I suspect this might be the beginning of a new turn for Apple strategy under Ternus: more satellite hardware that’s cheap(ish) compared to the flagship devices & locked down, reliant on your iPhone to do anything useful, pushing you to use exclusively Apple services rather than 3rd party ones. The App Store strategy is a thing of the past.

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fcarraldo 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wouldn't this have been in-development for quite some time under Cook?

	▲	mastax 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ternus was the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering and by reports was leading the charge on this stuff.

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Brendinooo 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, this is interesting to think about.

Maybe it's a bet on LLMs/Siri AI as well: all of the not-iPhone devices become more useful if you can control them well with your voice.

I think people do feel some tension about staring at their phones all day and like the idea that the phone can stay in the pocket or on a desk while stuff like the Watch and maybe a HomeView or a HomePod could cover a lot of the little usages along the way. (I'm not sure people would ACTUALLY use them that way, but I could see it driving some sales.)

	▲	msdz 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> people do feel some tension about staring at their phones all day That, plus the crowd who would want or like to hack on a device like this, or at least use a non-Apple app or service, is probably far outnumbered by people who don’t care what (and whose) software can run on their screen in the home as long as it looks nice and works well, which is typically the case for Apple.
	▲	joshstrange 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> some tension about staring at their phones all day They talk about it more but very few (low enough to not effectively not matter) actually do anything about it. If you want to spend less time on your phone you can... just do it. Setup screen time and practice an ounce of self-discipline. It's the same as when people say "People hate their phones so that's why we created <AI Pendant>", uh people _love_ their phones, some to an unhealthy degree but I've never bought into the idea that people are actually pinning for a way to use their phones less. That's why it's going to be a massive uphill battle for OpenAI to break into the hardware space IMHO. Apple wasn't wrong in their Keynote about how the perfect "AI" device is already in your pocket. Now, it's more limited than it should be due to the locked down nature of Apple's phones but if you could build anything without restriction on the iPhone platform then yes, it would be a great AI platform.

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joshstrange 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Rumor has it that this product has been kicking around internally for 1-2 years waiting on a better Siri to pair with it. Meaning it would have been released under Cook if not for the disastrous showing of Siri and all things AI from Apple.

I really hope this is just something that was all packaged up to release and didn't make sense to kill it. I mean, I still think they picked wrong and they should have shelved it and the LG device integrations. I really hope it's not a sign of what's to come with Ternus.

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pkulak 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's the big agent play for everyone. What good is this thing unless your whole family has an iphone, you use iCloud for email/calendar/contacts, you have HomeKit running your house, AppleTV, etc? Failing that, it's a big, voice-activated kitchen timer; just like everything else.

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HumblyTossed 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He's been CEO for a week. Product development timelines are longer than that.

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EDC9599190 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I could see that.

Apple wants to design the best UI for everything and be the front-end to everything their users interact with.

Home automation is a good place to gain market share among their upper income clientele.

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criddell 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Surely this device has to be mostly a Cook project, no?

	▲	Lalabadie 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ternus being named CEO is a long-term project that certainly includes him and Tim Cook. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone internally that there are several big releases after his nomination.

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throw4356h3w 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Reminds me of what Xiaomi does. They have an assortment of Home products that all tie in together with their ecosystem/apps.

I use an iPhone, but I have a lamp, a shaver, and sunglasses from Xiaomi.