Will Apple’s Home Hub Be a Robotic Swiveller or a Static Stand?

After missing a predicted 2025 launch date, Apple’s “Home Hub” is reportedly still on track for a release early this year, but there seems to be some slight disagreement on exactly what we can expect.

While rumors of Apple’s work on a centralized smart home display or hub go back several years, it wasn’t until late 2024 that they began to seriously gel, when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reporting on a wall-mounted iPad-like home hub that was slated for early 2025.

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Of course, that didn’t happen, but that’s not necessarily because the hardware wasn’t ready. Several sources said key Apple employees were already testing these new hubs in their own homes; the key issue was apparently that Siri wasn’t ready for prime time — not a big surprise considering Apple also failed to deliver the more personalized Siri it had promised as part of Apple Intelligence for iOS 18.

Siri was expected to be a core component of the new device, which Gurman’s sources said would feature a square 7-inch screen that would be about the size of two iPhones sitting beside each other. It also reportedly included a FaceTime camera, a rechargeable battery, and internal speakers, and was designed for either wall-mounting or tabletop use with a docking base, seemingly borrowing a design idea from Google’s original Pixel Tablet. However, it wasn’t clear if those would be two separate devices or a single unit with two mounting options.

While this device is widely referred to by the placeholder name ‘HomePad’ in some corners of the rumor mill, internal Apple code identifies it simply as J490.

There have also been multiple reports of Apple’s work on a new “homeOS” that’s expected to run on the new device. Some expected to see at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), but it seems that this was pushed off by the home hub delays — likely along with the rest of Apple’s home products that were expected in 2025.

Leaked code has revealed an internal software code name of “Charismatic,” and hinted at the possibility of the built-in camera using Face ID — or at least some kind of facial recognition — to recognize who is in the room to swap between user profiles, in much the same way the HomePod can use voice recognition for things like setting reminders and sending messages. This would also track with other rumors of Apple’s work on a Face ID-equipped doorbell.

The Long Road Home

Multiple sources have said the new and improved Siri is on track for iOS 26.4 in the next few months, and the confidence in that has been bolstered by the official announcement that Siri will use Google’s Gemini models to give it a leg up. If Siri is truly the Rosetta Stone needed to unlock Apple’s home hub, that makes it even more likely that it will soon be ready for release.

Now, the folks at The Information have weighed in, not only corroborating a spring timeline, but adding another slightly controversial new tidbit.

The information came in what felt like a footnote among the broader report of Apple’s work on an “AI pin”, but Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu added that the new AI-powered home hub will have a “robotic swiveling base.”

That’s stark departure from what we’ve previously heard, at least for the first-generation model. Gurman and other sources have reported that Apple is working on more advanced robotic solutions, but those aren’t expected to see the light of day before 2027.

The first of these is expected to be a “tabletop robot” (J595) that we’ve been hearing about since mid-2024. The Information’s report sounds similar to this in concept, with its swiveling base, although Gurman described the tabletop robot as having “an iPad-like display with a robotic limb,” suggesting it might do more than merely swivel.

That leaves some room for the notion that Apple could decide to start with a more basic turntable-style design, but The Information remains the sole voice suggesting this, and following the publication of its report, Gurman countered that by saying these are still “two separate products,” with the robot coming “much later.”

Ma and Liu didn’t provide any additional details on how they believe the base would function, and it’s possible the information they’ve heard from sources has caused them to conflate two different products in Apple’s skunkworks. It’s also possible the “swiveling base” could be an optional motorized dock accessory rather than a built-in feature, which means both reports could technically be correct — and would likely fit with the $350 price point for the base model that multiple sources have been predicting.

Either way, it’s highly probable we’ll see the first-generation home hub arrive in the next few months, and everything else they’ve said lines up with other reports; the only question is whether it will be able to move under its own power.