Apple HomeView: the new Siri AI, at home for $299

Apple introduced HomeView at an event in New York on Tuesday, October 13, per Reuters: a 7-inch Liquid Retina display on a domed speaker base, joined by a stainless steel hinge that tilts for comfortable viewing. It comes in four colors — silver, starlight, rose pink, and space gray — and a separate wall-mounted model in space gray and silver sells for the same price.

Both models cost $299 (U.S.). Pre-orders started today in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S., with availability beginning November 13; Singapore pre-orders open October 15, and South Africa gets it through authorised resellers. One big hole on the map: HomeView is not for sale in the European Union, because Siri AI is currently unavailable in iOS in the EU. Apple says it is working with the EU to find a path forward.

The device exists to ship the new assistant. Apple calls Siri AI an entirely new version of Siri, powered by the next generation of Apple Intelligence and Apple silicon. It holds multi-turn conversations, understands personal context, has onscreen awareness, and takes action across apps — surfacing relevant information from Messages and Calendar, Apple Music playlists, and more, per Apple's release.

Conversations that start on HomeView continue in the Siri app on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or Apple Vision Pro, with history privately synced over iCloud. The fine print, from Apple's own footnotes: personal context requires a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad with Siri AI turned on. Without one, you still get Siri AI's world knowledge, natural conversation, and music discovery — just not the personal stuff. Siri voice expressiveness and pace are customizable, but only on recent devices (iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, or M4-or-later iPads with 12GB+ memory), in English only. Siri AI ships in beta in HomeView software 27.2.

HomeView recognizes up to six people by face and switches to each person's Home Screen, apps, and widgets. Personal content like Messages and Calendar only surfaces when the enrolled user is recognized by face and their paired iPhone or iPad is present and recently unlocked — the rest of the household does not see it.

Apple's privacy architecture leans on the A18 chip's Secure Exclaves, which process camera and microphone data in compartments the device software, apps, the user, and Apple itself cannot access. Siri requests run on-device or through Private Cloud Compute, where Apple says data is not stored or made accessible to anyone. Reuters' on-stage reporting showed the pitch: Siri recognizing a user, pulling a recipe from text messages, finding a nearby farmer's market for missing ingredients, then updating a shopping list — and switching to a different household member's personal data, including a friend's flight landing time and a heads-up to the coffee maker, when they step in front of the screen.

As a home hub, HomeView controls lights, thermostats, locks, and blinds by touch or voice, livestreams up to nine camera feeds at once on the Home Camera face, and can detect the sound of a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm and alert the user's iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. Apple also announced the Apple Home Collection — its first lineup of smart home cameras, thermostats, and a lock, built with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric — starting in December alongside other Works with Apple Home and Matter accessories.

The wall-mounted model attaches with three purpose-built mounts from Schneider Home: USB-C power at $59.95, AC wired at $79.95, both orderable today, and a PoE wired option at $129.95 coming in early 2027. Apple also slipped in a pricing footnote worth knowing: some Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models face daily usage limits, with expanded access ‘for a fee’ down the road.

Worth noting: this is new CEO John Ternus' first big AI hardware bet, per Reuters — his pitch is the iPhone as an ‘intelligent personal hub’, and HomeView is the kitchen counter where that idea lives. If you own an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone, this is the most personal Siri has ever been. If you don't, or you live in the EU, it's a $299 photo frame with good sound — at least for now.