Apple Puts a 7-Inch Siri AI Hub on Your Wall: HomeView Costs $299 and Ships November 13

Apple has put a name, a price and a ship date on its long-rumored smart home hub. HomeView, announced Tuesday at Apple's second launch event under new CEO John Ternus, is a 7-inch touchscreen device built to be the household's command center for the company's rebuilt Siri AI — and it starts at $299.

The hardware is straightforward: a 7-inch Liquid Retina display, an Apple A18 chip, a built-in speaker, and a design that works either on a table or mounted on a wall. HomeView supports up to six users and uses face recognition to decide whose information to show, pulling Messages, Photos, Calendar and Reminders data through Apple Intelligence. It handles FaceTime calls, doubles as a digital photo frame, and acts as the smart home dashboard for camera feeds, thermostats and connected locks.

Apple chief marketing officer Greg Joswiak framed it as a household device rather than a personal one: "It recognizes your face to shift from a household screen to your own experience, fills the room with incredible sound, keeps you connected to the people who matter most with FaceTime, and makes it easy to control your smart home." Conversations with Siri started on HomeView can continue on an iPhone or iPad.

Preorders opened Tuesday and the device ships on November 13 in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. One market is conspicuously missing: the EU, where the new Siri AI has yet to arrive in iOS. Apple also announced partnerships with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric for a line of compatible cameras, thermostats and door locks, and said setting up a new smart home accessory takes one tap from an iPhone.

HomeView arrived alongside refreshed companion hardware. HomePod mini 2 costs $149, up from $129, adds Sound Glow lighting that pulses with music, runs on Apple's S10 chip and ships October 30; Siri AI will reach it through a free software update. The new Apple TV 4K rose from $199 to $299 and ships November 13 with a redesigned remote that can play a sound when lost. Both price increases trace back to a problem Apple has been public about: Tim Cook has said memory costs for the company have become unsustainable, and component inflation is now visibly working its way into consumer pricing.

The category matters less to Apple's top line than the iPhone — Wearables, Home and Accessories generated $7.88 billion in the June quarter, about 7% of revenue — but it matters a lot to the Siri AI story. After two years of delays, the smart home is where Apple can put its rebuilt assistant in front of ordinary households every day, and where the switching cost of owning several Apple devices compounds. Under Ternus, who has reportedly pushed the company to ship faster, HomeView is also the first genuinely new product category of his tenure — and the first real test of whether Apple can still create one.