The weird thing about this product is that its biggest competitor is "an old ipad." I feel like most of their target customer base already has an old ipad that's better suited for what this does in every way. Old ipads:

1. Have a battery so you're not tied to a cord. Even old poor batteries are better than no battery.

2. Have apps! How does this not support apps?!

3. Have a huge range of 3rd party products and hacks and 3D models to wall mount it or stands for it

4. Are kitchen-safe (splatter proof, far fewer holes than this product, movable out of the way)

5. Also support siri and facetime and everything this device does AFAICT

I'm guessing they realized this and made sure it's priced lower than the cheapest new iPad, but it will be interesting to see if the price difference can compete with the old iPads most of their customers have in drawers or already on walls.

Maybe the purpose-built nature will be a reasonable enough differentiator, but I'm not sure it's focused enough for that. It's both a passive information station and for calls? It's for recipes which implies you put it in the kitchen, but it looks like a nightmare to clean with all those holes? It's also a very small screen when you have to read the recipe from a distance because it has no battery. I can't move my stove to it, and I definitely don't want it too near a stove or sink!

The multiple users feature is a really neat trick, but I would kill to have this for all Apple devices. Let me hand my kid my phone and it automatically switches to kid mode!

Please Apple don't lock multiple users to stationary devices like HomeView!

No Apps is such a strange choice, like really anti consumer....

I can’t believe nobody’s brought this up yet, but the HomeView fundementally exists for one reason: to be a Matter hub for smarthome stuff. No iPad – or any portable Apple device - can be configured as a home hub for managing Matter-protocol devices. There’s no significant advantage to a HomeView over an iPad if you don’t have any Matter devices.

That’s why this device has multi-user support: you’re only supposed to have one of them, which everyone uses. The Apple TV also has good multi-user support, because Apple doesn’t expect you to connect one Apple TV per user to your television.

Yeah all this device proves is they can easily enable user profiles on iPads and iPhones but they choose not to because fuck you give us more money.

Old iPads are better than this in every way except for the way that matters most in a shared family device, then? I'd love for Apple to add multi-user support to iPadOS and think it's way past time they did, but it's not going to be a simple software update. This device has on-chip support for multiple FaceID accounts so it can distinguish them securely.

I think the real issue is that this is "competing" with 7 year old Google Home and Alexa show devices. Devices that were $50 for a lot of their useful life (Now they have of course, become more expensive, and worse.)

Basically, people use them for photos, kitchen timers, quick recipe lookups, quick questions, and "can a dog eat the thing I just dropped".

Not quite, surely. It seems to have a pretty solid speaker, which an iPad can't really compare to. I've also struggled to work out how to get an old iPad to work the way my old decrepit Google Home does: digital photo frame until I interact with it, then it resets back to photo frame by itself. There are plenty of iPad photo frame apps but they're not able to automatically reset device state.

I’ve been through this thought process many times and I’m not comfortable leaving a device like an iPad permanently connected to AC with a battery that was never designed for that. I can just imagine ending up with a spicy pillow, except now it’s plugged into the wall all the time.

The biggest addition is multiple users supported on a single device - something ipads should have had a while ago.

A lot of those cons are advantages for at least one target market, the elderly. It's much better for them if the device can't move and can't install new software.

It's very obvious which comments are from those without kids and a busy kitchen. This hardware is built to sell apple family one subs. The multiuser is not a feature of the iPad, and this alone means an iPad can't replicate this.

As you get older you start to realise half of hot takes are a result of living in a different half of the economy which doesn't quite get things like the suburbs are appealing

An issue with old iPads is getting OS updates.

The last base iPad still supported on the current OS must be the 2020 version. There was a blip in the corona years, but since the iPad sales have been declining, so the amount of devices still up to date aren't that many.

> The multiple users feature is a really neat trick, but I would kill to have this for all Apple devices. Let me hand my kid my phone and it automatically switches to kid mode!

I suspect the reason for this is that it’s not a mobile device and can afford to have the camera always on.

It's a niche product and pretty cheap. Of course you can do everything and more on an ipad but I see this as basically a competitor to Alexa that sits on a kitchen counter and is occasionally useful. In that scenario never thinking about a battery is an advantage. I imagine you might leave this unlocked all the time and it is closer to a hands free device which is useful while cooking. The splatter thing is really only an issue if you place it like right next to your stovetop or sink. Even one foot away on a counter pretty much eliminates that issue.

It doesn't have to do a lot to be useful. If there are even a couple consistent daily use cases I can see this making sense for some people. Even if just means I don't need to go grab my iPad/iPhone from the couch to set a timer or ask a quick question.

3. Have a huge range of 3rd party products and hacks and 3D models to wall mount it or stands for it

you'd be surprised how much of a barrier this is for average consumer

> an old ipad

You've just realized they're going to obsolete all those products.

Isn’t there a safety hazard with battery swelling and such if it’s always connected to power? May be I have outdated information I unmounted the iPad after reading about it.

I have an old alexa and a paper calendar we literally write on for our family stuff. And the wall ends up getting written on.

So this is two birds for me

I was going to say the same thing -- we already solve all these use cases in our household now with an old iPad and there is nothing wrong with it.

Good idea for Apple to made old iPads unusable :)

At least my old iPad turns off and consumes zero energy when off.

With this thing ... it remains to be seen what happens in practice.

Exactly. I won't buy this, but I might buy "magsafe on a chrome arm, with a bluetooth speaker" from AliExpress in a few weeks.

An iPhone is actually also just a small iPad which happens to have a SIM card slot!

Yes, it's the family iPad that I would love to have for years!

I think the main thing that this does better than an ipad is voice control. Maybe you can buy an iPad dock with a speaker and a good microphone that would obviate this concern (happy to take correction if so), but if you're in the kitchen it's often nice to be able to ask it to play music or if carrots are safe for dogs to eat or whatever. It's nice not to have to use your hands when they are covered in chicken juice or whathaveyou.

Don’t want apps for kids to find their ways into.

Lots of parents want to manage it

This is a new device like a home phone.

Kids can securely call who they are allowed to from a fixed location, not wandering off with a device.

This looks like a modern Google Home Screen, likely matching the market when it seems obvious.

Edit: Typos.

For the parents that are engaged with trying to solve a problem like this, it's not solved by an old iPad, because old enough iPads often can't run current apps.

I'm not sure if this is a kitchen device, maybe an edge of the kitchen device, where a desk or landline cordless phone used to be in some homes.

Apple moving into home is one thing, also people being uncertain about apple releasing new product categories is also not new.

Personally it feels like some of the features in this have been researched with the audience who will buy it (homeowners, parents, kids, etc) which are shown in the imaging as well. This can seem a little off because Apple is usually creating something for everyone and not just some.

The main thing about the screen being on a stand is a child can't be too tempted to walk aroudn with it, or touch it (guided access aside).

Yeah, most people cannot be bothered with (3) honestly

[flagged]

[dead]

I highly suspect this product will be tombstoned at around the same time as the VR goggles.

It’s really out of touch. I don’t see any benefit over any old tablet.