Apple has officially entered a whole new product category with the surprise announcement of the Apple HomeView on Tuesday.
While smart home hubs have been around for over a decade, Apple has shown an increasing appetite to venture into untapped market segments—most notably with its first foldable, the iPhone Duo, and the Apple Vision Pro VR headset two years ago.
This latest launch marks the tech giant’s second brand-new hardware category in 2026 alone, with the HomeView standing out as perhaps its most curious entry yet.
Visually taking cues from a scaled-down 2002 iMac G4, the device mounts a 7-inch square display atop a domed base via a metallic arm. Crucially, however, it depends entirely on wired power to operate. A wall-mounted configuration is also available, though that essentially leaves you with a square iPad fixed to your wall.
Apple’s HomeView: A New Contender in the Market with Multi-User Facial Recognition
In Apple’s promotional video, a father is seen preparing French toast for breakfast with his two children in the kitchen. The showcase heavily highlighted the HomeView’s deep Siri AI integration—even if everyday users know real-world voice assistant response times are rarely as instantaneous as advertised.
Ultimately, the device offers little that an iPad cannot already achieve, bar one major distinction: seamless multi-user facial recognition. That feature lets you access your private messages via Face ID—demonstrated in the clip when a sister logs in before her brother can snoop on her texts.
Here is the kicker: at an official retail price of $299, simple conversion puts it around R4,921 before import duties and taxes. Once localised, South African consumers are likely looking at a real-world price tag closer to R6,000. While the entry-level iPad sells for substantially more at R8,799, it offers portability alongside virtually every function the HomeView delivers.
Whether the HomeView can capture a meaningful foothold in the local market remains to be seen—the jury is still out.