I forget the name. So they they sell a bunch of these products that will like, hey, just put these speakers wherever in your room. We give you a bunch of them.

Just put them around. And then our computers will figure out where did you put them? How can we make these this these speakers sound good in this room? And I was talking about my awkward room range when everyone was like, you should get one of those things. Instead, I went with components or whatever. You know, anyway, those systems are always kind of a compromise.

It's like, do you want cool home theater, but don't want to have an AV receiver and individual speakers from some expensive speaker company where each speaker costs five grand or whatever? Do you just want like I just want to buy it's like a stereo in a box stuff. But now with computational stuff in the old days, you get that you'd get like the Dolby or the Bose stereo in a box thing with those little Bose speakers and the big subwoofer.

And it's like, wow, home theater. But like it had no idea where you put the speakers. They just put the same sound out of all of them and good luck having that sound good if your room isn't perfect. Right. The computational ones are like it's user friendly. Put them somewhere and we'll figure out where they are and we'll use our computer maths to make it sound good from where we think you're sitting.

Apple doesn't say anything about this. Right. In their literature, but presumably they've got to be doing something like that. But the state of the art in this is like, again, like the Sony systems where they they will do amazing things. You can put the speakers at different heights and weird positions behind the plant, like wherever you put them.

That Sony system will. And it's really expensive, like three grand. But anyway, that Sony system will like, don't worry about it. Don't worry about shape of your room. Don't worry about where your stuff is. We will figure out how to provide an actual 5.1, 7.1, 5.2, whatever mix the content you're watching is.

Don't worry if that matches the number of speakers you have . We will figure it out because our speakers have drivers that point up that point left, that point right, that point forward and we'll drive them all. They're like, it's a really complicated thing. And they've gotten actually pretty good, like with the advances in computation, with computation getting cheaper, where those systems can do amazing things in non-ideal situations.

My impression of what Apple's offering is we'll play sound out of all four of the speakers. Maybe the back ones will play different sounds than the front ones. But like, I get the impression that they are not doing anything close to the state of the art and consumer will figure out your room and make cool surround sound. So I have extremely low hopes for the audio quality and fidelity of a four HomePod setup.

That said, it will be fantastically better than A, a setup with no speakers behind you, or B, your stupid built-in TV speakers. So I'm not poo-pooing this, but I am saying that I'm with the other people, other sort of like medium to high-end TV people who are disappointed that Apple doesn't seem to want to pursue that.

Because here they have huge amounts of computation in that A19. They could do almost anything. And I bet they're, my speculation is that they are not going to have stellar sound from four HomePods. The remote does look the same and it has the same external buttons and whatnot.

However, it does have Find My with precision finding and it can make sounds. You can also buy it separately for 60 bucks. It works with every model of Apple TV going back to the Apple TV HD. But, according to Stevie Bonifield at The Verge, if you want to see exactly how far away the new Siri remote is on your phone with details like 20 feet rather than simply far or near, you need to have an iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, or any iPhone 17 or later.

Those are the only models that include its new N1 networking chip with support for Bluetooth channel sounding, which enables AirTag-like precision tracking, but without the ultra-wideband chip. And I think what they're saying is the remote doesn't have an ultra-wideband chip because like the phones do, right?

But that's why you need the phones with the N1. So, I mean, it shouldn't matter. Like, the thing can make a noise and near and far is probably enough, but just FYI, you need a very new phone, Duo Air 17 or later, to be able to get the distance because apparently you need the N1.

And I guess like one of the reasons the remote is the same and works well as other ones is the remote doesn't have radically different innards inside it with possibilities. The possible exception of the added speaker. We're going for distance and we're going for speed, John. That's a reference. Wait, from the cake song? Yes.

Hey, all right. Look at us. All three of us. Look at us go. With Siri AI, you do have conversational search. So, Apple says users can simply ask Siri what Apple TV shows won at the Emmy Awards this year. Weird flex, but okay. While watching, users can ask Siri AI follow-up questions and tap into Siri AI's broad world knowledge to go deeper into a show, asking things like, where was Pluribus filmed?

Or is this appropriate for a 15-year-old? Responses appear in a compact, subtle overlay. With an Apple intelligence-enabled iPhone, Siri AI on Apple TV 4K can now tap into a user's personal context to answer questions like, or excuse me, requests like, play the show Alinda recommended.

Yeah, I've heard some people saying that, like, this is kind of silly in that, like, in fact, it was a friend of ours saying that, why don't you , this is why I just use call sheet, because I don't want crap over my screen, especially if I'm watching a show with a bunch of people, like a family. If I want to know what that person is from, I'm much more likely to pull out my phone and pull out call sheet and find out where they're from, because that doesn't put anything up on the screen.

But my argument is, okay, I do that too, right, for the same reasons. But I still think a device like this and an operating system like tvOS should support the on-screen thing. That's why I'm very supportive of the speakers in the box, even though I'm probably always going to use the remote.

It should be there. I feel like it's a base functionality. You should be able to shout at the screen and say, what is that person from or whatever, right? Maybe not everyone wants to do that. Maybe most people are going to do it on their phone, but the capability should be there. I feel like it is table stakes for, especially for a $300 box, that it should be able to do that.

And you can choose never to use that feature. You can use to look it up in your phone. That works great too. But I definitely think it should be there. And I do think with Siri AI, it will be less, I was going to say, I don't know, less, less pigheaded about it. Like I should be able to talk to it conversationally and have it actually figure out what I mean.

Like I'm used to doing this with both the Amazon and the Google products. When I ask questions at the table of like, what movie was this person in or whatever to answer, you know, things that we're wondering without looking it up on your phone while we're eating dinner so we don't have to pull out our phones. Right. I would, I'm happy to have that same experience on the Apple TV.

And especially if like, I will see how it works out. Like once I have the capability and if it works at all, maybe I will pause the show and ask it because very often it's my wife saying, go look, where's that person from? Go look it up. Go look. But she never has her phone with her. She wants me to look it up. Right. So then I pull out my phone and I look it up on call sheet. I would, I might be able to just pause the show, assuming it will play again when I hit the play pause button, pause the show and say, Hey, dingus, what was this person in before?

We'll see how it works, but I'm looking forward to trying that. And again, these are this, this, this feature, Siri AI, not exclusive to this new Apple TV hardware. To be clear, it is part of the whatever 27 point, whatever OS that has it in it. I'm sorry. Can we go back a step? Tina never has her phone with her.

Never. She doesn't even know where it is. But she has six phones with her anytime she leaves the house. I know. Maybe that's part of the problem. She's always like, she, the person who is most likely to use the thing that makes your phone make a sound in our house is her. Because the kids know where their phone is, but she has no idea and is very often wandering around looking for it.

And whenever she wants to look something up at the call sheet, she never has her phone. So I'm always the one doing. Incredible. Some of the older Apple TV 4Ks do get the Siri AI stuff as well. The Apple TV 4K second or third gen, which is, I believe the two prior generations with tvOS 27.2 availability.

You can already pre-order in store on the 13th of November, just like home view. Like I said, I'm in for one. If you recall, I have, I believe a gen three in the living room. Now I have a gen two in the bedroom, which we very rarely use to be completely honest with you.

And I think it's a 4K gen one maybe, or it might be the last of the 10 eighties. Um, that is our tailgate tub slash travel TV, uh, Apple TV. And that is very long in the tooth. I think that one is like nine years old or something like that.

So it is a testament to Apple that it still works in reasonably well, but it's quite slow and I am very excited to retire that one. So there will be a trickle down, uh, starting, uh, on November 13th. John, you said you're in for one.

Are you doing a similar trickle down scenario? Yep. I'm going to replace the previous generation Apple TV 4K on my main TV. Then that one will move up to my bedroom and the bedroom will become the travel Apple TV and the travel Apple TV will retire to a box in the attic. I love it. Marco, what did you do? I did not buy anything yet.

Uh, all of my Apple TVs are fine. And so when one dies, I'll replace it. Or when, if, if something, you know, if there's some big software update down the road and it gets really bad, um, or something, then I'll buy the new, I 'll buy whatever the newest one is then.

But so far all of our Apple TVs are fine. And that's part of the fallout of this having only those two exclusive features, which is, do you want to talk to your Apple TV box, put the microphones on it? And do you want to hook up four HomePods?

Marco does not want to hook up four HomePods to his TV because he's already got TV speakers and it sounds like you don't care about talking to the box. So you're happy to talk to the remote. Yeah. And by the way, if you're having trouble finding your remote, you can just buy the $60 remote and replace your current remote with it. Yeah. So it's, as far as I can see, there's nothing in, in this Apple TV that really makes me motivated to replace one that already works.

Yeah. The only other thing would be, let's say you're a big Apple TV gamer. The A19 is going to be much better for games, but like when I say big Apple TV gamer, yeah, people laugh because it's like what that, like, you know, you're the one. It's part of the whole thing with this product. Like Apple has not, Apple has continues to pursue the same strategy.

They're not turning into a serious games machine. They're not turning it into a, like the thing that all of the TV nerds want. Like everyone is screaming about the fact that it still doesn't have audio passed through. They can add that with a software update if they really wanted to. It still doesn't do more than 60 frames per second.

So if you're going to like try to stream PC games through it or whatever, like it's just, it is what it has always been. It is just the latest version of that. And the price is up because the price of everything is up and because it's got an A19 in it. And as Jason Snell has been pointing out, you know, they're going to sell the same damn box for the same price for the next four years.

So this is both the most powerful it will ever be relative to everything else. And also they need to make sure that the guts are in it, that are in it will not be too embarrassing. A thousand change days from now. We are sponsored this week by Quince.

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Oh, no, not rounding out. I'm sorry. We have two more steps to go. First of all, there's a new HomePod Mini 2. That's a thing that exists. Moving on. There is a home collection. Wait. The HomePod Mini 2. You can't move on from that because for $50 more, they added more lights on top.

That are synced with album art. Yeah. I had to also look up what the old price of this one is. I was surprised that it was only $100. But yeah, it's $150 now instead of $100. I couldn't find what the SoC is. Did any of you find that anywhere? I don't know. I mean, yeah. It was one of the watch chips before.

The HomePod Mini has, as I said earlier, it's always been a really good value for $100. At $150, it's less of a good value. It's still like if you want the best and most sound out of the smallest one of these speakers you can get, it's the HomePod Mini.

It gives you way better and bigger sound out of that tiny little ball than anything Amazon or Google makes. But at $150, you're starting to push people's boundaries of value for what that is. I still think it is overall an okay value.

Before, it was a great value. As for the lights on top, who cares? I mean, most of the places that I've put HomePods in my house, I either can't see the top if it's on a shelf or something, or I'm not looking at the top very often because it's not that far below eye level or I'm not staring at it while listening to it or whatever.

That's a nice little gimmick, but that's fine. Mainly, it's a price raise. It definitely seems like a kind of feature where they were like, the team was challenged, like, look, you can't really add any costs or change this product in any way. What can you add to the hardware within those constraints?

It's like, well, we can put different lights under it, or if those lights were already there, we can drive them based on software. You know, it's a kind of like sort of a thing you can do without changing the product too much. They changed the colors. I think it's green, pink, blue, midnight and white now. I don't remember what the old colors were, but a lot of people like the old like orange color and stuff, and those are gone now.

Same size and shape as far as I can tell, including the quote unquote non-removable power cord. I think it's similar to the power cord on the big HomePod, and the power cord of the big HomePod is technically not removable, but it actually is removable if you yank on it real hard and don't break it.

What I'm saying is it's not a connector. It's not a USB-C connector. It's not any kind of one of the power plugs. It is that the wire is attached to it, and people complain about that because like, oh, if my cat chews through the wire, do I have to get an entirely new HomePod Mini? I don't know what it looks like inside there. I know on the big one you can physically remove because I 've yanked my own cord out of my big HomePod.

It's hard to do, but you can do it, and you can also snap it back in. Like it goes out and it goes in. It is possible. I don't know what's on the inside of one of these minis, but I feel like this does tie into the thing that we haven 't mentioned in any of these products. So like Apple's continuing like at the bottom of every one of these product pages, they list like, here's our progress towards Apple's carbon neutral 2030 goals.

And they keep their listing stuff. They're like, we're doing better. Here's how this product is, whatever. Part of their carbon neutral 2030 goals should be update the HomePod Mini to have a USB-C jack on it, let's say. A removable cord. Because we all know like the little battery bases that they have for these.

You always have to do something with the cord because you can't get rid of it and you can't replace it with like a little like a short USB-C connector. So that I feel like is an environmental thing that they need to do. Now, the reason they're doing it is not because Apple is mean and hates the environment. It's because Apple does not update these products frequently. Like this has not been redesigned.

It is the same as it has ever been. They don't redesign them frequently because they're just not updated frequently. When they do redesign this in three to five years, I really hope that it will have a USB-C port on it. And then when your cat chews through the cable, you can just get a new cable. Let's see.

With regard to audio, the only real change that we know about is the surround sound thing. We're not sure if this is new. I think this is new. But again, I don't really care about HomePods. You can make the HomePod Mini 2 or I believe a stereo pair thereof as they can be the default speaker for Macs now.

Maybe that was already a thing, but I didn't think so. That might have already been there. But like Apple is advertising. I guess they're just saying just to remind you what this product does. I don't know if it's new or not. Someone will write in and tell us whether it's new. But either way, the problem with using HomePods as speakers for Macs has always been lag. Because you can't connect them to your Mac directly.

It's all, you know, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, whatever. And if they were really serious about advertising these speakers for your Mac, I would hope they would say. And now with, you know, lower lag or they just didn't say it. They just don't care. It's like it's a thing you can do if you feel like it. It looks real nice. They're never going to say that.

I just, I don't know. Like, Marco, you tried this, I think, with big HomePods once. I did. And was it awful? Yes. It was awful for two reasons. The lag was only one of them. The other one is that it was just unreliable.

Like, they would drop the link. You'd have to, like, reconnect it. At that time, music, like the music app, would actually treat them a little bit differently than using them as system audio. Like, it was a mess. And I later tried the same thing with Sonos ERA 300s, which were significantly better.

So I just used, like, a line-in kind of setup. Significantly better than trying to, like, you know, Air Play to HomePods and stuff. But still had lag as a fairly annoying factor. Now, they're saying, you know, this requires a certain Wi- Fi standard and everything. So maybe they are going to take advantage of some, like, you know, nice low-latency Wi-Fi thing.

So it's not, you know, just, like, going over the regular network. Maybe it'll, like, send some kind of peer-to-peer direct. Maybe they can make that very low latency. I don't know. I mean, as I was saying earlier, CarPlay seems to be, you know, a video stream between the phone and the car at short range, peer-to-peer.

And while we've had issues with CarPlay audio, because that is kind of sort of over Bluetooth and, you know, it's kind of complicated. CarPlay video is fairly responsive. You know, you figure you're touching the car's touchscreen. That is to go over a local Wi-Fi network from the CarPlay, you know, head unit or car computer or whatever, over Wi-Fi to the phone.

The phone interprets the touch, updates the interface, sends it back over that same link a second time, and updates the UI. It seems pretty responsive. So, I'm guessing they have a way that if you have peer-to- peer Wi-Fi over short distances with, you know, known quantities of hardware on both sides and nothing else is congesting the link in that area and everything else, maybe they can set the latency and the buffer is very, very low on these things to make it much more responsive and less noticeable.

So, if that's the kind of thing they're doing to achieve this, that could actually work. Or, again, if and when they ever redesign these things, everyone is screaming for this forever for every one of Apple's speaker products. Put a damn line in, Jack. Put a USB-C. Like, pick one.

You don't have to have a thousand ports. It doesn't have to be like the back of third-party speakers that have a thousand ways to connect them. We just want one. One way to connect it with a wire directly to a Mac so you have a, basically, you know, low latency. Lower latency than wireless connection. USB audio would be perfectly fine.

Analog audio with a 3.5 millimeter jack also would be perfectly fine. Probably Apple won't do that one. But, like, the current situation where it's a sphere and it 's got a permanently attached cord that brings it power, everything else is wireless. Even if you want to use it on your desk next to your Mac where it's never going to move, why does that have to be wireless?

It's dumb. And then we briefly mentioned Soundglow. Apple writes, with Soundglow, the top of HomePod mini transforms into a visual canvas that glows and pulses in sync with the music, reacting in real time to bass and treble. The song's album artwork from Now Playing generates a color -matched light experience that's unique to every song, and users can pick a soundscape like rain to trigger bespoke animations for a soothing atmosphere.

I snark, but, I mean, that's kind of neat. But you'll never look at it. Nope. And it's not like it's a screen. Like, it's not like the cars, all the car interiors that have, like, these moody things. Those are actual screens. This is just, like, vague RGB lights under a frosty piece of whatever. Like, a successfully added a feature to a product without having to redesign it.

Hooray. All right, then finally, for real, for real this time, Home Collection writing, Apple writing says, Designed in collaboration with Apple and select brands, Apple Home Collection accessories, including smart cameras, thermostats, and a door lock, are simple to set up, easy to use, and private with data that's encrypted end-to-end in Apple Home.

There's two primary manufacturers that are associated. There's LG and Schneider Home, which we briefly mentioned earlier. For LG, you get a floodlight cam, or, well, you don't get. You could get a floodlight cam that's $400, an indoor camera that's $200, an outdoor camera that's $350, a smart deadbolt lock, which is $350, a smart thermostat that's $ 200, a temperature sensor that's $40, or a video doorbell that's $250.

For Schneider Home, they have their own smart thermostat that is also $200. They have a smart thermostat room sensor, which I think is basically a temperature sensor, also $40. And we discussed the power mount earlier at $130 freaking dollars. For the power ethernet one, they also make the AC one and the USB-C one.

Those are all Schneider Home products. It seems like, as far as I could tell, Apple doesn't make a mount for the, which is weird. Like, they'll sell you a wall mount thing, but they won't sell you a way to mount it. But they're partnering with Schneider Home for that, and I 'm sure a million companies will have third-party things. And I went to these, I think there's more products than you just listed.

These are the ones I found, like, from a MacRumors article and, like, in Apple's press releases. But if you go to their websites, you'll find all sorts of little doohickeys and accessories. The part I should have put in here from the notes that I thought I had, but apparently I don't, is some of Apple's, I don't know how to describe this.

Like, the new HomeKit or the new deal that Apple is making with manufacturers for HomeKit products or whatever. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't have it in the notes. My recollection is they said something about the fact that all these products that you just listed do not have their own account system and can't have their own account system or their own apps.

Is that correct? I believe that Apple, specifically on the marketing site, which is apple.com slash home slash accessories, I believe somewhere on there it specifically says that you don't have to install an app. I'm trying to vamp and find where it's that.

Yeah, like, it seemed to me from, again, I think I saw it in Apple's marketing literature that what they were trying to say is, hey, I know home products suck because, like, you get the thing out of the box. You got to set up. You got to install their damn app. You got to make an account on their thing. You got to do all this stuff. And then you just wanted to add it to HomeKit. And it's like, why the hell did I do all this stuff? And now I have, I can view it in the app, but it's also visible in HomeKit and yada yada.

It seems like with these partners, what they're trying to do is say, hey, partners, we want you to make HomeKit products. And they're probably using the matter standard or whatever. But the point is, you can't have your own app. You can't have your own account system. You can't make the people sign up for an LG floodlight account or an LG smart home with their 500 megabyte app that I have that tells me my laundry is finished for my LG washing machine.

Like, you can't do that anymore if you want to be part of this program. I don't know if it's a requirement for all HomeKit things going forward. I don't know if it's just to deal with the LG things. But that is part of the pitch of this. That and the easy setup. And it's part of the easy setup. And, like, just bring your phone near it. I mean, you know, HomeKit products have QR codes on them for a long time.

And also the thing where you bring the phone close and it sets it up. But the point is, there's no other part of that. There's not also. And by the way, go to the App Store and download the LG app . It's just it's a HomeKit accessory. You bring your phone near it. It gets into HomeKit. You use Apple's Home app to control it.

And that's it. And that I do find appealing. If only I had any faith that HomeKit didn't suck. So I found it. It's in the press release. These new accessories are simple to set up, starting with one tap with iPhone. And everything is managed through the Apple Home app. No separate app or account required.

Yeah, again, it's not clear if that's like they're going to demand that from all of their partners or if you need it as part of a qualification for HomeKit compatibility or if it's just for these particular ones. But I endorse that approach because it has always been annoying that that has not been the case. Now, I think it's also the case that these accessories can also be visible to other home things.

Like if you buy one of these, you're like, well, what if I also have a Google Home setup? Can I use like the camera and doorbell on that? Some of them, I believe that is the case that it's not like it's tied to Apple things. They also speak again. Maybe they're doing it through matter. Maybe they just speak the other protocols that you will also be able to put this very same device into Google Home.

Like and that is that's been the case, you know, forever. Like pretty much every I have very limited number of smart home devices in my house, but they're all in Amazon's home thing, Google's home thing and in Home Kit. Pretty much all of them. I think my cameras are only are not in HomeKit, but only because I haven't done the home assistant thing or try to get them in.

Right. And I think most of these are similar. They are multi ecosystem, which is important for like a door lock or something like if someone in your home has an Android phone while they can't get in your house anymore. But the ease of setup in the Apple ecosystem is nice and the products look vaguely Apple-y, but I'm still not sold on HomeKit as a platform, period, even though the new one is in theory going to be better, but we'll see.

I mean, this is actually extremely similar to HomeKit secure video and the camera that Logitech made for that years ago. The one that I bought four of and three of them died within a year. It's exactly the same playbook again, partnering out to these companies.

Literally, this was one of the same companies making a very similar type of camera that also had no app and no login and no separate thing. It was just, you know, natively paired to HomeKit. Like it's exactly that playbook again.

It didn't work that well last time. Why would we believe that it would work that well this time ? Isn't it supposed to be? I don't know if it's. They didn't change the, they changed the architecture of screen time. I'm getting confused. They changed the architecture of screen time. They used, they changed the architecture of HomeKit a while back and you had to convert your old home over to it.

They did, yes. But in theory, every time there's a new OS release, in theory, the home app could be better. The software stack and these devices could be better. So there's always the promise that even though this is not an overhaul like the old HomeKit conversion was, that it is a new version of all the OSs and these are new products.

So maybe it's better. And that's, I mean, that's, that's certainly Apple's pitch. These are products. They look sleek. They work well. And you trust us this time. It won't be like Marco's old Logitech cameras. Yeah. But that's, that's the thing. Like, would you commit, you know, a grand worth of home equipment to this?

No. There's a, there's a reason I don't have a, that I have Google cameras and not a, well, formerly Nest cameras, which have been serving me faith fully for years and years. And there's no way I would buy this Apple one or LG one. Sorry. Yeah. Cause like they've literally done exactly the same thing before and it was pretty mediocre.

Um, and it didn't, again, it was one of those things where like they put a bunch of stuff out there. They didn't want to release it themselves. They relied on third parties and partnerships. No one bought them, which made two things happen. It made Apple not, you know, put any wood behind the arrow and the companies that made them, it made them not really want to update them or do much for them either.

So they put out products that no one loved. The company didn't love them. Apple didn't love them. And customers couldn't love them because they didn't work that well. So I don't, again, like what's going to be different here? I don't know. I mean, I feel like a part of the, the, the, uh, the message of this whole, it's not really an event, but whatever the, the products they announced at a certain time while inviting a bunch of famous YouTubers to see them in person.

Let's call that an event. This was their home thing. And what they came out with was I think their most sophisticated and feature capable home advice ever, which is the home view. Uh, and they trivially updated a bunch of their other home stuff, including the Apple TV, which was super old and they announced some partnership deals.

And so again, we'll talk about in future episodes, this topic that has been pushed down forever, but like, is Apple making a new push into home? Are they going to do what they did before and just let these products all sit there for a year and neglect them?

Or have they had a change of heart under a new CEO and they 're actually going to pay more attention to this product category? Remains to be seen. Apple's messages, we're getting even more serious about the home and we've got all this great stuff and they've backed it up again by the home view. I feel like is the strongest signal that like we're not giving up on this segment.

We are doing more than we have ever done hardware and software wise in this segment, even though we're still essentially playing catch up with everybody else because they totally are like everyone else is so far ahead and all this stuff, but they 're not going the opposite direction. It's not like the, uh, the vision pro where you're like, are they even going to do this at all anymore?

They are like the trend line is upward and it is upward at a steeper slope than it has ever been before, but that's not saying much. So I, you know, it's like prove it to me, but all the potential rumors and whatever about Apple, you know, putting the gas down on product categories that they had let, uh, you know, lie fallow for a long time.

We'll see, but like, that's, I feel like it's the, the, the very low key message of this event is like, maybe Apple won't neglect all these things forever . Like Apple hasn't been particularly adamant about it, but you know, I'm again, like not optimistic, but I'm, I'm not pessimistic about this category.

Previously I was pessimistic about it. Now that I see the product roll out, I'm just like, I'm neutral. I don't, I don't trust that it's going to be wonderful, but I will continue to watch it. And I think they're moving in the right direction. I'll be it slowly. No, I agree with that wholeheartedly. Uh, one product that I wanted to call attention to is the indoor camera from LG.

If you imagine a letter L, a capital letter L, and then off the top of the L is the camera. Well, apparently it can, uh, at least tilt up and down. I don't know if it can pan laterally or not, but one way or another, it'll, it can tilt up and down. And apparently what it does is once Apple home realizes that there's at least one person inside the house, you can configure this to tilt, I believe downwards.

So that it's basically pointing at its own base and can't see anything and thus isn't recording anything useful. And then once, when the last person leaves the house, it'll pop itself back up so that it'll be, it'll start recording again. I thought that was a very clever feature. Uh, this is the sort of thing you could presumably automate in home assistant.

I'm just saying, I'm sorry. I'm that guy. Uh, but nevertheless, to have this in Apple home, I think is very, very cool. Yeah. My cameras do this too, but they don't have any motors in them. They only got the presence awareness. So they'll turn off when you're here and then turn back on when everybody leaves. But the key feature of this one is that physical motion, because there's always the question with cameras like, Oh, don't worry.

The little green light will always be on when it's on. All right. Um, this, there is less doubt because it wrote, like you said, it rotates. So the camera is like two millimeters from the base. So that camera is just seeing the, its own base. And you can glance at that and say with your eyeballs, clearly that camera is not looking at me right now.

Cause it's literally not looking at you. Like, I don't care if it's on, it's going to see nothing. It's going to see its white base. That's five millimeters from the thing. Right. So that I think is a reassurance and is a, um, it's an improvement on this thing, but the cost is now the camera is bigger and bulkier and has moving parts in it.

So I'm not even sure that's a wonderful trade-off, but I do think it is a useful innovation in the space. I'm sure other cameras have done similar things, but like, I think, I think that is useful. Like living in a house with kids who never want to be on camera when they were like, you know, you know, early teens and being left home alone, they 're like, but don't look at me on the cameras, you know, like blah, blah, blah.

They're always thought the cameras would be on, even if we assured them that they were off because they didn't trust the little light. Uh, if we had this camera, they would see that it's pointed down and they say, see, we're not looking at you. Oh, I forgot to mention actually, uh, these ship in 2027, you can order in December. So we don't know when in 2027 could be December of 2027, but sometime in 27, you can, you can receive some of these.

And again, you can order allegedly in a couple of months. Um, I would wait for the Amazon reviews on these. Like, is anybody pre-ordering these? Like, I don't know. That seems like a high risk and a low excitement product. Again, if you have a full home kit, I think like a Steven Robles is probably going to get a bunch of these things.

So we'll definitely see how they are from, uh, based on his experience. All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Quince, Factor, and Tailscale. Thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at ATP.fm slash join. One of the many perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic.

This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about the, um, the past keys are a trap blog post that's been going around recently. Uh, you can join to listen to our opinions on that at ATP.f m slash join. And you get all sorts of other membership perks as well. Thank you everybody for listening. And we'll talk to you next week.

Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research.

Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm. And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E -Y-L-I-S-S.

So that's Casey Liss. M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M. S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse. It's accidental. Accidental. They didn't mean to.

Accidental. Accidental. Tech podcast. So long. Got a new toy like a month ago and I finally had the opportunity to use it a little bit because I'm turning into that guy in part because of Marco and largely because of Stephen Hackett.

A while ago, like, I don't know, six months ago or something like that, I got a Unify UTR, which is a Unify Travel Router. So I got a Unify Unify Travel Router. You know what I mean. It's an ATM machine. Anyways. You put your personal PIN number in too. That I put my personal identification PIN number in.

Anyhow, I got a new version of this. They still sell the original, but they now have the UTR-LR or the Unify Travel Router long range. And this is almost identical to the original one, except now it has a little flappy thing that you can pick up.

And I presume that's the antenna. And allegedly, it works a lot further away. And I got to tell you. Wait, wait, wait. What is the range? What range are you talking about? Is it the range that your devices can see the Wi-Fi signal emitted by the travel router? That's right. That's certainly my understanding anyway.

The original Unify Travel Router is roughly the size of an iPhone battery pack. You know, the one from several years ago that still has a lightning connector. Not the one from the iPhone Air. I'm saying the original one. It's almost identical to that size. It's not exactly.

But that's a really good thing to envision. So now envision another like third of that that can flip up . And that's the antenna. I think I've talked about the original UTR in the past, but it has two Ethernet jacks. And the thing is so thin that it has like PCMCIA style flaps that you lift up in order to make the space for an Ethernet cord to plug in.

This is in contrast to a lot of the GLINet. We talked about GLINet. I think it was last episode, maybe the one before. I talked about their KVMs, but they originally became a part of my world on account of their travel routers, which are very good. This is physically quite, quite a bit smaller than their travel routers.

Now, the chat room is already grumbling that it's only Wi- Fi 5. GLINet has Wi-Fi 7 travel routers. This is not as advanced, but I love these things. And I got to tell you, the Unify Travel Router, the original one, when we would travel and we would go over the summer to like a couple of standalone homes, the one in Cape Charles and one in a different beach that we go to.

And in those standalone homes, which I would guess are roughly 2,000 square feet, the Unify Travel Router, the original one, would work sufficiently. But I would not say it was spectacular. And on the far edges of the house, it would typically be really spotty Wi-Fi coverage.

I haven't had this long enough to go to one of these homes over the summer, but we did do a little bit of traveling and went to a hotel, a home to suites hotel in Charlottes ville to meet up with some friends. And this thing worked great in there. And I suspect it would work pretty darn well in most average-sized vacation homes.

I really, really like these things. And especially by Unify standards, they're astonishingly cheap. The original Unify Travel Router was $80. This Unify Travel Router, long range, $100. Really not bad. I think they are still doing a tariff surcharge.

I don't recall off the top of my head. And shipping is unknowingly expensive, despite it all coming from Memphis and going via FedEx, if I'm not mistaken. But that being said, I love how freaking small this is. I like that it has a little display on it that shows how many clients you have connected and so on and so forth.

And if you recall, one of the perks of this, when paired with a Unify setup at home, is first of all, you can just tell it, mimic the home Wi-Fi. And it will use the same SSID and same password that you have at home. And the reason that a travel router is exciting and useful is if you travel with multiple devices, or perhaps you have multiple people in your family, or gasp, you have multiple people in your family with multiple devices per person, then you only have to get on, let's say, the hotel Wi-Fi or

maybe hotel Ethernet once, and then everything else is connected. Including, if you're an absolute lunatic like I am, a Sonos speaker. Because as far as the speaker is concerned, it's still at home. And that's also true of like an Apple TV. And again, this does have an Ethernet port for a local area network.

It has a WAN Ethernet port and a LAN Ethernet port. Unfortunately, there's only one of them. So you could pair this with like a Flex Mini, which is one of their very, very physically small and very affordable gigabit switches. And you can also, interestingly, if you use Teleport, which is their VPN solution that's WireGuard-based, similar to TailScale, but not the same.

If you use their Teleport thing, then you can actually have a camera attached to this via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Not PoE, I guess. So I guess it would have to be a Wi-Fi camera. But anyways, you could have a camera connected to this, then via Teleport, VPNed into your home, and storing all the footage on your home like UNAS or what's the NVR?

Is that what it is, Marco? The video recorder? Yeah. What am I thinking of? Yeah, there's multiple ones now, but yeah. Okay. So anyway, so you can have a remote camera if you want. Why would you want this? I don't know. But can you do it? Yes. And I think that's neat. And additionally, you know, it has a second, all of this is true of the original one.

It also has a second USB port so you can tether. It's really, really slick. And if you are a Unify person, which maybe you're not, but if you are, this thing is so cool. And I really, really appreciate the fact that it is longer range and seems to work in bigger spaces a lot better.

Cool. I don't know. I like it. Beep beep beep.