While it’s hard to predict with any certainty what Apple is up to when it comes to its HomePod — or anything in its living room product lineup — we’ve seen more than a few persistent rumors over the past few years that suggest the company’s interested in equipping its smart speaker with a display. Now, new code found in tvOS 17.4 adds more evidence that such a device could actually make a debut sometime this year.
Of course, it’s not surprising that Apple would at least be pursuing that line of thinking since it’s the only mainstream smart home platform that lacks the concept of a central home hub like Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub — not to mention Google’s Pixel Tablet that’s designed to pull double-duty by letting you dock it centrally in your home. Sure, you can turn an iPad into a Home Hub — Apple’s Home app is quite good at that — but it’s still not nearly as elegant as a dedicated screen and speaker combo.
Apple seems to believe that Siri should be good enough for home control — an ironic position considering that Amazon and Google have gone in the opposite direction, and Apple’s Home app predates their attempts to go beyond just a voice control interface.
Sadly, as great as HomeKit is when it comes to offering robust automation features, it’s always felt like an afterthought for Apple, which has its hands full enough with flagship products like the iPhone and the Vision Pro. Last year was also the first year we failed to see even a single new iPad release, and while Apple is almost sure to rectify that next month, it shows how thinly spread the company’s design and engineering teams may be. Apple has always run lean and mean compared to other big tech companies.
As a result, some of the rumors we hear surrounding Apple’s “B-list” products, like the HomePod, may be almost entirely accurate — they just take longer to come to fruition than many expect.
That’s likely the case with the HomePod. After all, we’ve been hearing solid reports for years now that Apple is up to something with its smart speaker, but the most reputable sources have also suggested that Apple is playing the long game here.
Only months after Apple blindsided everyone by discontinuing the full-sized HomePod in early 2021, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman revealed that Apple was working on a more advanced and powerful HomePod that would be its “most ambitious smart-home hardware offering to date.” However, he also made it clear that such a device was in “early development,” and we shouldn’t hold our breath about seeing it anytime soon.
Instead, we got a second-generation HomePod last year that was virtually indistinguishable from the one Apple had discontinued two years prior. This led some to give up hope that Apple had anything more ambitious, but no sooner did Apple’s slightly revised smart speaker hit the market than rumors appeared that a new HomePod with a seven-inch display would arrive in early 2024.
Those began to gel last fall when confirmation appeared of an advanced-stage prototype of a HomePod with an LCD panel on top. According to the folks at 9to5Mac, sources described it as a device code-named B720 and indicated it was being “actively worked on by Apple.”
However, leaked images suggested no significant design changes beyond the screen. Instead, if those were accurate, we’d be looking at a HomePod nearly identical to the one we’ve known for years, with the biggest change being a full LCD touchscreen on top where we now only have a colorful glowing dot.
At the time, 9to5Mac also reported that Apple was modifying the tvOS versions of Apple Music and Apple Podcasts to work on different display formats. Since these are used only on standard television sets connected to an Apple TV, these changes would presumably only be needed to adapt them for the HomePod, which also runs tvOS under the hood.
Now, 9to5Mac has shared information on code found in the latest tvOS 17.4 beta released this week that lists another new device with the identifier “Z314” currently being tested with both internal development and production hardware.
While that could be a next-generation Apple TV, that doesn’t seem to fit. Firstly, it runs the same A15 Bionic chip already used in the 2022 third-generation Apple TV 4K. There doesn’t seem to be much point in Apple releasing a new version of its set-top box powered by the same chip; if the company were planning a new version to introduce some other new capabilities, it would still be more likely to bump it to the A16.
However, the second and more interesting point is that tvOS 17.4 beta 3 adds new SwiftUI user interface frameworks and other related tools to the HomePod version of the firmware. Since the HomePod as it exists today has no user interface, there’s no need for any UI elements in its operating system, so the addition of these suggests one is coming.
A few months ago, we also saw a report that Apple was internally running a version of tvOS 17.2 on a “modified” sixth-generation iPad mini, which also uses the A15 Bionic chip. It’s unclear whether this could be connected to a HomePod with a display or a separate device that’s more of a home hub than a speaker, but either way, it’s not a normal thing for an iPad.
The unique internal model numbers B720 and Z314 suggest that Apple could be working on two different devices. The B720 still seems to be a standard HomePod with an LCD screen on top that’s still primarily a smart speaker, while the Z314 could be something more akin to a full-screen home hub since it appears to have more sophisticated user interface elements and be tied into a more iPad-sized display.
It’s difficult to know right now what such a device will look like; concept artists have been having a ball sketching out ideas for the past few years, ranging from an Apple version of an Echo Show to a HomePod with an iPad attached to an articulating arm, but so far we haven’t seen any concrete leaks of anything more than the “B720” version that could easily be mistaken for a standard second-generation HomePod.
Either way, it sounds like at least one of these devices could finally be making an appearance this year, possibly even as soon as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, as that’s where the company has typically shown off its home products over the past few years. We’ll have to wait and see what materializes, but if Apple is actually working on something that’s close to release, there’s a good chance we’ll hear more from the usual sources as June approaches.