713: I Have Medium Hopes
15 Oct 2026Apple’s new HomeView, Apple TV, HomePod Mini, and Apple Home Collection.
Episode Description:
- Apple’s New Home-Related Products
- Post-show: Casey got a UTR-LR
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Regarding Passkeys are a Trap…
Sponsored by:
- Tailscale: A secure network that just works
- Factor: Healthy Eating, Made Easy
- Quince: Elevated essentials and staples that last
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Eskewing follow-up
- HomeView 🖼️
- Sponsor: Factor (code atp50off)
- HomeView, continued 🖼️
- Sponsor: Tailscale
- Apple TV 4K (4th-gen)
- Sponsor: Quince
- HomePod Mini 2
- Apple Home Collection
- Ending theme
- UTR-LR
Eskewing follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So with that in mind, I think we're going to issue eskew. No, let me reboot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that because I realized I don't know how to pronounce that
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you got it right the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first time. 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 f*** you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I just need to do that. So Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John just pick a different word, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we're going to reboot it, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John need to swear We're going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, eschew. I needed to swear so Marco wouldn't use it. All right. And then that's not a challenge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never uses the audio when you curse.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We never keep those parts of the show. Don't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not a challenge. All right. Let me reboot that whole damn thing. Hello and goodbye, future, Marco. I'm totally using that.
HomeView
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, with that in mind, we are going to issue follow-up for this episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We will keep it askew, if you will. But we're going to go straight into the not event event,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we're going to talk about Apple's new home products. And we're going to start with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HomeView, which is a name that doesn't offend me, but doesn't really rev my engine either. What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do we think about the name?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh it was like HomePod with a screen is what we've been calling it for years, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 its distinguishing
⏹️ ▶️ John characteristic. As the date approached to like when, you know, this was supposedly going to be announced,
⏹️ ▶️ John I started to see more people saying HomePad, which makes some amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of sense. But if you're listening to this, you're like, they would never call it HomePad because they already have HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ John And who would make two products with such confusingly similar names? Well, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you're new to Apple, they used to have a product called the iPod. And then at some point in the future,
⏹️ ▶️ John they were going to make a tablet. And everyone's like, what are they going to call the tablet? The iSlate? Certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John they're not going to call it iPad. They called it iPad. So they made the iPod
⏹️ ▶️ John and they made the iPad. They made the HomePod. They did not make the HomePad. They called it HomeView,
⏹️ ▶️ John which, you know, it's got a screen, so you view it. Makes sense. Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ John really not, you know, if you think you know what Apple's going to do with names, they usually zig when you think they're going
⏹️ ▶️ John to zag. I think HomeView is better than HomePad, but it's not a great name.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the challenges with HomeView is that it doesn't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have any unique or interesting words. Like Apple's product strategy for product naming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategy for a long time has been just putting Apple in front of a generic word.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple TV, Apple Watch. Apple Music. Right, Apple Music. You know, Apple was the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand, but these were all like pretty boringly named. And they, for a little while, could have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit more of like a trademark unique name. iPhone. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I mean, obviously back when everything was iSomething, like those all kind of had those. You know, iPod, and that led
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to HomePod, which still like still using pod as like the, you know, the unique Apple version of this. It's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like generic word, but pod. So, you know, that helped. iPad, you know, again, like the pad was kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the i, both of those. But I feel like HomeView, it's like no part of this name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is interesting or unique to Apple. It's just like when you're filing a trademark,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forgive me, I'm not a trademark lawyer, but I filed a bunch of them. And so I know that the gist of it basically is like, if it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too, if you're, if what you're filing is too descriptive and not like unique
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough, if it just describes what the product is, you generally can't get a strong trademark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it or even maybe any trademark on it. And I feel like home view is like, it's almost that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boring. Like it's not quite to that level. Like I'm sure they I'm sure they secured the trademark, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's just describing with two boring words glued together what this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. Like, okay, it's fine. I do wish there was a little bit more personality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the name, but what the hell? It's not a bad name. It's just a name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we, even as Apple nerds, are going to almost immediately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have trouble remembering. And civilians aren't going to stand a chance. Ask anyone who's not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Apple nerd what this product is called in six months. Nobody will know, I guarantee it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's the interesting thing about HomePod, because like pod exists because of the iPod.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the iPod was very popular at the time, and people latched onto it pretty well. And I feel like the
⏹️ ▶️ John only reason HomePod makes any kind of sense with consumers is because
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPod existed. And they're like, yeah, whatever, Apple makes pods. And, you know, I wonder how many people
⏹️ ▶️ John call the HomePod an iPod just because, you know, pod is in the name. But practically speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is pod about the HomePod? It is, is it pod shaped? I mean, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of things Apple makes are arguably pod shaped. What is a pod shape? And it's
⏹️ ▶️ John a HomePod. I mean, it doesn't even have anything to do with sound in there. Like it is a big speaker,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there's nothing even to do with audio sound. Like nothing in that vein is in there. It's almost like they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John we made the iPod. People know we made the iPod. It was really popular. Stick home in front of that. done. At least
⏹️ ▶️ John this one says view and home. So it's like a thing for your home and you look at it, which
⏹️ ▶️ John okay. But I do think it actually makes more sense than HomePod, but it is a worse name for the reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple owns. And when you stick them together, it doesn't really say Apple. But like all these names, like I hated MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John and still don't really particularly like it, but eventually you just get used to it. Even even iPad was a, ridiculed when it first
⏹️ ▶️ John came out because people were so attached with slate and all their other rumors that were going around that when they called it Pad, everyone's
⏹️ ▶️ John like, ugh. But you just get used to it. You do. But like, i I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do kind of, I hope that Apple starts adding more terms that kind of say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple. Like they kind of, I think Neo and Duo are small steps in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction. Not like, you know, they're not super strong because they're
⏹️ ▶️ John not super unique. Neo, I think, better than Duo. Well, I mean, Duo is, it's got two screens, so it makes perfect sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Neo, i Cause it's new? I don't know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think, again, I think Neo is a better step in that direction. A Duo is a step in that direction. So maybe this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just like a boring name product that, we know. Hopefully, hopefully this is the anomaly. But hopefully new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products get like a little more interesting names.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Either way, Um, we should talk about what the heck this is. So this is a $300,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I'm going to come back to that in a second, a $300 thing that vaguely looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the, how would you describe that iMac, John? The one that was on like a cantilevered,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, the iMac G4 and all the rumors, all the rumored, this product's been rumored for so long. Supposedly the
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware has been done for so long. But it didn't actually, this hardware didn't actually leak like picture-wise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone knew, oh, it's got a square screen. It's got a dome on top. Like it looks like the iMac G4. When you say
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac G4, people don't know what the hell is the G4 It's the one with the arm and the flat screen. It was on an adjustable
⏹️ ▶️ John arm and the base of it was a hemisphere, right? And it sat on the desk. And so every single
⏹️ ▶️ John like fake rendering based on text rumor descriptions, they're like, okay, I can draw
⏹️ ▶️ John a square screen. I bet it's going to have rounded corners. I'm going to put it on a little arm and I'm going to put it on a
⏹️ ▶️ John hemispherical base because all the rumors were like, oh, it's kind of like that flat screen
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac that had the thing on the arm. Every drawing I saw of this, every rendering, everything
⏹️ ▶️ John looked like that. That's not what the product looks like. The product looks like that
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting on top of a cylinder.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would almost say, and I say this not as an insult. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks like what an AI rendering of an imagined Apple product would look like. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the sense that it just looks kind of like modern Apple kind of low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco priority product, you know? And I think it looks decent. Like I you know from at least from from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pictures and from the couple of reviews that I saw, like a couple of video reviews I saw, or you know video captures from the the hands-on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. It looks decent. It looks nice. And I think it's what it needs to look like because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we'll get to in a second, like there's two versions. There's one with the base and there's one that just wall mounts. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, this is this was all been rumored for a while, so we're kind of not too surprised. uh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the wall mount one, you want that to be as minimal as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it is. And the base seems like it's to put on your counter or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and heavy with that big base woofer on the bottom. I think it's going to look nice and normal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a countertop or on a side table or something. So I think it is a successful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design, if not a little unsurprising, but it's only unsurprising because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect Apple products to look good and made out of silver, space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gray, pink, and beige aluminum and have holes in them for sound to come out of. And like that's exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it looks like.
⏹️ ▶️ John oh here's the thing that surprised me. Maybe it's because I've seen so many of those images for so long. I was really,
⏹️ ▶️ John really surprised at how tall and skinny the base was. The fact that it wasn't a hemisphere,
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially an R2D2 or a top of a rounded trash can. It is a cylinder with a hemisphere stuck on
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And it is way taller than I thought it would be. Now looking at the product, I'm like, okay, it doesn't
⏹️ ▶️ John actually have an like an arm, adjustable arm like the, the flat panel iMac did.
⏹️ ▶️ John It instead has a basically a solid piece of metal that hinges up and down in
⏹️ ▶️ John one, one dimension, as far as I can tell. So it's not an arm because the arm had like the arm had like joints
⏹️ ▶️ John on both ends and you could you know, move around. This is not that. And remember, there's rumors surrounding this product as
⏹️ ▶️ John well about a version of this with a robotic arm or that rotates by itself to face people and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's not this product. But you can see how a product like that could be made from these pieces,
⏹️ ▶️ John differently assembled with a different kind of arm and so on and so forth. The base is tall. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John again, when I look at the product, I'm 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
⏹️ ▶️ John be like touching the table. You want it to be elevated a little bit. So you have the
⏹️ ▶️ John stand has to be taller. you know otherwise like to try to slowly increase the
⏹️ ▶️ John height of a hemisphere, you end up having to increase the base by a lot. There's probably some ratio
⏹️ ▶️ John for those two things that you can figure out. Anyway, um so it ends. it So it's an R2D2 head.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's a half of R2D2 with the screen sticking out of it. And it looks a little bit more ungainly from the back and the
⏹️ ▶️ John sides than all the renderings did. And the arm is less an arm and more of just like, this is how the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing attaches. But in the end, like you said, Marco, it does look like an Apple product. And the rumors about this
⏹️ ▶️ John one are wild. I can't wait until people start getting these things because like the rumor is that this thing was done so
⏹️ ▶️ John long ago. And let's rewind slightly to the first thing Casey said. $300.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to admit, that is way less than I thought this thing would cost.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2024? That's a fair point.
⏹️ ▶️ John things were cheap, you know what I mean? When RAM was cheap, when every aspect of this was cheaper, is that
⏹️ ▶️ John why it's $300? Because they built literally like millions of them and they're sitting in a warehouse waiting for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, iOS 27.2 to finally be out? I don't know. But wow this
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the bargain of the century. If you consider that this thing includes a screen
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it's just mind-bogglingly inexpensive. I haven't heard anyone complain about the price of this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think one thing that helps the price angle a lot is like, what is expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now? It's not metal and speakers. It's not even screens. What's expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now is high-end chips. And this doesn't really appear to have any of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's five nanometer, right? Like uh Maybe, but like it's, isn't it just an A18? Like it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, there's not much in there. Presumably there's not a huge amount of storage. Presumably there's this stock amount of RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John the A18 comes with, which I didn't bother to look up. um Right. But like still, just Apple doesn't sell
⏹️ ▶️ John you anything made of anything for three hundred dollars like
⏹️ ▶️ John something with this. When has Apple sold you something with a screen for $300? bucks Like it's hard to get Apple watches for that
⏹️ ▶️ John much. And they have much wimpier SOCs. much Everything about the Apple watch is like the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John is small I mean, I guess they're OLED, but the screen is smaller. The SOC is smaller. The battery is smaller. Granted, this has no battery.
⏹️ ▶️ John There's just less, there's literally less aluminum in the watch less everything in the watch. $300.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not a terrible deal, I'm going to say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but I think also like they have, they are entering into a market that like, you know, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we're all going to probably buy one because we're Apple nerds and we're stupid with money. But I think, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really? Okay. Casey's allergic to this product category. We'll get there. Okay. But I will, but I will say, like, if you look at this product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco category from other makers, namely, you know, Amazon probably is the most, you know, the biggest player in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this category. Yeah, the Echo show and the Google thing. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google has a thing too. And like, I think this is more than both of those.
⏹️ ▶️ John well, they're like 270, right? Or like 250. So it's still in the ballpark. And of course, the Apple one's going to be more expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John But normally the Apple one is hilariously more expensive, not just like, oh, it's 30 bucks more than the Amazon one. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John $30 bucks more than the Amazon one is a price area that Apple never touches. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think like it like sometimes they do, um just usually not, and usually only their lowest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end product. So for instance, I think before today, the HomePod Mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was actually a pretty good deal for what it was. It was before today, it was a hundred dollars We'll get to that later, but it was a hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars and it was kind of like between like the the cheap echo dots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the full-size echoes in terms of sound quality, but it was also between them in price. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think for its size, especially, and secondarily for its price, I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HomePod Mini was a fantastic deal for what you get for $100.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, not anymore. And then the full-size HomePod, Apple always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco struggled to move those. And I think a huge reason was the price, that the full-size HomePod,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Apple thought they were competing with Sonos and they priced it as such. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they kind of aren't competing with Sonos. The full-size HomePod I think was competing a little more with just like higher-end
⏹️ ▶️ John big Echo speakers or the big Google home speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, which are usually like $180, $200, something like that. So I think the $300 full-size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HomePod or $350 at first, I think it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always well above that market. So I think maybe Apple has learned from that a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit. And maybe they've learned like, hey, we really can't push this too high because this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not like a must-have product for a lot of people. And all the other options out there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be cheaper than it. So it can't be too excessive. And I think if the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do that is by basically offloading all of the expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco operations to your expensive iPhone in your pocket, which just seems like that's what they're doing, that's a good strategy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them because then they can still sell this hardware at what is probably pretty healthy margins
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still be within the realm of what people might consider for their homes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, we need to move on from price. But with that said, I think the thing that's striking to me about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is whenever I see a screen, and I think I conceptually understand that the screen is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smaller than I think it is. It looks to me to be like 10 plus inches and it's not. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see a screen and I just assume, oh, that's expensive, especially with an Apple screen, because generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple devices have really nice screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I assume, oh, this is like a $500 plus product. And then I see the price of $300. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the two explanations that make the most sense to me, genuinely, is that, hey, this probably doesn't have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a whole lot of RAM. And a lot of the things that are the actual cost these days, because yes, screens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to be the problem, but now, arguably, they're not. And actually, John, I really think you're onto
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something. I really think these may have been manufactured.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I mean, I still think the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen is probably the most expensive component in this. Maybe the case. I don't know. But it's like a six-inch
⏹️ ▶️ John by six-inch square screen, or at least the outside of it. What do they call it? They have a diagonal measure. Well, You'll get to it when you read
⏹️ ▶️ John the specs. But I'm trying to look up how much RAM the A18 had in it. But I'm sure it has the amount of RAM that the A18
⏹️ ▶️ John had when it was in a phone because I don't think they would, you know, they're
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not going to make a custom
⏹️ ▶️ John one of these for that chip.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, and in any case, let's keep it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The A18 is three nanometer. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it really? Yeah. So they released a couple of videos. I'm going to talk about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. That one was fine. It's exactly what you expect. They released a different one that I think was like three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a half minutes. And it's called Welcome Apple Home View Designed for Life at Home.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get the vibe that I might be standing alone on this. I thought this was a great video.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really enjoyed it.
⏹️ ▶️ John agree with you. I could not
⏹️ ▶️ John many people were slamming this. Okay. Cause it, here's the, here's the pitch. If you haven't seen it, which you should watch in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John and it's a short. 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
⏹️ ▶️ John morning of getting out of the way. And they're trying to show how the home view fits into these people's lives. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John And it's very difficult to do this without embarrassing yourself. Like it's difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John to make an ad of like, oh, busy family at home. Like, all right, it's an ad for the product, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the home view. Like you're supposed to see everyone in the family using the product and how it fits into their life, but you're also supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John show the family interacting with each other in a realistic way. That is a really high degree of difficulty because
⏹️ ▶️ John it's so easy to be like embarrassingly corny or unrealistic or whatever. And in
⏹️ ▶️ John the end, we all know there is artifice. We're not, I don't think this is like no real family is like this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone is too well spoken. The timings are too perfect. It is clearly a script piece of narrative fiction.
⏹️ ▶️ John But once you're willing to accept that, the goal of this is to show how
⏹️ ▶️ John semi-realistic archetypes of mom, dad, kid, and brother and sister would
⏹️ ▶️ John use this product to fit into their life. And I thought they did not embarrass themselves with the script
⏹️ ▶️ John writing. So whoever wrote this script, you did not embarrass yourself. Now, did you write something amazing? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John There's no groundbreaking stuff here. It's not like, oh, it brought a tear to my eye, emotional. It's not
⏹️ ▶️ John the Think Different ad campaign inspiring the masses. It's just a little tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John family skit to advertise a product. But I was shocked by how little I was
⏹️ ▶️ John cringing while watching this. And I've heard a lot of the people talk about this and say, only parents understand
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing, like that it speaks to parents. But if you're not a parent, it just seems like some dumb, corny family sitcom
⏹️ ▶️ John that you don't want to watch because it's an infomercial for a product. Like I get it. And I'm not saying it was like a
⏹️ ▶️ John tearjerker 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
⏹️ ▶️ John something to that because I have seen a lot, a lot of people looking at this and saying that it's just the most embarrassing
⏹️ ▶️ John thing they've ever seen. And I'm mostly with Casey. I didn't think it was that embarrassing. But it is supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell you this is how the product fits into your life. And boy, this was the first thing I watched. This
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately raised tons of questions to me. The second the ad starts, it's like a family in a
⏹️ ▶️ John kitchen um and there's a kitchen island and the family is rotating around the kitchen island dealing with their
⏹️ ▶️ John day of like they have to get off to school and what are they going to make for breakfast and they have to look up a recipe on the home button. Mom
⏹️ ▶️ John can't find her keys and the the brother's being a jerk and the sister's walking to school with a guy who
⏹️ ▶️ John might be her boyfriend. Like it's whole, it's whole little skit they fit into this thing here. And there's the home view
⏹️ ▶️ John in the center of the kitchen island. And immediately I said, okay, all
⏹️ ▶️ John I know about this product is that it's not battery powered. Like there is no battery inside it. You must
⏹️ ▶️ John be plugged in for it to be used. Where is that thing plugged in? Because you know in an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ad, they're not going to show a cord snaking from the center of the kitchen island, draping over the edge
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they drilled the hole in the middle of the kitchen island and snake the usbc cord
⏹️ ▶️ John through the hole that they drilled in the center of the kitchen island so they could be like a Sony ad where whenever
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony shows their televisions on their website, there's never any cords attached to them. You're like, well, that's a great if you just
⏹️ ▶️ John want to look at the the TV in a turned off state. But if you ever wanted to turn it on, you're gonna have to plug it in and maybe connect
⏹️ ▶️ John it to a video source. uh But yeah, that's just like, okay, i'm I'm mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere. But that does factor into their pitch for the product, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John at one point they show someone like, you can rotate it. So now the screen's facing me. Now the screen's facing you. That's that's why it's on a little
⏹️ ▶️ John R2D2. That's why it's circular. That's why it has a little arm. To be clear, the the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing doesn't rotate. R2D2's head does not turn. R2D2 is a continuous cylinder. He does not have a separate head
⏹️ ▶️ John section that turns, but you can rotate the entire thing because it's a cylinder and it's small and you can turn
⏹️ ▶️ John it or whatever. And that's why it's in the center of the island. But no actual family can
⏹️ ▶️ John ever put this in the center of an island unless they already have a hole there for snaking the USB-C cord
⏹️ ▶️ John through. So that was an immediate ding for me. um The
⏹️ ▶️ John second bit is uh they show, you know, and I was very curious about this when I saw this in the
⏹️ ▶️ John ad and we'll get to it in a bit. They show people using it. It's like, oh, when you look at it, you see your junk. And when dad looks at it, he see his
⏹️ ▶️ John junk. And when the the daughter looks at it, she sees her text messages, right? So, oh, it's like it's recognizing you and it shows
⏹️ ▶️ John you your stuff. Isn't that clever? um And they show a sequence
⏹️ ▶️ John where the brother tries to peek and see what the sister was seeing in her text, but he
⏹️ ▶️ John can't because 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
⏹️ ▶️ John that he's disappointed they're showing the security thing about it. And that brings me to the
⏹️ ▶️ John final and I feel like most important question and the thing I heard everyone bring up about this video, which is, wouldn't
⏹️ ▶️ John every person in this video be doing all this stuff on their phone? Certainly the kids would. That is the question
⏹️ ▶️ John Homeview has to answer. Why should I use this and not my phone? Because if this was not an ad for Homeview,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can bet the girl would be texting her potential boyfriend on her phone, not on the
⏹️ ▶️ John communal home pod in the middle of the island, regardless of the security features that don't let her
⏹️ ▶️ John brother see it. He could just shoulder surf that crap. She's going to do that on her phone 100%. Is the dad
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do it on the island for the recipe? Maybe, but then if someone comes and yanks the home view and
⏹️ ▶️ John starts doing their thing and you be like, hey, I was looking at the recipe. I don't think this infomercial answered that question. And everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw looked at this ad was like, the reason why it was unrealistic depiction of a family is that there was no
⏹️ ▶️ John one on their phone. And that's a problem for this product.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that's like phones have gotten so good now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that many people don't even use countertop speakers anymore. They just play crap out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their phone speakers as they go around the house doing stuff. Many people use their phone for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco timers, especially like, you know, young kids are going to use their phone. Like teenagers are going to use their phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all of these tasks. Teenagers care even less about sound quality and big screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care way more about privacy and
⏹️ ▶️ John family not seeing what they're doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think this is, I think it's going to have a reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small market. I don't think it's going to be no market. I think it will sell. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it's going to sell better than some other platforms Apple might have launched in the last few years. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's going to be probably about the same size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the market for the HomePod, which is not big. It's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not nothing, and it's not a bad product. It's just not a big market. And that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. And I think this is kind of leading into like, you know, we'll get to the larger view later on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about like, you know, what they're doing with, you know, this new push into HomeKit and home devices and stuff. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is like a flagship device for people who are already in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple home ecosystem already. I don't think this is going to bring that many new people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into it. But for those of us who are in it, this is probably going to be pretty nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder if it's going to like live and die based on its audio quality, because the main appeal I can see for this
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, I've seen a lot of people who bounce off home smart
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers because you have to talk to them and people find that uncomfortable and they don't know how to do it. And we
⏹️ ▶️ John all know that it can be unreliable and weird. Whereas if you basically got a speaker with a little
⏹️ ▶️ John screen on it, people are a little bit more comfortable interacting with that, even if they're just mostly doing it from their phone, just to
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to see something on the screen that shows that they're doing it right. Like there's being able to see
⏹️ ▶️ John like visibility into what the thing is doing and a thing that you can touch, I think that makes people feel more comfortable. So I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John still thinking of this kind of as the home pod with a screen for most people. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John like, so maybe you didn't want a home pod mini because you're, or a big home pod certainly, because you're like, well, I like the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea of a speaker, but I'd rather just have a dumb Bluetooth speaker. Like I don't need any smarts in it because a dumb Bluetooth speaker looks
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I know how to connect to my phone and play stuff and that's that. But for like young people setting
⏹️ ▶️ John up their first apartment or home and they want to have some sound, maybe they bounce off the mini because they're like, I don't
⏹️ ▶️ John want to talk to a thing, but if it has a screen, I can just, you know, pull up a playlist like whatever they think they can do with this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Remains to be seen what they'll actually be able to do with it by touching the screen, but whatever they think they can do with it, they're like, I'll
⏹️ ▶️ John just be able to pull it up there and use a touch screen and start playing stuff as sort of like a modern young
⏹️ ▶️ John person's small, compact apartment or dorm room stereo. And that really depends on how, how good is that speaker?
⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing I've heard from the people who were there in person, like the YouTubers who said that, so a couple people say that
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn't as loud as they thought it would be. And that is maybe a problem. Maybe it's a little bit too small
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. Maybe it's actually not even as loud as a HomePod Mini. But, you know, at 300
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks, I can see this as a splurge purchase for your first apartment on your own as
⏹️ ▶️ John a way to have sound and maybe also some other aspects of like, you know, FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How many people getting their first apartment on their own have the money for this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, again, it's 300 bucks, like I said, I did say it's your splurge purchase. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John than like, oh, I want, you know, I want to buy a stereo from a new apartment. Well, no, no one buys stereos anymore. Like, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John they're just, they're just going to play it on their phone. What if you want to level up a little bit from that? What if you want to, if you're interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in music and you want some kind of sound system for like casual gatherings and parties at your apartment that
⏹️ ▶️ John also maybe doubles as a thing you can FaceTime your parents from or whatever? Like I can see a way to advertise
⏹️ ▶️ John this as that product. Again, at 300 bucks, I feel like it's within reach because it is within, it's less than $100
⏹️ ▶️ John within its competitors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we liked… Well, Marco, what did you think of the video?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought it was fine. I
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn't put off by it. I think it was a little long. I mean, it is an infomercial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. And I think like they can get a little too cute,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, but like it's fine. It was exactly what it
⏹️ ▶️ John needed to be. Everyone was a little bit too well-spoken and clever. And they, you know, and in
⏹️ ▶️ John the end, they're demonstrating features of a product. So there's no getting around that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones? But of course, it's contrived. But this is a tangent I really don't want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go down. So please do not engage, gentlemen. But I actually don't think New Siri is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that great. And it's certainly not as fast as they showed in this commercial.
⏹️ ▶️ John yes. I noticed that immediately. it brings up the final point that a lot of people were pointing out. Like, oh, we were lauding
⏹️ ▶️ John them for showing Siri AI in real time when it was first rolled out, like, you know, making up for the 2024 WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And people were like, well, this doesn't do that. This doesn't show anything in real time. Not even
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a sequences shortened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco text at the bottom? You ever see that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, they did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sequences shortened to show that they're not lying about a product. And my take on this is that
⏹️ ▶️ John they don't need to do that because this is clearly narrative fiction with
⏹️ ▶️ John edits. And every time there's an edit, there might as well be infinite potential time
⏹️ ▶️ John between the edits. Like it's an immediate understanding of when we see something edited like this. If there's a cut,
⏹️ ▶️ John we're not saying that this happened and then immediately that happened. There could be any amount of time between those
⏹️ ▶️ John cuts. And so I don't think they have to say, you know, professional driver closed course sequences
⏹️ ▶️ John shortened because it's not one continuous shot. They put that in there when it's like a TV ad where they're showing a phone and they
⏹️ ▶️ John hear someone tapping and tapping on the phone and they never cut away and things happen way too fast. You need sequences shortened
⏹️ ▶️ John on that. Again, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know. For this one, they always seem to cut. And the cuts did
⏹️ ▶️ John make it seem like Siri AI is way faster than we all know it to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I agree with you, Casey. Like, I mean, Siri AI is only such a relief
⏹️ ▶️ John after the non-AI Siri, but compared to other competing products that are more mature
⏹️ ▶️ John and have always been more responsive, they still are. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So there is the tabletop one, which is mostly what we've been talking about. There's also a wall-mounted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, which I think John mentioned in passing earlier. The tabletop one has,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe, a downward-facing subwoofer, if I'm not mistaken. Downward-facing dog. No, it
⏹️ ▶️ John We'll get to the specs of the two things. But for now, suffice it to say that the wall-mount one is the
⏹️ ▶️ John non-wall-mount one without the R2-D2 in the arm. Yep. That's it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And you may be
⏹️ ▶️ John well, what the hell's in the R2-D2 in the arm? Apparently, you don't need any of that stuff because you can put it on the wall. Apparently, the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is in the screen. Well, the R2-D2, the arm obviously connects it to the R2-D2 and the R2-D2
⏹️ ▶️ John contains speakers. Indeed. Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the wall mount one does also have speakers. And Apple has made a point in the releases
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they've made, the newsroom stuff, that they have tuned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the speakers for the wall mount version to accommodate for the fact that it's mounted against a wall.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And obviously the wall mount speakers will be worse because they are tiny, like iPad speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And we'll come back to the wall mount stuff in a minute. But like we said earlier, the display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with bezel is a little less than six inches across. I forget what they're calling it, corner to corner,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it's fine. The colors for the R2-D2 version are silver,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starlight, rose pink, and space gray, which I would describe as gray, gold, pink, and darker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gray. For the wall mount one, you get gray or darker gray.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that's smart because anything you're going to mount on your wall, you want to be neutral. I know people are complaining about this. Why can't I get the
⏹️ ▶️ John pink one on my wall?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You probably don't want the pink one on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. So yeah, it's an A18, which we've already covered. The screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Eight gigs of
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM, by the way, in the A18.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, thank you. The screen is a seven inch diagonal IPS LCD. It's 1088
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by 1088 at 220 points per inch. It is true tone. It gets as bright as 500
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nits, but interestingly, as dark as three tenths of a nit. This is the lowest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minimum brightness ever. The previous low was one nit. John, could we get any lower?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so here, I look at this screen, like people are lauding the fact that it can get down to 0.3 nits
⏹️ ▶️ John because like, what if it's in a home and you want the home to be dark? It's really annoying like to have a dark room and like this bright screen in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So getting really, really dim is useful. Like imagine if you want to put this in a bedroom or use it as like your alarm
⏹️ ▶️ John knows what people use this for? It's nice that it goes down. But here's the thing. It drives me up a wall about all these
⏹️ ▶️ John devices. Like, my, for example, my ecobee thermostat, which is similar. It's a thing on a wall. It's got a screen
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. Sometimes that room is dark. Uh, LCDs emit light when they're
⏹️ ▶️ John quote-unquote black uh because the i spent these are these don't have dynamic backlights. The backlight
⏹️ ▶️ John is on all the time. They close the liquid crystals, trying not to let any light out. But guess what? some light
⏹️ ▶️ John gets through, which means in a dark room, your L C D screen, even when the screen is
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely quote unquote black, is glowing. You know it doesn't do that? Self-emissive
⏹️ ▶️ John technologies like OLED. I know OLED would have made this super expensive, but like for my ecobee where the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the size of an Apple Watch. Oh my God, I would pay like $100 extra for an OLED screen I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could be just so the black can be black, because most of the time it's black with like some white numerals showing the temperature
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. OLED is perfect for home devices because the black parts of the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen you always want to be actually black and only self-emissive stuff. Perpixel
⏹️ ▶️ John self-emissive stuff like OLED can do that. LCD can't. So this thing, it's great that it gets
⏹️ ▶️ John dim. It's not so great that even when the screen is quote unquote black with white letters
⏹️ ▶️ John on it, even though the white part can get down to 0.3 nits, I wonder if the black part will be 0.03
⏹️ ▶️ John nits. So yeah, I'm not arguing for like, oh, this should have been OLED because
⏹️ ▶️ John it's a $300 device or whatever. I'm just saying like the sooner self-emissive
⏹️ ▶️ John per pixel lighting can reduce in price enough that it's in home devices, the better, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John is the ideal application.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, I mean, wouldn't image retention be a pretty significant concern on this one, on this kind of device? I mean, they got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to solve that problem
⏹️ ▶️ John too. It's true. But yeah, like you get image retention on LCDs as well, as we've all seen by looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John like a big old LCD flat screen TV as a menu in some like restaurant, right? These are problems
⏹️ ▶️ John to be solved. I'm just saying, like for home devices in particular, since we're talking about getting dim, any screen
⏹️ ▶️ John in a black room, you're going to know the technology. You're like, is that an LCD or not?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, So yeah, the camera is 12 megapixel center stage camera, f2.4 aperture.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is in the bezel. There's no notch or dynamic island. For the regular and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the wall mounted versions, there are two custom full-range driver speakers. For the R2T2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version only, there's a custom down firing woofer and dual force canceling Marco passive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey radiators. Interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so they shove a lot of speakers in that dome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, so the, a passive radiator in this case, um they've been doing those recently in a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their devices. The passive radiator is the only kind of base sort of driver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the HomePod Mini has. And I think they even put them in some of the laptops recently, or at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least maybe the iMacs. I forget, but it actually helps somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with bass response. Like, it's not as good as having a real driver, but it's good. Now, in this case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have both. They have what sounds like probably It's probably going to be like a big downward-facing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco woofer, which is how HomePods have always been built. It looks like that's kind of what the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bass mainly is. The good thing is those tend to be really freaking heavy. So it kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of gives you what you want in a bass like this, which is a nice, you know, stable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco footing for the whole thing and probably pretty good sound, at least in the bass department.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do wonder a little bit how the mid-range and upper frequencies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to be represented very well by what appears to be only the screen and only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the top and bottom edges, or maybe even only the bottom edge. Are there holes in the top?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So on the left and right sides, it appears to just be microphones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I can't tell where the where the speakers are. I haven't seen my own one of these open yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it might just be the bottom for the for the mid and treble. So that, So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bottom of the screen, like that little.
⏹️ ▶️ John You'd assume on that one it's bouncing off a hard surface, like that would be incorporated into it, kind of like how the iMacs used to have down firing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will, but that's a tough design to make sound good if you don't need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we'll see how it sounds. Full-sized HomePods, which this seems to be basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco replacing, sound pretty good. So I don't know. I'm a little skeptical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this will sound as good as they do, but we'll see. Oh, it's not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to sound as good as a full-size HomePod. And by the way, rumors are that they are going to eventually make a new full-size HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, this is not close to the sound quality of a full-size HomePod, I would bet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, rumors are always that they will eventually make a new full-size home
⏹️ ▶️ John And they did. They canceled the entire product and they still made a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So eventually that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sucker. Like they stopped making the old one for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we'll see. Oh, and reminding slightly for the camera, and we're going to talk more about the camera in a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit. Thank God that they put a camera back in the bezel. I'm so sick of notches
⏹️ ▶️ John and dynamic ions. And I was like, like, is. could they have done this with a notch or a dynamic island?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they could have. You were just like, oh, we don't like any bezels on our screen. Why? Because we don't like them. We just don't.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we're not going to have them. Like, I mean, there's a million arguments for them. It's like, oh, well, so you can grab the screen and move it. Yeah, that applies
⏹️ ▶️ John to iPads too. We used to have to grab those by a giant one-inch rim around the outside. And they just shrunk that up until it was totally gone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now we get notches in the dynamic islands and stuff. Love a screen without a notch or a dynamic
⏹️ ▶️ John island. Just put a bezel on it. It's fine. It still looks nice. Thank God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I actually think these proportions of the screen, bezel and all, I think it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good for this type of design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, it looks like a home
⏹️ ▶️ John product. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is totally fine. And I think it's actually, screen-wise, it looks like a pretty attractive design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing on with the sound, Apple says it's powered by Apple Silicon and real-time system sensors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Advanced computational audio continuously optimizes loudness and bass response at any volume.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It does have spatial audio with Dolby Atmos for music and video. Computational audio for real-time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tuning. and for microphone design for far field SIRI. And sound recognition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for smoke and carbon monoxide alarm sounds.
⏹️ ▶️ John So i've thrown a lot of computation. at In the end, like as marco was saying, there's no getting around the fact of like, what are your drivers
⏹️ ▶️ John and where are they positioned, but they'll throw the computers at it to try to make it all sound better. And I do like the fact that like
⏹️ ▶️ John most of their home speaker products, it's trying to like wherever you put me, I'll try
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out how to not sound terrible in this position. You know, I'm not sure if that's the same inertial sensors as the big
⏹️ ▶️ John home pods of knowing when to do that or whatever, but I give them the benefit of the doubt that they're going to do as much sound processing
⏹️ ▶️ John as they possibly can to make this sound better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For wireless, it's a wifi six E simultaneous dual band, peer-to-peer discovery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for easy guest access, Bluetooth six and thread. It has ambient light sensors, temperature
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and humidity sensors, and an accelerometer. Where things get a little bit dodgy, though, is power.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I believe it requires 20 watts. There is a 30 watt adapter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a meter and a half-long cable included for the R2-D2 version. You get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you get the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall mounted version. But interestingly, and in the defense of Apple, there's like three or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four different options for wall mounts. And I forgot to put them in our internal show notes. I don't have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them in front of me. But interestingly.
⏹️ ▶️ John They're in there. You're looking at them right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. uh That's what I totally said.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are three prices at the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm sorry. That's what I totally said. We're going to leave it in. There's a USB-C wall mount for $60,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an AC wall mount for $80. And interestingly, and I really do, no snark,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I commend Apple for this. Schneider Home is apparently going to do a POE wall mount,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is great. I genuinely mean that. I think that's awesome that for power over Ethernet people, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you're a Ubiquiti person, you kind of implicitly become a power over Ethernet person. I genuinely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy that they're doing something with POE. Now, I suspect that it's not actually getting a network
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connection over POE. In fact, I would probably assume that this is just a PoE to USB converter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nevertheless, I still appreciate that it's a thing. And from a press release from Schneider,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it says, Schneider homes, Power Mount, designed exclusively for Apple's new Home View, wall-mounted.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Power mount's design is purpose-built for Apple Home View and offering an elegant wall mounted installation, three configurations, USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall connector, AC wired and power over ethernet wired. All three power mounts feature precision magnets to securely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hold Apple Home View against the wall to stay powered. For a seamless professional installation with no visible wires, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AC powered wall mount connects to electrical wiring through a single wall box, and the PoE-wired wall mount receives power and data. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm wrong. I should have read that further. And data through a standard Ethernet cable hidden in the wall. Again, I really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dig this until you look at the price. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco PoE wall mount
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is $129.95, which if you do a little bit of mathematics,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is 43% of the purchase price of the entire effing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home view. Astonishing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And wait, it gets better. Remember that the wall mount home view is
⏹️ ▶️ John the regular home view with the R2D2 part chopped off. But it's
⏹️ ▶️ John the same price as that other one. So they took a piece, a piece of
⏹️ ▶️ John the other product. Granted, probably the most expensive piece because it's the screen and has the SOC in it clearly or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they removed all like the downfiring woofer, that aluminum case, the passive radiators,
⏹️ ▶️ John the arm, all that is gone. Is it cheaper than the non-wall mount No, exactly the same price. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John insult to injury is, oh, and if you want to connect it to power over Ethernet, take
⏹️ ▶️ John your thing that doesn't have an R2D2 but costs the same price as one that does, and had 43% of the price for a power.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, the good thing about that is, look, these are, in the end, these are like, it's
⏹️ ▶️ John a physical problem. How do you mount this thing to the wall? Third parties are going to be all over this
⏹️ ▶️ John with like, I mean, you could 3D print something, or go to do this. Like in the end,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you just have to
⏹️ ▶️ John get some way to get a USB-C cable into the thing or some kind of, you know, whatever you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do. It is a physical problem, not a computer problem. uh If you don't want
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay $130 for a power over Ethernet thing, I'm sure you could take a power over
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John it's $130, bucks but like these are solvable problems for people. Maybe you're not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John the precision magnets, maybe, although you can 3D print those too. Not the magnets, but the places where the magnets go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can buy magnets on Amazon that fit into 3D printed things really cheaply.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is like the wall mount one is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John one not be cheaper than the regular one because let's let's face it, it can't cost, it costs less for them to make. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, what this, what the wall mount product is, or at least what they're hoping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will be, is there's this whole market. First of all, businesses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will, you know, if for some reason a business wants to install one of these, now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't know what kind of business that would be that would want this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why would they do it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John A six person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think what this is really for is custom installers doing high-end installs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for nice houses and rich people. There's this whole world out there of, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the same people who wall mount TVs, you know, and, And, you know, a lot of times like people will have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco centralized audio systems that like play through ceiling speakers all over the house and they'll have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a closet full of Sonos amps and a rack. Like it's that market. Custom-installed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice things for high-end houses. That is what this is for. And that market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's like when you sell to the enterprise or to people having weddings. These are just words that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can put in front of things that make the prices go up. Why? Because they can. And because those customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will usually pay the premium because they can. So it's not like it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I don't like when people use the term money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grab to when they accuse developers of software of money grabs for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like charging money for anything. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's kind of what this type of product, like when you have like the version of it that comes with less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff and costs more, that's just market segmentation. They're selling to a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market that will pay more and they will happily make them pay more. That's all it is.
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HomeView, continued
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let's talk apps. There are built-in apps, alarms, calendar, FaceTime, find my home, intercom,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey messages, music, podcasts, reminders, Safari settings, timers, weather, and world clock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are apps also available from iPhone, which is audiobooks, classical music, news, and TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then it apparently, quote, supported, it will also have supported third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey audio and video apps, quote. This requires iOS and iPadOS 27.2.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There were, there, 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to, okay, how does third party stuff work? Uh, Julian Chakatu
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at Wired says it doesn't have an app store. Instead, Apple has a curated selection of apps, including FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Messages and Safari. A handful of third party media apps like Spotify are available, and developers can bring over existing CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps. What? Hey, it's on boats. Right? It's on boats. It's not on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rivians, but it's on boats. A handful of third-party media apps like Spotify are available, and developers can bring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over existing CarPlay apps. If your iPhone already has one of these CarPlay apps installed, it can automatically appear on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the home view after setup. Julian continues, there are no video streaming apps like YouTube,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Netflix, or Disney Plus, but if those companies choose to make their apps available on the CarPlay framework, they will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show up in Home View. For now, you'll have to consume videos by using the Safari browser, which raises
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that John beat me to and put in our internal show notes, which we will also put in your show notes. There
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was something about this at WWDC this year, which I immediately thought of, and apparently so did John. John,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, at CarPlay, WWDC 2026, they were like, hey, now we support video apps
⏹️ ▶️ John for CarPlay. And they were very cautious saying, oh, you should watch them when you're parked. Maybe you're charging your EV.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it's like, all right, sure, I guess. Secret uh preparing for a product that
⏹️ ▶️ John was already done by then. Hey, why would you make a CarPlay video app? Well, now, if you did make
⏹️ ▶️ John a CarPlay video app, boom, automatically works on the home view.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was it turns out it wasn't just for when you're parked charging your EV.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, it is for that. Like that is a valid place for it, but also for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But again, people who were parked charging their EVs usually use their phones or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go into the travel plaza. But anyway, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. I like, look, a lot of cars do this. Like, you know, Teslas do it. A lot of them have a way where when you are stationary in
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John other people do it. Apple will too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing, we'll quote from Apple's latest developer agreement, which just came out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, earlier today as we record. 6.4.1, iOS application widgets on CarPlay and Apple HomeView.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You agree that your iOS application widget may be available on CarPlay and Apple HomeView. 6.4.2,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey availability of iOS applications for CarPlay on Apple HomeView. If your application includes a CarPlay entitlement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey profile in a category identified by Apple in the documentation, you agree Apple may provide access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to such application on Apple HomeView while it is running on a paired iOS device. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it's not like VisionOS where you can opt in and opt out. It's not like iPad apps on Mac OS where
⏹️ ▶️ John you can opt in and opt out. They're like, look, if you made a CarPlay thing, you now agree we
⏹️ ▶️ John can make that appear on this device. Like you you are opted into it and you have no choice, which is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John fine, but it's just it is a change in attitude towards Apple's things. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ John we'll get more into this with the next item, but like, is this really a platform? But just FYI, it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco, Overcast will be on this device and you have no say. I mean, first of all, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast to be on this device.
⏹️ ▶️ John don't have to do more work because you already have a CarPlay version, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So my one wish for this, this is totally unrelated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the home view. I had to think about the name for a second. CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the APIs to write CarPlay interfaces are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old style, like create CP template row, set properties.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know When things update, you have to go find the instance of the CP update row and update its properties or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know generator new and then makes the whole screen blink. and like there's so many It's so cumbersome.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it like WatchKit where it's entirely data-driven, where you're just sending like data over the wire and then the data
⏹️ ▶️ John rehydrates into a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sort of, except that I'm pretty sure the phone is rendering the whole UI and just sending it over like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a video airplay kind of link. But what the apps see is you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco create like CarPlayListTemplate, CarPlayRow, CarPlayMediaRow, and you say this one is now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you're doing. It is so difficult to make anything good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using that because it's, first of all, it's full of bugs. Second of all, like it's so cumbersome to go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You basically have to like manually diff and update your data model into the interface.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Swift UI has this amazing power where like, you know, the declarative structure of it is like you basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco declare the interface using these wonderful result builders and you know, you kind of bind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your data to various parts of it such that when your data updates, the UI updates for you. It does its own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diffing. It kind of does like efficient updates, only updating what it needs to update. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really hope that every day, every year, WDC, what I hope Apple releases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a Swift UI style declarative result builder based interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for CarPlay apps to use. They haven't yet done it. I'm hoping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe this will help push them to do that sooner rather than later. Maybe next year, WDC,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe there's a chance of something like that. Like some kind of redo of the CarPlay APIs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it's not for like six apps anymore. There's a lot of CarPlay apps out there, as we always talk about whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we talk about Ruby, but there's a lot of CarPlay apps out there. And writing them is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unbelievably cumbersome. And they have this amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data-diffing system with SwiftUI. Just use that. Make that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's one of my projects. I fantasize sometimes about, I wonder if I could make AI build me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a shim that does that. Like just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann build me that layer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that I never have to use the ancient CarPlay APIs again. Cause again, it's just, it's so difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to write a CarPlay UI that is correct, efficient, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. And a result builder one would do that so much more easily.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we may get email from SwiftUI experts saying that SwiftUI does not actually do
⏹️ ▶️ John React style tree diffing, but we get conceptually what you're saying. Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. With regard to the name, Joe Rosignol at MacRumors writes, MacRumors was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first to reveal the name HomeView last week after discovering a trademark filing from a secretive shell company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we correctly suspected was linked to Apple. Apple was likely behind a HomeOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trademark filing as well, but the company ultimately decided to stick with generic HomeView software naming, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it refers to HomePod's operating system as HomePod software. For example, the device will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ship with HomeView software version 27.2.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this does actually lean, explain what
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple stance is on this. Is it a platform or is it not? Apple's platforms have names,
⏹️ ▶️ John like tvOS and iOS and iPadOS and macOS and so on and so forth. Apple's
⏹️ ▶️ John platforms that aren't really platforms don't have names. The HomePod runs,
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe, currently Audio OS, but nobody knows that name who's not a developer because it's not a platform
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? HomeOS would have been publicized if there was, for example, an app store
⏹️ ▶️ John for HomeView, but there's not. So instead, it's like when it was like iPhone software, iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John firmware before it was christened iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's just the software for your home view. Homeview software version 27.2.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's nice that they sync the version of this and totally unbranded nameless. Don't call it an operating system, operating
⏹️ ▶️ John system with everybody else. So it is also 27.2. What is 27.2 home view software.
⏹️ ▶️ John And under the covers, maybe it is called HomeOS. When someone cracks one of these opens and looks at what UNAME pulls out
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, it probably is actually called home OS or maybe what the code name was, like Vision, Uh, what do you call the, The
⏹️ ▶️ John Vision Pro is still called XR OS under the cover, I believe. Um, But yeah, they didn't brand it
⏹️ ▶️ John as a platform because it's not. It is, I've heard some people refer to it, and we'll
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about like the UI in a little bit, like it's like a big Apple Watch kind of, but also kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like a big CarPlay screen, but also its own thing. It is a weird hybrid because you can project stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John onto it because CarPlay, that's what CarPlay does. And it can delegate stuff to your phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John run directly on it too. Like, you know, the HomePod has stuff that runs directly on it
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. But this has a screen and everything. So this isn't a weird middle place, but it's clear that Apple is starting
⏹️ ▶️ John this cautiously and not trying to say, kind of like they did with
⏹️ ▶️ John TVOS of like, this is just an all new platform. Like everything we make is a platform and everything has an app
⏹️ ▶️ John store. And that's like the watch. Watch has its own app store and its own apps. And it's like some things lend
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves better to that approach than others. This one they're not even trying. They're saying, this is fits into our ecosystem,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is not yet a platform you develop for. I just had someone ask me on Mastodon earlier. It was like, is this
⏹️ ▶️ John a deployed deployable target in Xcode? I don't think it is. I don't know the answer to this, but I don't think it
⏹️ ▶️ John is. like, you don't, you can't like write apps for it and target it and deploy it on it. I think you add CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John think that's it. Like we'll find out more in the coming days. But yeah, it may be running Home OS
⏹️ ▶️ John under the covers, but it is not a new platform, at least not yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it definitely seems like from a developer point of view, it's basically like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CarPlay and widgets, almost like standby mode on the phone where you can offer a widget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the user can put it there. It's probably going to be very similar to that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don't make Home View OS, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don't make Home OS apps. We make iOS apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco optionally project something onto the home view.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are some requirements if you want to use this. Julian at Wired writes, to get the most out of HomeView,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you need an iPhone with Apple Intelligence support, which is an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. You can't set it up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an iPad. Apple says you can still set it up with an older iPhone and access some of Siri AI's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smarts, like broad world knowledge, but smarter app actions and personal context queries require an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Apple Intelligence.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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's Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John AI, you can't delegate it to Like that stuff's not going to happen on the home view. It happens on your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That's right. And again, Julian writes, you can add up to six iCloud accounts. John has made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of mentions of that earlier. And the user interface will adapt to each person. John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe you would like to take a moment to climb up on your high horse.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey about this was, I
⏹️ ▶️ John wonder if it will cancel your Apple Care One plan every time a different person uses it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because historically speaking, products that are in your home that can be used by more than
⏹️ ▶️ John one Apple account simultaneously or in alternation will, in fact, cancel your
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Care One plan. And I'm speaking, of course, about a Mac with multiple accounts. If anybody signs
⏹️ ▶️ John into an account on that Mac with an Apple account that is not part of your Apple family,
⏹️ ▶️ John yoink, off your Apple Care One Family plan, it goes. And by the way, I did confirm this with a long phone
⏹️ ▶️ John call with Apple Support the other day. I think I mentioned in the last episode, but I'll just reiterate
⏹️ ▶️ John it again. Apple Care One Family, what they told me is if you do that, even if you have Apple Care One Family, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John use any Apple account that's not part of your Apple Care One family, even if you're still logged into that Mac with one
⏹️ ▶️ John of your Apple family accounts, doesn't matter. They will yank it off Apple Care One Family. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that sucks, but don't worry about it because as far as I can tell, this is not like
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS where it's like there are multiple users on the system and they have accounts and it
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John I would bet a substantial amount of money that what this is actually doing is always running
⏹️ ▶️ John one big monolithic application that simply does different things depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on who the current authenticated user is. And we'll get to that in a second. It is not, oh, it's running
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always running as root,
⏹️ ▶️ John it's always running as the same user. It's a single monolithic application. And it's just multiplexing whose phone it's
⏹️ ▶️ John talking to. And in that way, yes, six people can use it at the same time because that's that's the
⏹️ ▶️ John problem of any kind of like thing in a home with a screen. If you're not living alone with it and multiple people,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John But ideally, when you are using it, it will tell you your stuff. Like, well, we'll
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So to be a registered user of the home view, you need an iPhone, and Apple account, and you need to be a member of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home that the home view is a part of. That's an interesting list of requirements Cause first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John are you a little kid and you don't have an iPhone? Tough luck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John don't get any customization
⏹️ ▶️ John for the HomeView. It doesn't show you your stuff. Uh, It doesn't know who you are. It doesn't care. If you don't have an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John you're not a person. Uh, Second, you need an Apple account, which that makes sense. And then being member of the
⏹️ ▶️ John home, that's different than being member of the Apple family thing, I think, cause I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John most people, it's, 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
⏹️ ▶️ John be a member of the Apple family.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, uh, home view does not have face ID.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, Recognition just uses the camera. There's no like depth sensors or anything like that. You will only be recognized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by HomeView if your iPhone is at home on the same Wi-Fi and has been recently unlocked.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch is not enough to serve as your I'm Home personal device. There is no IR.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, you know, there's limited to no functionality in the dark and there's no voice recognition. We don't
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I didn't say anything about it, but like the, my Google Home does voice recognition. When I talk to it, it knows that it's me because
⏹️ ▶️ John my voice sounds different than my wife. Um, All this, this is another fascinating part of the multi-user
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks, whatever. That's fine. um It just uses cameras. But as we all know, I could just print out a picture of
⏹️ ▶️ John your face and hold it up. But that's there's more that is required. The other things that you read.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to be on the 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
⏹️ ▶️ John account that it thinks is you. So you could still do this. Like if I'm sitting on the couch and I've recently
⏹️ ▶️ John unlocked my iPhone and you walk over to the home view and hold up a printout of my face, you're in. So it's not super duper
⏹️ ▶️ John security. But remember, when I say you're in, it's not like you suddenly have access to my phone on the home view.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John It is still like, it is still potentially a side door security hole because this is
⏹️ ▶️ John probably the weakest security Apple has ever had in modern times for accessing
⏹️ ▶️ John someone's personal information. But from what I've heard of people who are there in person asking Apple these questions,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple's basically saying that like, we are considering your home to be a security
⏹️ ▶️ John domain that like if someone's inside your home and you don't want them to be, you know, there's
⏹️ ▶️ John a follow-up item that we'll probably have in the thing next week saying, you know, for a lot of people, being
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same home doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who's also in that home is a safe person, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So keep this in mind when you are considering this product, because I feel like it does give
⏹️ ▶️ John people in your home one of the easiest possible ways to get at
⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff without being you. I mean, obviously you just wait till your shower and steal your phone or whatever, but like a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John people are in home situations where they can't trust everyone who's with them. This product is designed in a
⏹️ ▶️ John way that you mostly trust the people who you're in the house with. Now, the stinky little brother trying to see his
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, this is basically your only choice to make it a useful product for multiple people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Arguably, Google's voice recognition is weaker because you can just make a deep voice and it'll probably think you're me
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But I do worry about this aspect of the product. I'm not quite sure what
⏹️ ▶️ John they could have done otherwise. Again, because if you want to sell for 300 bucks, maybe you can't afford it with face ID, but it does worry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I could have sworn during the commercial, the three-minute commercial, not the one and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a half-minute commercial. I could have sworn they implied that there was voice recognition. So we might have that wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there might be. But again, voice recognition is also like you just record the person's voice and my voice is my passport.
⏹️ ▶️ John Verify me. Like we know that's not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I get it. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. uh Also, John, you have a question in the show notes, which I concur with. Why doesn't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPhone Duo, which also does not have Face ID, do something similar where the home location is like a second
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, so 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John um 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
⏹️ ▶️ John thing of like that is incredibly less secure than face ID, like because you can just hold up a picture of yourself. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you could say, well, why doesn't the iPhone duo just do that when I'm at home? Maybe that's arguable,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I do feel like getting, like unlocking your phone is still
⏹️ ▶️ John more invasive access than unlocking a home view, which can talk to your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John at this point for people in terms of security. Whereas I feel like the home view is not. Depending on how much access
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to people's personal data from home view, maybe via Sierra AI. Well, again, we'll see when people get this because I'm
⏹️ ▶️ John sure somebody will try the experiment. What if I hold up a picture of you, unlock home view? How much stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John can I exfiltrate from home view while you sit on the couch without you knowing it by asking Sierra AI questions like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what did they say to this person or show me this message conversation? Or, you know, what is the password to this website?
⏹️ ▶️ John or Something like that. So we'll see how that goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder if it'll like, you know, tap the phone of the person like as it's responding or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the phone to notify you like, hey, I'm talking about you. For some reason, you're not using me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Yeah. Or like, I mean, I don't, I don't know. This would have been good if we were like, does
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John we'll, we'll see when people get this and start trying to break it, what the actual security barriers are. But
⏹️ ▶️ John again, with the follow up item, I'll be next week, there is always a trade off between convenience and security, and you have
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John a price that doesn't allow you to pull out all the security stops that you have for your fancier devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to AI, as we mentioned, personal context requests require a paired Apple intelligence-enabled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone or iPad running the latest software version with Siri AI turned on and set to a supported
⏹️ ▶️ Casey language. For installation, they've said, particularly for the Walmart mount stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can have ADT, which is an American alarm company, do professional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey installation. You can receive more information and self-service support content with your order confirmation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says Apple. I really would love to know how much this is going to cost. Again, it may be more than
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, availability. You can pre-order right now. It is in store on the 13th of November.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple says HomeView is not available for sale in the European Union. as Siri AI is currently unavailable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in iOS and the EU. Apple's working constructively with the EU in an attempt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find a path forward.
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Troughton Smith was cranking online today saying that, you know, Europe didn't get the
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePod either until like a long time after it was released. And even then, it was only in five countries. So
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of these home products are apparently not going to Europe even before the
⏹️ ▶️ John whole Siri AI DMA business. But yeah, software is a hold up on a lot of these. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John done forever. I think it needs like the 27.2 OSs to be out everywhere. So this product is
⏹️ ▶️ John still waiting on software, even at this late date, even though they've announced it. You still have to wait to, I assume,
⏹️ ▶️ John 27.2 to be out everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Anything else for home view? Actually, let me, let me finish this up perhaps by asking, have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either of you ordered one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn't think Marco was going to get one because he was so down on home pods. Well, I'm down on HomePods, but I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have them all over my house. Um, The only person I've ever seen who has more HomePods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their house is John Gruber. His house, they might as well be holding up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco benches and stuff. They're just everywhere. But no, I have a lot of HomePods because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are very good at certain things, and they're just really crappy in lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of other ways. Like almost every workout we do, at some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point, the HomePod in TIFF studio says, hmm? Like, it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they're just so mediocre in so many ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's like having a little little uh little pets around that talk to you sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, that always think they're being talked to and say, hmm yes um anyway uh but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also use one like to play music while I'm in the shower every day. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i do I do like home pods sometimes in some cases. They're very good sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think this, if it is good and if it holds up to the promises
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if it is anything like the commercial they made for it, that will actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be really useful in our kitchen. Not necessarily because of all the like, you know, family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking about their text from their boyfriends, much more about just it being a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice speaker with a screen to show timers and the time and the weather and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All that other stuff, like, I don't think we would actually use that stuff that much, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just being what this was rumored to be, a HomePod with a screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That's actually pretty interesting and pretty compelling, if it works. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here's the problem with that. The HomePod doesn't work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that well at a lot of this stuff. It never has. Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Casey breezed by earlier, it has gotten better. Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI now is a totally different beast than old Siri. It is way more capable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It can do way more stuff. It is significantly improved in most ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, it is slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco It's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really slow. Sure is. When I was developing Unforgetful over the spring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought I had one thing in mind for it. And then when I started using the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 27 betas in the summer, and macOS 27 betas, but especially iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started using Siri AI and beta, and I noticed how incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow and cumbersome it was to create reminders with Siri. And at first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought, crap, here I am making an app that's all about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful it is to capture reminders from Siri. And… And I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relying on this thing that was fine for a long time. And this summer, I think it got way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way worse because there's two huge problems with using Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI for reminders. Number one, it's very, very, very slow. Number two, it constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asks, like, you know, buy milk. Did you say try silk? or buy?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said buy milk. Did you say try silk? Or no, I said buy milk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you say, ah, and then you eventually just give up and do
⏹️ ▶️ John something else. I remember it also asked you which app you want to use.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Well, apparently it will eventually learn and stop asking It asked me again today. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't know why. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always give it the same answer. And God forbid there be a UI somewhere to just let you pick. you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know. But just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think It's always going to be reminders. Just do it. You know, They're very conservative with their settings screen in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the settings app, John. They don't like to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John put that much
⏹️ ▶️ John there. I think it's over 50% of the time it asks me now. It's madness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Anyway, so what I turn that into a positive for Unforgettable because I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, well, now I'm going to build in fast dictation. And that's why, like, unforgettable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn't have dictation until like July. The reason I added that like almost at the last minute was because I'm like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there's an opportunity here because Siri in 27 is going to be so incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow for everyone. Dictating into Unforgettable with its little microphone buttons that I let you put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all over your system, you know, lock screen, control center, widgets, everything. It's so much faster. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that's what I've been doing. Like all summer, whenever Siri would frustrate me and ask me over and over and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over again with huge long delays between each one, what I actually meant by a phrase that I said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time that worked fine before Siri AI, I just tap the Unforgettable thing and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, you know, tomorrow, buy milk, done. And it's so fast. I saw that as a huge opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. The rest of the world, I don't think, has discovered unforgettable's wonderfulness in this regard yet, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assure you. Anyway, the home view,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm getting there. The home view is going to have that same problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that it's relying on Siri AI, which is very capable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time. And it does have a lot more that it can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell you eventually. And it can take more actions and apps. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is very impressive often, but it's so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow. And this has always been the problem that the HomePod had. The original HomePod with original Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the version 2 and everything. Siri has always been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to do things that are fairly impressive for its time, but it just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never did them quickly or reliably. Will this be any different?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is this also going to be slow and unreliable? I don't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think we can really say with confidence that this is going to blow us away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that regard. And will it consistently do it? And then also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has a history of making home products,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like both HomeKit and the Home app itself, and also HomePods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Both of those, Apple kind of puts something out there and then neglects it for years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just withers and dies of neglect because Apple just can't be bothered to do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to improve it. Why would this be any different? This is HomeKit and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a HomePod combined. So this product, the way it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the video, the way it is sold on Apple's website, the way like the promise of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product is strong. I think if this product works well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple keeps supporting it and it actually doesn't have a lot of bugs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Siri gets fast and is responsive and has a high success rate with what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you ask it, this could be really great. But Apple has not shown a strong track
⏹️ ▶️ Marco record in any of those areas. So I have a really hard time believing in it long
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the slowness is actually slightly more tolerable for a thing that you're not like
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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, okay, timer
⏹️ ▶️ John is set for 20 minutes starting now. Like as long as I hear that within a few seconds, yeah, it is
⏹️ ▶️ John slow, but I'm okay with it. Whereas when I do it on my phone and I'm watching those stupid little white little leafy things rotate
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like, come on,
⏹️ ▶️ John come on, come on. So maybe the speed will be more tolerable. And in terms of speed, like what is the,
⏹️ ▶️ John what does the big home pod have? It has some like ancient watch chip in it or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um I think it has like an, like, yeah, like an S7 or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, this has got an A18 in it, which should be a big step up from the other
⏹️ ▶️ John things that we used to talk to, the HomePod Mini and the Big HomePod, which are just massively underpowered. I mean, eight gigs
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I do feel like my tolerance for slowness, as long as it eventually gets the job done,
⏹️ ▶️ John is higher for a thing that is not my phone that's in my hand now, because I can do it as I wander
⏹️ ▶️ John around. As for getting one of these, yeah, I got one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, if it wasn't
⏹️ ▶️ John three, if it was like five ninety nine, I wouldn't have got one. But at 300 bucks definitely.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John little R2D2 things. I have an Amazon Echo thing. I have a Google Home thing. And this is going
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann and I
⏹️ ▶️ John just festooned with ads and it's disgusting. And my home is not, I don't have a lot of home automation
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I mean? I have a place where it's going to go. Yeah, I have, I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ John have medium hopes for this product. What color did you get, by the way, Margo?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got pink because where I'm going to put it in our kitchen, pink would be the best color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fit in with our kitchen decor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And honestly, I kind of do wish they would have had like a little bit better colors. Like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, silver, space gray, pink, and beige are Apple's like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most old, boring default aluminum. Like those are, that's, at this point, that's the penalty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco colors for like a low-end, crappy product in Apple's lineup. That's like, you know, if the Apple Watch SE gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low-end colors. So I was kind of disappointed by those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, I think this thing is just physically larger. Like, I know they do really bold colors in the HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ John Mini as like a fashion type thing, but that is, I feel like that's less physically imposing than this thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John its upright nature in the screen. So like, I kind of understand why they went with, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John various dim shades of silver for this. But like, why not use like more of an iMac treatment on it? Like, the iMacs
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco look decent. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, it stand out too much. I just got the space gray one because, or I don't even remember. I either got the silver or the space
⏹️ ▶️ John gray. I got one of those two to fit in with neutral stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, Casey, you continue to be boycotting this entire product category. I guess you're just so so wed
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John for anything else like that in your life.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it's, yeah, it's a little bit of both. Um, I'm not, I'm anti-home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pod because that does things. or I'm trying to say like seven different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John things at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It conflicts with the sono stuff because I generally play things using the sono Sonos app. Obviously, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could airplay and I could mix and match, you know, Sonos and HomePods, but I just, I don't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey personally really get anything out of the home pods. Like they don't really do anything for me and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really like my sonos stuff um With regard to home view, I have never, ever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever had a screen thing in the kitchen. I just haven't. And it's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just not something I feel like our family needs or wants. At $300,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I consider this within the realm of not an impulse purchase. That's a bit dramatic, but like something I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give it a whirl and it would not be financially ruinous to do so. But I literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do not know where I would physically put this in my house. My house.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John put this? Because you do need that. Otherwise, like, what are you going to do? Drill a hole in the middle of your table?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John by square footage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And my house by square footage, I think, is a bit bigger than John's, but it's not a particularly large
⏹️ ▶️ Casey house. And I just don't feel like we have extra space for this, nor do we have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a particular need for it. I'm not opposed to it. I think it's a cool product. It looks neat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can see how one would enjoy it, but it's just, I don't think it's for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Potentially. And I did think about that because with Home Assistant.
⏹️ ▶️ John you could have Stephen Hackett wired
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into your wall for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you've already you've
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, right, right. No, I've— I have pretty much everything that's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Home Assistant, um, not echoed, but like presented in HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well. And I actually, I would say me personally, 50, 50, I, you know, half the time I'm using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Home Assistant to control things and half the time I'm using um, the Home app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For Aaron or occasionally the children, it's a hundred percent the Home app. Um, So it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is potentially useful. Um, But I don't know. I just, I, I do have a space in the kitchen actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just above and slightly to the left, annoyingly, of my status board where I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hypothetically put this. We have a not used RJ11 telephone socket
⏹️ ▶️ Casey box in the wall. It's not centered on the wall, annoyingly. So that would be a little weird. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I, I just, I, I don't personally feel like there, this is something I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need. And with regard to audio, our kitchen kind of blends in with the living
⏹️ ▶️ Casey room. Again, I'm making this sound like we have some freaking mansion. It's not, it's like 2,200 square
⏹️ ▶️ Casey foot house. It's really unremarkable. But anyways, the Sonos Arc Ultra that's in the living
⏹️ ▶️ Casey room is plenty of oomph to get music into the kitchen. So I don't feel like I need an additional speaker there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I did, I would get a Sonos speaker anyway. So it's just, it's not something for me. I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think for audio purposes, I think one of the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco downsides of this for audio is that if you are filling even a modestly sized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room, like if it's going in your bathroom, put whatever, but this is not a bathroom product. Although
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be nice to see the times. Anyway. I don't think it's
⏹️ ▶️ John Don't put it in your bathroom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, none of them are waterproof, but if you're filling like a modestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sized or large room, historically with the HomePods, you really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want a stereo pair. Even if you just get two minis, that's still way better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of anything. And you space them out a little bit on the countertop or on a table or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A stereo pair is very, very good for any of these speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don't think this can do that. Did they say anywhere? I don't think it would make sense to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a left screen and a right screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John two screens looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. So I think straight up for audio purposes, this is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong. But also, I think for audio purposes, like that's more like a living room situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas this seems really like a kitchen device. This is like this, this should go on your kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco counter, like or wherever, like, whatever is like the hub of your house. Maybe it's like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your entryway, if you have like a, like, you know, a hallway that everyone comes and goes through. I don't know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this, to me, this is a kitchen device.
Sponsor: Tailscale
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are sponsored this week by Tailscale. I adore Tailscale.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey you gave a Raspberry Pi to a friend outside Boston, or perhaps you have a Mac Mini
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in or on Long Island. I can never get it right. Sorry, Marco. Anyway, you can connect to all of these devices
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Apple TV 4K (4th-gen)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let's move on and let's talk about the actual star of the show, the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV 4K Generation 4, I think, something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. This is a brand new Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I want to get this out of the way and be done with it so we can talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about happy things. How the is this thing $300?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it makes perfect sense, but it is such an amazing contrast. We just got done talking about a product
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John product, same exact price. Everyone hates it. Now, here's the thing. I had to look this up because I hadn't
⏹️ ▶️ John been keeping up with Apple TV prices because why would I? I was waiting for the new one, just like Casey. But the previous
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV 4K, it is annoying they all have the same name, but they do have that generation and whatever in parentheses. The previous
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV 4K had been increased in price to 200 bucks for the one with 64
⏹️ ▶️ John gigs and Wi-Fi and 250 for the 128 gig and Wi-Fi plus Ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ John So already, while I was not paying attention because of, you know, the world and AI absorbing everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John all RAM and inflation and whatever, the biggest Apple TV was
⏹️ ▶️ John already 250 bucks. And so now when this one is 300, it's like, how is this 300 bucks? It was already
⏹️ ▶️ John 250. Now, people are complaining because like, well, no one buys that one. Why would only stupid people buy that one? Who needs
⏹️ ▶️ John Ethernet on their Apple TV? And who the hell needs storage? What the hell is it even used for? Everyone buys this cheaper one.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the cheaper one was $100 less. It was $200. Like, I get that. But how is this $300?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because, as we'll see in a second, they decided to only make one. And it's the
⏹️ ▶️ John big one. And it's got Wi-Fi and Ethernet at 128 gigs. And so that's what they've done. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they're clearly choosing their market for this. Hey, are you in the market for an affordable streaming box?
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV was never it. And now it's really not it. Like, do you
⏹️ ▶️ John want an affordable thing that you can stream on your TV? Don't even come into the store. We
⏹️ ▶️ John have nothing for you. This is not the product for you. On the flip side of that, did they make it
⏹️ ▶️ John into like a modern replacement for the NVIDIA Shield? No, they did not. It is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a super massive, powerful thing that does high frame rate and has all these amazing features and has audio pass-through.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is also not this. So everyone is pissed. The high-end people are pissed, not because it's 300 bucks, but because it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn't have features befitting a 300 buck streaming box. And everyone else is pissed because like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I never would buy an Apple TV for 300 bucks. Who the hell buys an Apple TV for 300 bucks? And so, yeah, much
⏹️ ▶️ John sadness about the price from all sides.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It's real bad. Like, I bought one. I'll tell you right now, I bought one. I bought one too.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's the thing about the price. I said it the last time we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John As overpriced as the Apple TV is, because it is the way I watch, like I
⏹️ ▶️ John would, sadly, I would pay hundreds more to avoid having to use a Fire
⏹️ ▶️ John TV stick or a Google TV stick or anything else because they're worse. It doesn't make this one any
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John very bad bunch. And if they ever stop making this product, like what would we all do?
⏹️ ▶️ John Would we go try to find the most expensive Google TV thing filled with ads and crap? Like, and to be clear,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple's TV product is also becoming filled with ads. The other day, I paused something on my Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John and it put an ad up on the pause screen. So Apple is getting worse here too. But still,
⏹️ ▶️ John among all the players, Apple TV is still, with the possible
⏹️ ▶️ John exception of the ancient, what, seven-year-old Nvidia Shield, which is like an NVIDIA streaming box they made back in the day that has a ton
⏹️ ▶️ John of features. I'm glad they're still making this. And I bought one, even though it's 300
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks. I don't like the price, but I would still rather have this than any other product.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John things about this product as we continue to put ads all over it, it's 300 bucks now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it's it's ridiculous. I really hate how expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is in part because I'm comparing it to all of the like $40
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices, which is unfair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Or free with your TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or free with your TV. It's just not, I don't know, it's just not a good choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all that, but if you need
⏹️ ▶️ John they said there's going to be one and it's going to be the high-end one. So there you have it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I suppose. But one way or another, um, I do like, I genuinely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do like that there's only one of them now. It always seemed arbitrary last generation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there was like the 64 gig Wi-Fi only and then the 128 gig Wi-Fi and Ethernet. That seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey silly to me. I get that almost nobody uses Ethernet but John and I anymore, but I don't know. It still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems dumb to have two of them. So I'm glad we're down to one. But woof 300
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bones. My goodness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it's fine, by the way. I think for what the Apple TV is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has never been price competitive with anything else in its market. The Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not a mass market device. It never has been a mass market device. The mass market device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now is just the built-in apps on everyone's TVs that suck. The mass market device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before TVs all had the apps were cheap Roku sticks and Amazon Fire sticks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not a mass market device. This is like, you know, it's like the sonos of set-top boxes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like this is for, the Apple TV is for people who value a high quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience and are willing to pay a premium for it. You know, that sucks for those of us who,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, balk at this price, like that sucks. But that's what this product is. And it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you're saying, it is a premium experience. The other options are really mediocre.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They're full of paper cuts and most people don't care or tolerate it because it's cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we do care and we have money and Apple's happy to take that money. And here's one way they do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that's what this product is. I am happy they updated the Apple TV. I also recognize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in this environment of component cost, there was no way it wasn't going to go up because you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have significant computation, memory, or storage. The Apple TV has no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display, no speakers, but significant computation, memory, and storage.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's just got one higher number. It's got an A19 instead
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, granted, the storage, 128 gigs versus whatever the heck the home view has, which I imagine is
⏹️ ▶️ John piddling. But, you know, I wouldn't surprise me if the home view had 64. We'll see what it ends up having. But
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John for many years now. No, no down firing subwoofers, no passive radiators, no tweeters,
⏹️ ▶️ John no camera, no screen, no arm, no nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is kind of bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But at least, at least there's no longer two different versions of it, weirdly.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey said, nobody cares about Ethernet but us. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'm glad that it has Ethernet. Don't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John me wrong, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John most people don't. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fair. But I'm glad they simplified because that was always a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird decision. And you know, look, it's fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I think this is, it's like we wanted a new Apple TV for a long time. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gave us one. And it's exactly what you'd expect out of a 2026 hardware release. And
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John I hit pause on a thing, which is just like really over a line for me. And I'm very upset about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another aspect of a premium experience, I feel like, is just basically reliability. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John believe twice in the last five days, I've had this experience while watching a
⏹️ ▶️ John television show on Apple TV with my wife. You know, hit play episodes that we're
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John this one, Apple TV 4K. Hit play. Episode starts playing. up. she wants to go and get a snack.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John video does not resume playing.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John I left off. Two times in five days. That's not a premium experience. How many
⏹️ ▶️ John times has my TiVo ever done that where I hit pause?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hit pause, got up to get something, came back in, hit unpause, and the video did not resume playing. I don't
⏹️ ▶️ John know what the problem is. I don't care what the problem is. This is like a straight up the middle watching an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John show on an Apple TV 4K, latest everything, everything's working. Hardware is not broken. I'm sure it's
⏹️ ▶️ John some stupid software problem, but this to me is unacceptable. And it's going to hurt much worse when my
⏹️ ▶️ John $300 box does the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure is. For the record, by the way, as per the MacRumors Buyer's Guide, 1,456
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days since the last update, which was October 2022. Absolutely bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, so like we said, just one model, A19, 128 gig storage, Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 7, Bluetooth 6, thread. The physical form factor is almost identical,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey except that the light is now in the center.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not an improvement, in my opinion, but fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We'll get there in a second. Again, HDMI 2.1 and gigabit Ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here's where things get a little bit interesting. The actual box itself has built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey far-field microphones. There's a three-microphone array with voice isolation, and it's on the box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey itself. Additionally, for output, you can pair Apple TV 4K
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with four homepod speakers for three-dimensional sound. So you'd have two fronts and two rears. There was a, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, marketing photo somewhere that showed two full-size homepods near
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the TV, if I recall correctly, and two minis behind the couch as rears, which I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John On this feature, by the way, the two things you just read are, as we'll get to in a little bit, the
⏹️ ▶️ John only things besides the A19 that distinguish this Apple TV from its
⏹️ ▶️ John predecessors. It's got an A19. Microphones on the box. Four home
⏹️ ▶️ John pods. Everything else about this is available in some number of previous
⏹️ ▶️ John iterations of this product, including the remote, as we'll get to. So that's worth considering. The other
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is they just say, oh, now you can pair four HomePods with it. Well, the market
⏹️ ▶️ John for many, many, many years has been filled with various products that let you pair some number
⏹️ ▶️ John of speakers more than two with your television, not pair, but like connect some number of speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John more than two to your television and have something somewhere figure out how to make sound come
⏹️ ▶️ John out of those more than two speakers in a way that provides some kind of experience based
⏹️ ▶️ John on programs that are may or may not be mastered for multiple speakers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lots of products
⏹️ ▶️ John do this. It is essentially, it's it's, it's computational audio. Uh, Sony makes sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of like medium to high-end prosumer models that do this of various things. I forget what the old one was called.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John out uh, where did you put them? How can we make these this, these speakers sound good in this room? And I was
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about my awkward room arrangement. Everyone's like, you should get one of those things. Instead, I went with components or whatever. you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, um, those systems are always kind of a compromise. It's like, do you want cool
⏹️ ▶️ John home theater, but don't want to have an AV receiver and individual speakers from some expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John 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.
⏹️ ▶️ John But now with computational stuff, in the old days, you get, you'd get like the uh, Dolby or no, the Bose
⏹️ ▶️ John stereo in a box thing with those little Bose speakers and the big subwoofer It's like, wow, home theater. But like, it
⏹️ ▶️ John had no idea where you put the speakers. It just put the same sound out of all of them. And good luck having that sound good if your room isn't perfect,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? The computational ones are like, it's user-friendly. Put them somewhere and
⏹️ ▶️ John we'll figure out where they are and we'll use our computer maths to make it sound good from
⏹️ ▶️ John where we think you're sitting. Apple doesn't say anything about this, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John In their literature, but presumably they've got to be doing something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the state of the art in this is like, again, like the Sony systems where they they will do amazing things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can put the speakers at different heights in weird positions behind a plant, like wherever you put them. That Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John shape of your room. Don't worry about where your stuff is. We will figure out how to provide an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John 5.1, 7.1, 5.2, whatever mix the content you're watching
⏹️ ▶️ John is. Don't worry if that matches the number of speakers you have. We will figure it out because our speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John have drivers that point up, that point left, that point right, that point forward, and we'll drive them all. They're Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it's a really complicated thing. And they've gotten actually pretty good, like with the advances in computation,
⏹️ ▶️ John with computation getting cheaper, where those systems can do amazing things in non-ideal situations.
⏹️ ▶️ John My impression of what Apple's offering is we'll play sound out of all four of the speakers. Maybe the back
⏹️ ▶️ John ones will play different sounds than the front ones, but like I get the impression that they are not doing anything close
⏹️ ▶️ John to the state of the art and consumer will figure out your room and make cool surround sound. So I have extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John low hopes for the audio quality and fidelity of a four home pod
⏹️ ▶️ John setup. That said, it will be fantastically better than A, a setup with no speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John behind you, or B, your stupid built-in TV speakers. So I'm not poo-pooing this, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John am saying that I'm with the other people, other sort of like medium to high-end TV people who
⏹️ ▶️ John are disappointed that Apple doesn't seem to want to pursue that because here they have huge amounts of computation in
⏹️ ▶️ John that A19. They could do almost anything. And I bet they're,
⏹️ ▶️ John my speculation is that they are not going to have stellar sound from four homepods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The remote does look the same and it has the same external
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buttons and whatnot. However, it does have Find My with precision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finding and it can make sounds. You can also buy it separately for $60.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It works with every model of Apple TV going back to the Apple TV HD. But according
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Stevie Bonnefield at The Verge, if you want to see exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, or any iPhone 17 or later. Those are the only models that include its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new N1 networking chip with support for Bluetooth channel sounding, which enables AirTag-like precision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tracking, but without the ultra-wideband chip.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think what they're saying is the what they're saying is the remote doesn't have an ultra wide band chip. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John like the phones do, right? But there's like, that's why you need the phones with the N1. So, I mean, it shouldn't matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the thing can make a noise and near and far is probably enough, but just FYI, you need a very new phone, Duo
⏹️ ▶️ John Air 17 or later, to be able to get the distance because apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn't have radically different innards inside it, with possible exception of the added speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We're going for distance and we're going for speed, John. That's a reference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Look at us, all three of us. Look at us go. With Siri AI, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do have conversational search. So Apple says users can simply ask Siri what Apple TV shows won
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the Emmy Awards this year. Weird flex, but okay. While watching, users can ask Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AI follow-up questions and tap into Siri AI's broad world knowledge to go deeper into a show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asking things like, where was Pluribus filmed? Or is this appropriate for a 15-year-old?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Responses appear in a compact, subtle overlay. With an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Siri AI on Apple TV 4K can now tap into a user's personal context to answer questions like, or excuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, requests like, play the show Alinda recommended.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I've heard some people saying that like this is kind of silly and that like, in fact, it was a friend
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John phone and pull out Call Sheet and find out where they're from because that doesn't put anything up on the screen. But
⏹️ ▶️ John my argument is, okay, I do that too, right? For the same reasons. But I still think a
⏹️ ▶️ John device like this and an operating system like TVOS should support the on-screen thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John That's why I'm very supportive of the speakers in the box, even though I'm probably always going to use the remote.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John from or whatever, right? Maybe not everybody wants to do that. Maybe most people are going to do it on their phone, but the capability
⏹️ ▶️ John should be there. I feel like it is table stakes for, especially for a $300 box, that it should be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to do that. Now, you can choose never to use that feature. You can use to look it up in your phone. That works great too.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I definitely think it should be there. And I do think with Siri AI, it will be less,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say, I don't know, less less pigheaded about it. Like I should be able to talk to it conversationally
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John it up on your phone while we're eating dinner. So we don't have to pull out our phones. Right. um I would, I'm happy to
⏹️ ▶️ John have that same experience on the Apple TV. And especially if like, I will see how it works out. Like once I have the
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John play pause button, pause the show and say, hey, Dingus, what was this person in before? We'll
⏹️ ▶️ John see how it works, but I'm looking forward to trying that. And again, these are this, these,
⏹️ ▶️ John this feature, Siri AI, not exclusive to this new Apple TV hardware, to be clear. It is part of
⏹️ ▶️ John the whatever, 27 point, whatever OS that has this in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I'm sorry, can we go back a step? Tina never has her phone with her.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Never. She doesn't even know where it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But she has six phones with her anytime she leaves the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I know. Maybe that's part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the problem. The person who is most likely to use the thing that makes your phone make a sound
⏹️ ▶️ John in our house is her. Because the kids know where their phone is, but she has no idea
⏹️ ▶️ John and is very often wandering around looking for it. And whenever she wants to look something up a call sheet, she never has her phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I'm always the one doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Incredible. Some of the older Apple TV 4Ks do get the Siri AI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff as well. The Apple TV 4K second or third gen, which is, I believe, the two prior generations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with TVOS 27.2 availability. You can already pre-order in-store on the 13th
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of November, just like home view. Uh, Like I said, I'm in for one. If you recall,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have, I believe, a Gen three in the living room now. I have a Gen 2 in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bedroom, which we very rarely use, to be completely honest with you. And I think it's a 4K
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gen one maybe, or it might be the last of the 10 eighties. Um, That is our tailgate tub slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey travel TV, Apple TV. And that is very long in the tooth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that one is like nine years old or something like that. So it is a testament to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple that it still works and reasonably well, but it's quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slow. And I am very excited to retire that one. So there will be a trickle down uh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting uh on November 13th. John, you said you're in for one. Are you doing a similar trickle down scenario?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. I'm going to replace the previous generation Apple TV 4K on my main TV. Then that one will move up to
⏹️ ▶️ John my bedroom and the bedroom will become the Travel Apple TV. And the Travel Apple TV will retire to a box in the attic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love it. Marco, what did you do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did not buy anything yet. All of my Apple TVs are fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so when one dies, I'll replace it. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if there's some big software update down the road and it gets really bad or something, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I'll buy whatever the newest one is then. But so far, all of our Apple TVs are fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that's part of the fallout of this having only those two exclusive features, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is, do you want to talk to your Apple TV box, put the microphones on it? And do you want to hook up
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John to the box so you're happy to talk to the remote. And by the way, if you're having trouble finding your remote, you can just buy the
⏹️ ▶️ John $60 remote and replace your current remote with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So it's, as far as I can see, there's nothing in this Apple TV that really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes me motivated to replace one that already works.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John games. But like, when
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I say that. Are there any of those people left?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. People laugh because it's like what that like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you're the one.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's part of the whole thing with this product. Like Apple has not, Apple has continues to pursue
⏹️ ▶️ John the same strategy. They're not turning into a serious games machine. They're not turning it into
⏹️ ▶️ John a like the thing that all of the TV nerds want. Like everyone is screaming about the fact that it
⏹️ ▶️ John still doesn't have audio pass through, like they can add that with a software update if they really wanted to. It still doesn't do more
⏹️ ▶️ John than 60 frames per second. So if you're going to like try to stream PC games through it or whatever, like it's
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it is what it has always been. It is just the latest version of that. And the price is up because
⏹️ ▶️ John the price of everything is up and because it's got an A19 in it. And as Jason Snell has been pointing out,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they're going to sell this same damn box for the same price for the next four years. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ John both the most powerful it will ever be relative to everything else. And also they need to make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that the guts are in it that are in it will not be too embarrassing a thousand and change
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HomePod Mini 2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then I believe rounding out. Oh, no, not rounding out. I'm sorry. We have two more steps to go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey First of all, there's a new HomePod Mini 2. That's a thing that exists. Moving on, there is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the HomePod Mini 2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can't move on from that because for $50 more, they added more lights on top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are synced with album art.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John of $100. I couldn't find what the SOC is. Did any of you find that anywhere?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, yeah, it was one of the watch chips before. The HomePod Mini has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I said earlier, it's always been a really good value for $100. At $150, it's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less of a good value. It's still, like, if you want the best and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most sound out of the smallest one of these speakers you can get, it's the HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini. It gives you way better and bigger sound out of that tiny little ball than anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon or Google makes. But at $150, you know, you're starting to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push people's boundaries of like value for what that is. I still think it is overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an okay value. Before it was a great value. As for the lights on top,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who cares? I mean, most of the places that I've put HomePods in my house,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I either can't see the top if it's like on a shelf or something, or I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not looking at the top very often because like it's not that far below eye level, or I'm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not staring at it while listening to it or whatever. Like that's a nice little gimmick, but you know, that's, that's fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mainly, it's a price raise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it definitely seems like a kind of feature where they were like, the team was challenged, like, look, you can't really add
⏹️ ▶️ John any costs or change this product in any way. What can you add to the hardware within
⏹️ ▶️ John those constraints? like, well, we can put different lights under it, or if those lights were already there, we can
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John much. uh They changed the colors. I think it's green, pink, blue, midnight, and white now. I don't
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John size and shape as far as I can tell, including the quote-unquote non-removable power
⏹️ ▶️ John cord. I think it's similar to the power cord on the big home pod. And the power
⏹️ ▶️ John cord of the big home pod is technically not removable, but it actually is removable if you yank on it real
⏹️ ▶️ John hard and don't break it. like What I'm saying is it's not a connector. It's not a USB-C connector. It's
⏹️ ▶️ John not any kind of one of the power plugs. It is that the wire is attached and People complain about that because like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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's It is possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 any
⏹️ ▶️ John any of these products. Like Apple's continuing, like at the bottom of every one of these product pages, they list like, here's
⏹️ ▶️ John our progress towards Apple's carbon neutral 2030 goals. And they keep their listing stuff. They're
⏹️ ▶️ John like, we're doing better. Here's how this product has whatever. Part of their carbon neutral 2030 goals
⏹️ ▶️ John should be update the mod mini to have a USB-C jack on it, let's say, a
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that they need to do. Now, the reason they're doing is not because Apple is mean and hates the environment. It's because Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John does not update these products frequently. Like this has not been redesigned. It is the same as it has ever been.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don't redesign them frequently because they're just not updated frequently. When they do redesign this
⏹️ ▶️ John in three to five years, I really hope that it will have a USB-C port on it. And then when your
⏹️ ▶️ John cat chews through the cable, you can just get a new cable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let's see. With regard to audio, the only real change that we know about is the surround sound thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We're not sure if this is new. I think this is new, but again, I don't really care about HomePods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can make the HomePod Mini 2, or I believe a stereo pair thereof, as the, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can be the default speaker for Macs now. Maybe that was already a thing, but I didn't think.
⏹️ ▶️ John that might have already been there. But like, here's when Apple, Apple was advertising. I guess they're just saying just to remind you what this
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John as speakers for Macs has always been lag because you can't connect them to your Mac directly.
⏹️ ▶️ John It's all, you know, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, whatever. And if they were really serious about advertising
⏹️ ▶️ John these speakers for your Mac, I would hope they would say, and now with, you know, lower lag or they
⏹️ ▶️ John just they just don't care. It's like, it's a thing you can do if you feel like it. It looks real.
⏹️ ▶️ John never going to say that. I just, I don't know. Like, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John you tried this, I think, with Big HomePods once.
⏹️ ▶️ John And was it, was it, was it awful?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. And it was awful for two reasons. The lag was only one of them. The other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is that it was just unreliable. Like they would drop the link. We'd have to like reconnect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Um, at, at that time, music would like the music app would actually treat them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit differently than using them as system audio. Like It was a mess. And I, I later tried the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same thing with um, Sonos era three hundreds, uh, which were significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. So I just use like a line in kind of set up Significantly better than trying to like, you know, airplay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to home pods and stuff, Um, but still had lag as as a fairly annoying factor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, Now they're saying you know, this requires a certain Wi-Fi standard and everything. So maybe they are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to take advantage of some like, you know, nice low latency Wi-Fi thing. So it's not you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like going over the regular network. Maybe a little like send some kind of peer-to-peer direct. Maybe they can make that very low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latency. I don't know. I mean, as I was saying earlier, CarPlay seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be you know, a video stream between the phone and the car at short range, peer-to-peer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And while we've had issues with CarPlay audio, because that is kind of sort of over Bluetooth and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it's kind of complicated, CarPlay video is fairly responsive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You figure you're touching the car's touchscreen. That is to go over a local Wi-Fi network
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the CarPlay head unit or car computer, whatever, over Wi-Fi to the phone. The phone interprets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the touch, updates the interface, sends it back over that same link a second time and updates the UI. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems pretty responsive. So I'm guessing they have a way that if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have peer-to-peer Wi-Fi over short distances with known quantities of hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on both sides and nothing else is congesting the link in that area and everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe they can set the latency and the buffers very, very low on these things to make it much more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco responsive and less noticeable. So if that's the kind of thing they're doing to achieve this, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could actually work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or, again, if and when they ever redesign these things, everyone is screaming for this forever for every
⏹️ ▶️ John one of Apple speaker products. Put a damn line in jack, put a USB-C, like pick one.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John one way to connect it with a wire directly to a Mac. So you have a basically, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, low latency, lower latency than wireless connection. USB audio would be perfectly fine. Analog
⏹️ ▶️ John audio with a 3.5 millimeter jack also be perfectly fine. Probably Apple won't do that one. But
⏹️ ▶️ John like the current situation where it's a sphere and it's got a permanently attached cord that brings it power.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything else is wireless. Even if you want to use it on your desk next to your Mac where it's never going to
⏹️ ▶️ John move, why does that have to be wireless? It's dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then we briefly mentioned Sound Glow. Apple writes, with SoundGlow, the top of HomePod Mini transforms
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into a visual canvas that glows and pulses in sync with the music, reacting in real time to bass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and treble. The song's album artwork from Now Playing generates a color-matched light experience that's
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unique to every song, and users can pick a soundscape like rain to trigger bespoke animations for a soothing atmosphere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I snark, but I mean, that's kind of neat.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you'll never look at it. Nope. And it's not like it's a screen. Like, it's not like the cars,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the car interiors that have like these moody things. Those are actual screens. This is just like vague RGB
⏹️ ▶️ John lights under a frosty piece of whatever. Like a successfully added a feature to a product without having
Apple Home Collection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, then finally, for real, for real this time, Home Collection Writing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Writing says, designed in collaboration with Apple and Select brands, Apple Home Collection accessories,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 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
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Apple Home. There's two primary manufacturers that are associated. There's LG
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Schneider Home, which we briefly mentioned earlier. For LG, you get a floodlight cam,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what you don't get. You could get a floodlight cam that's $400. An indoor camera that's $200.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey An outdoor camera that's $350. A smart Deadbolt lock, which is $350. A smart thermostat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that's $200. A temperature sensor that's $40, or a video doorbell that's $250.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For Schneider Home, they have their own smart thermostat that is also $200. They have a smart thermostat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey room sensor, which I think is basically a temperature sensor, also $40. And we discussed the power mount earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at $130 freaking dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John For the power power Ethernet one, they also make the AC one and the USB-C one. Those are
⏹️ ▶️ John all Schneider Home products. It seems like, as far as I could tell, Apple doesn't make a mount for the, which is weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John a million companies will have third-party things. And I went to these, I think there's more products than you just listed.
⏹️ ▶️ John These are the ones I found like from a Mac Rumors article and like in Apple's press releases. But if you go to their websites, you'll find all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ John of little doohickeys and accessories. The part I should have put in here from the notes that I thought I had, but apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John I don't, is some of Apple's, I don't know how to describe
⏹️ ▶️ John HomeKit or the new deal that Apple is making with manufacturers for HomeKit products or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John that all these products that you just listed do not have their own
⏹️ ▶️ John account system and can't have their own account system or their own apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe that Apple, specifically on the marketing site, which is apple.com slash home slash slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accessories, I believe somewhere on there, it specifically says that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don't have to install an app. I'm trying to vamp and find where it said that.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 the other stuff? And now I have,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can view it in the app, but it's also visible in HomeKit and yada yada. It seems like with these
⏹️ ▶️ John partners, what they're trying to do is say, hey, partners, we want you to make HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John have your own account system. You can't make the people sign up for an LG Floodlight account or an LG Smart Home
⏹️ ▶️ John with their 500 megabyte app that I have that tells me when my laundry is finished for my
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John for all HomeKit things going forward. I don't know if it's just a deal with the LG things, but that is part of the pitch of
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John HomeKit products have had 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
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John app. It's just, it's a HomeKit accessory. You bring your phone near it. It gets into HomeKit.
⏹️ ▶️ John You use Apple's Home app to control it. And that's it. And that I do find appealing if
⏹️ ▶️ John only had any faith that HomeKit didn't suck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I found it, it's in the press release. These new accessories are simple to set up, starting with one tap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with iPhone, and everything is managed through the Apple Home app. No separate app or account required.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John qualification for HomeKit compatibility or if it's just for these particular ones, but I endorse that approach
⏹️ ▶️ John because it has always been annoying that that has not been the case. Now, I think it's also
⏹️ ▶️ John the case that these accessories can also be visible to other home things.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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?
⏹️ ▶️ John Some of them, I believe that is the case, that it's not like it's tied to Apple things. They also,
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John into Google Home. Like, and that is, that's been the case, you know, forever. Like pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much every, I have very limited number of smart home devices in my house, but they're all in
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon's home thing, Google's home thing, and in HomeKit. Pretty much all
⏹️ ▶️ John of them. I think my cameras are are not in homekit but only because I haven't done the home assistant thing or anything
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to get them in, right? And I think most of these are similar. They are multi-ecosystem, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John important for like a door lock or something. Like if someone in your home has an Android phone, well, they can't get in your house anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John um But the ease of setup in the Apple ecosystem is nice and the products look vaguely
⏹️ ▶️ John apple-y, but I'm still not sold on HomeKit as a platform, period,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though the new one is in theory going to be better, but we'll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this is actually extremely similar to HomeKit Secure Video.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the camera that Logitech made for that years ago, the one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I bought four of and three of them died within a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It's exactly the same playbook again, partnering out to these companies. Literally, this was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the same companies, making a very similar type of camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also had no app and no login and no separate thing. It was just natively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paired to HomeKit. It's exactly that playbook again. It didn't
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work that well last time. Why would we believe that it would work that well this
⏹️ ▶️ John Isn't it supposed to be, I don't know if it's, they didn't change that they changed the architecture of screen time. I'm getting
⏹️ ▶️ John confused. They changed the architecture of screen time. They changed the architecture of HomeKit a while back and you had to convert your old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did. Yes. But in theory, every time there's a new OS
⏹️ ▶️ John release, in theory, the home app could be better. The software stack on these devices could be better.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there's always the promise that even though this is not an overhaul like the old HomeKit conversion
⏹️ ▶️ John was, that it is a new version of all the OSs and these are new products. So maybe it's better. And that's,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that's certainly Apple's pitch. These are products. They look sleek. They work well. And trust
⏹️ ▶️ John us this time, it won't be like Marco's old Logitech cameras. Yeah, but that's
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing. Like, would you commit you know, a grand worth of home equipment to this?
⏹️ ▶️ John there's a reason I don't have that I have Google cameras and not uh well formerly Nest cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ John which have been serving me faithfully for years and years. And there's no way I would buy this Apple one or LG
⏹️ ▶️ John one, sorry. Yeah, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they've literally done exactly the same thing before and it was pretty mediocre.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ Marco themselves. They relied on third parties and partnerships. No one bought them, which made two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things happen. It made Apple not, you know, put any wood behind the arrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the companies that made them, it made them not really want to update them or do much for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either. So they put out products that no one loved. The company didn't love them. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn't love them. And customers couldn't love them because they didn't work that well. So I don't, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like what's going to be different here? I don't know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I feel like a part of the message of this whole, it's not really an
⏹️ ▶️ John event, but whatever. The products they announced at a certain time while inviting a bunch of famous YouTubers to
⏹️ ▶️ John see them in person. Let's call that an event. This was their home thing. And what
⏹️ ▶️ John they came out with was, I think, their most sophisticated and feature-capable home
⏹️ ▶️ John device ever, which is the HomeView. And they trivially updated
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of their other home stuff, including the Apple TV, which was super old. And they announced some partnership deals.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so, again, we'll talk about in future episodes this topic that has been pushed down forever. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ John is Apple making a new push into home?
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John had a change of heart under a new CEO and they're actually going to pay more attention to this product category? Remains
⏹️ ▶️ John to be seen. Apple's message is we're getting even more serious about the home and we've got all this great stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John this segment. We are doing more than we have ever done hardware and software-wise in this segment,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though we're still essentially playing catch up with everybody else because they totally are. Like everyone else is so far ahead
⏹️ ▶️ John and all this stuff. But they're not going the opposite direction. It's not like the Division Pro where you're
⏹️ ▶️ John like, are they even going to do this at all anymore? They are like the trend line is upward and it is upward
⏹️ ▶️ John at a steeper slope than it has ever been before, but that's not saying much. So I, you know, it's
⏹️ ▶️ John like, prove it to me, but all the potential rumors and whatever about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you know, putting the gas down on product categories that they had let,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, lie fallow for a long time. We'll see. But like, that's, I feel like it's the the
⏹️ ▶️ John very low key message of this event is like, maybe Apple won't neglect all these things
⏹️ ▶️ John forever. Like Apple hasn't been particularly adamant about it, but, you know, I'm,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, like not optimistic, but I'm i'm not pessimistic about this category.
⏹️ ▶️ John Previously, I was pessimistic about it. Now that I see the product rollout, I'm just like, I'm neutral. I don't trust
⏹️ ▶️ John that it's going to be wonderful, but I will continue to watch it. And I think they're moving in the right direction, albeit slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I agree with that wholeheartedly. One product that I wanted to call attention to is the indoor camera from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LG. If you imagine a letter L, a capital letter L, and then off the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey top of the L is the camera. Well, apparently it can at least tilt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up and down. I don't know if it can pan laterally or not, but one way or another, it can tilt up and down. apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it does is once Apple Home realizes that there's at least one person inside the house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can configure this to tilt, I believe, downwards so that it's basically pointing at its own base and can't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see anything and thus isn't recording anything useful. And then when the last person leaves the house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it'll pop itself back up so that it'll start recording again. I thought that was a very clever feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is the sort of thing you could presumably automate in Home Assistant. I'm just saying. I'm sorry, I'm that guy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, But nevertheless, to have this in Apple Home, I think is very, very cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, my cameras do this too, but they don't have any motors in them. They only got the presence awareness, so
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John because there's always the question with cameras, like, oh, don't worry, the little green light will
⏹️ ▶️ John be on when it's on. All right. Um, This, there is less doubt
⏹️ ▶️ John because it, ro like you said, it rotates. So the camera is like two millimeters from the base. So that camera is just seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John the, its own base. And you can glance at that and say with your eyeballs, clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John that camera is not looking at me right now because it's literally not looking at you. Like, I don't care if it's
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John I think is a reassurance and is a, um, it's an improvement on this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John 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
⏹️ ▶️ John a wonderful trade-off, but I do think it is a useful innovation in the space. I'm sure other cameras have done similar
⏹️ ▶️ John 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're
⏹️ ▶️ John 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 always thought the cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John would be on, even if we assured them that they were off Cause they didn't trust the little light. Uh, If we had this camera, they
⏹️ ▶️ John would see that it's pointed down. They say, see, we're not looking at you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I forgot to mention, actually, uh, these ship in 2027, you can order in December.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we don't know when in 2027, could be December of 2027, but sometime in 27,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can you can receive some of these. And again, you can order allegedly in a couple of months.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, I would wait for the Amazon reviews on these. Right? Like, is anybody pre-ordering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these? Like, I don't know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like a high risk and a low excitement product.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, if you have a full home kit kit, I think Stephen Robles is probably going to get a bunch of these things. So we'll definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John see how they are from, uh, based on his experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Quince, Factor, and Tailscale.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you get all sorts of other membership perks as well. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
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⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's K-C-Liss,
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⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann accidental, accidental. They didn't mean to
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann accidental, accidental. Check podcast so
UTR-LR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Got a new toy like a month ago, and I finally had the opportunity to use it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit because I'm turning into that guy in part because of Marco and largely because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Stephen Hackett. A while ago, like, I don't know, six months ago or something like that, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a UniFi UTR, which is a UniFi Travel Router. So I got a UniFi Travel Router.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what I mean? It's an ATM machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyways, you put your personal PIN number into.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That I put my personal identification PIN number in. Anyhow, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new version of this. They still sell the original, but they now have the UTR-LR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the UniFi travel router long range. And this is almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey identical to the original one, except now it has a little flappy thing that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can pick up. And I presume that's the antenna. And allegedly, it works a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey further away. And I got to
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, what is the range? What range are you talking about? Is it the range that your devices can see the Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ John signal emitted by the travel router?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. That's certainly my understanding anyway. um, the original UniFi travel router
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is roughly the size of an iPhone battery pack. You know, the one from several years ago that still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a Lightning connector, not the one from the iPhone Air. I'm saying the original one. It's almost identical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to that size. It's not exactly, but that that's a really good thing to envision. So now envision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey another like third of that that can flip up, and that's the antenna.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I've talked about the original UTR in the past, but it has two Ethernet jacks, and the thing is so thin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it has like PCMCIA style flaps that you lift up in order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make the space for an Ethernet cord to plug in. This is in contrast to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of the GLINet. We talked about GLInet, I think it was last episode, maybe the one before, talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about their KVMs, but they originally became a part of my world on account of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their travel routers, which are very good. This is physically quite, quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit smaller than their travel routers. Now, the chat room is already grumbling that it's only Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5. GLINet has Wi-Fi 7 travel routers. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not as advanced, but I love these things. And I got to tell you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the UniFi travel router, the original one, when we would travel and we would go over the summer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to like a couple of standalone homes, the one in Cape Charles and one in a different beach that we go to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in those standalone homes, which I would guess are roughly 2000 square feet, um, the Unified
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Travel Router, the original one, would work sufficiently, but I would not say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was spectacular. And on the far edges of the house, it would typically be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really spotty Wi-Fi coverage. I haven't had this long enough to go to one of these homes over the summer, but we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did do a little bit of traveling and went to a hotel, a home to suites hotel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Charlottesville to meet up with some friends. And this thing worked great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in there. And I suspect it would work pretty darn well in most average-sized vacation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey homes. I really, really like these things. And especially by Unifi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey standards, they're astonishingly cheap. The original Unifi Travel Router was 80 bucks. This Unified
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Travel Router long range, a hundred bucks, Really not bad. I think they are still doing a tariff surcharge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don't recall off the top of my head. And shipping is annoyingly expensive, despite it all coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Memphis and going via FedEx, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I'm not mistaken.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that being said, I love how freaking small this is. I like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it has a little display on it that shows like how many clients you have connected and so on and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forth. And if you recall, one of the perks of this, if when paired with a Unify setup at home, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first of all, you can just tell it, mimic the home Wi-Fi, and it will use the same SSID and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same password that you have at home. And the reason that a travel router is exciting and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey useful is if you travel with multiple devices, or perhaps you have multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people in your family, or GASP, you have multiple people in your family with multiple devices per
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person, then you only have to get on, let's say, the hotel Wi-Fi or maybe hotel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ethernet once, and then everything else is connected, including if you're
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an absolute lunatic like I am, a Sono speaker, because as far as the speaker is concerned,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it's still at home. And that's also true of like an Apple TV. And again, this does have an Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port for a local area network. It has a WAN Ethernet port and a LAN Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port. Um, Unfortunately, there's only one of them. So you could pair this with like a Flex
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mini, which is one of their very, very physically small and very affordable uh, gigabit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switches. Um, And you can also, interestingly, if you use Teleport,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is their VPN solution that's WireGuard-based, similar to Tailscale, but not the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you use their Teleport thing, then you can actually have a camera
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attached to this via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Not POE, I guess. So I guess it would have to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Wi-Fi camera. But anyways, you could have a camera connected to this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then via teleport, vpn into your home and storing all the footage on your home,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like UNAS or uh what's the, what's the NVR? Is that what it is, Marco? the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The video recorder? Yeah. What am I thinking of?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there's multiple ones now, but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. um So anyway, so you can have a remote camera if you want. Why would you want this? I don't
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, but can you do it? Yes. And I think that's neat. uh And additionally, you know, it has a second,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of this is true of the original one. It also has a second um USB port so you can tether.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It's really, really slick. And if you are a UniFi person, which maybe you're not, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are, this thing is so cool. And I really, really appreciate the fact that it is longer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey range and seems to work in bigger spaces a lot better. Cool. I know. I like it.