Apple TV 4K and HomePod Mini Updates May Finally Arrive This Fall
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If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on buying a new Apple TV 4K or HomePod, it sounds like you won’t have to wait much longer, as a new report suggests that Apple is finally preparing to release both of those devices later this year.
Sure, we know you’re probably thinking you’ve heard this song before — and you’d be right. It seems quaint today to consider that signs once pointed to a 2025 launch for a new HomePod mini, and stock levels truly have slowly been shrinking, which is always a good sign that a new product release is imminent.
To be fair, Apple’s home hardware has been beset by a unique situation. By all accounts, Apple has had the hardware ready to go for months. It’s the software that’s holding the HomePod mini and Apple TV 4K back — that software is, as you probably guessed, Siri.
Fortunately, with the new “Siri 2.0” expected to debut at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) as part of iOS 27 and the rest of the gang, all of the hardware that’s been waiting in the wings should be ready to go.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll see any of these devices mentioned at the WWDC keynote, as Apple might prefer to save a few surprises for the fall, when its new operating systems are actually released to the public. However, we also can’t rule out the possibility the company might announce the new hardware at WWDC. After all, it did that with the original HomePod in 2017, which didn’t actually ship until the following February.
Whether we see a sneak peek or not, the consensus now seems to be forming around a fall release. In this week’s Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman shares the word from his sources that with Siri “now scheduled for this fall,” the Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini will also be joining the party.
I am told the hardware for the next Apple TV set-top box and HomePod mini has been done for months and that both devices are already in active use among employees at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. As I’ve said before, these refreshes have been held back for many, many months because they were designed to launch in tandem with the new Siri and Apple Intelligence updates. That software is now scheduled for this fall, following numerous delays.
Mark Gurman
Gurman had less to say about Apple’s so-called “HomePad” — the smart-home hub the company has reportedly had in the works for years — beyond obliquely referring to it as a “still-delayed smart home hub with display and facial recognition” that’s become a priority for the company over updates to its existing living room lineup.
What to Expect from the Next Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini
Unfortunately, if you’ve been hoping that this long wait between products will be worth it, we have some bad news. According to Gurman, we can expect the same design with only internal spec bumps: basically, newer and more powerful silicon inside.
Chances are you’ll have a hard time telling the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K apart from its current model on the outside. Gurman has heard that Apple may refresh the remote in some way that may or may not be significant, but the box itself is likely to get nothing more than a new A-series chip — likely an A17 Pro if other rumors are accurate.
Ditto for the HomePod mini. The new smart speaker is said to be code-named B525, with the biggest expected change being a bump to something like an S9 chip.
Of course, while those chip upgrades will deliver a healthy performance boost — the current models use the 2021 A15 and 2019 S5 chips, respectively — they’ll likely offer even more. Apple has long been expected to bring at least some Apple Intelligence to its smart home devices, and the very fact that they’ve been held back by the new Siri suggests this will be the key selling point of the updates.
What this means is an open question, but with Siri expected to actually become a fully-capable chatbot that can operate in the same league as Google’s Gemini and Amazon’s Alexa+, it’s not a stretch to imagine the new HomePod mini getting a lot smarter at understanding everyday, natural language requests.
Apple’s home products have frequently gone years between refreshes with only minor upgrades, so it’s not that surprising to hear we’ll see more of the same this fall. The first app-capable Apple TV debuted in 2015, and in the 11 years since then we’ve only seen three successors, with the first coming in 2017 to add 4K support, followed by two unusually rapid-fire releases in 2021 and 2022.
Meanwhile, we have yet to see a sequel to the six-year-old HomePod mini. Apple has offered some minor color refreshes, and improved functionality with software updates, but a HomePod mini you buy today would be the same class of smart speaker that first landed on store shelves in late 2020.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
