Apple expected to make home hardware ‘a top priority,’ with homeOS-powered smart displays and robotic devices

Apple is poised to make a significant push into the smart home market. Their new strategy involves integrating Apple screens and software throughout the home to create a seamless, unified experience.
According to Bloomberg News’ Mark Gurman, home hardware will be a major focus for Apple over the next two years. This initiative includes developing a new home operating system, a smart display, and a more advanced robotic tabletop device.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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The renewed effort follows years of mediocre performance in this category, with Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google taking the lead. One reason Apple has struggled is its focus on making premium products that work in a closed ecosystem. That hasn’t been an effective strategy in the smart home, where consumers want equipment that can work with a wide range of other products.
For Apple’s next slate of home hardware to be successful, it has to support as many accessories as possible — and the company is preparing to do just that. It helped develop a smart home protocol called Matter that allows Amazon, Google and Apple devices to all play nicely together.
That’s one piece of the foundation. Another is artificial intelligence. The company’s goal is to use its new Apple Intelligence platform to offer home automation on steroids, as well as precise control of applications, devices and media. A core piece of Apple Intelligence is a new App Intents system that allows the Siri digital assistant to manipulate features inside apps.
AI also will govern how the products work. The tabletop device will use AI to understand its surrounding environment so it can sense who is looking at the screen, what people are doing and who is speaking. That capability could make the device compelling…
The third component of the smart home strategy is software. That includes the new homeOS, which will be built on the underpinnings of tvOS — the Apple TV set-top box operating system. The company also recently revamped its Home app.

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MacDailyNews Note: Gurman reports that Apple’s first product in this new “home” strategy will be a new HomeOS-powered smart display meant for playing Apple TV+ streaming content, conducting FaceTime calls, surfing the web, and accessing apps like Calendar and Notes. It’s expected to be an “affordable iPad-like screen” that users of multiple units could place around the house.
A tabletop device, Gurman reports, would launch later and be significantly expensive – “around $1,000.” It would focus on home security monitoring, advanced videoconferencing, and media playback with high-quality audio. The screen would be positioned atop a swiveling robotic limb that automatically follows the user’s movement around the room.
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