Apple finally announced their smart home control hub (dubbed HomeView) yesterday. It's a whopping $299 and an amalgamation of their technologies in an attempt to reinvigorate their home strategy.

Later in the day, Marques Brownlee's impressions video dropped and he said he doesn't really know who the product is for:

"But whenever we see a new product, whenever I think about a new product, I always want to think about the target demographic that they think it's best for, that they're aiming this at. And I've been living with this for all day basically, and I cannot figure any group that this is actually ideal for.

Like maybe, okay, I guess in theory, the complete casual who doesn't really care about the price and just kind of likes that it's in the Apple ecosystem and the couple interesting features of it connecting to the iPhone, that makes it cool, then sure, fine, I guess.

But for like the super bleeding edge smart home enthusiast who already has a bunch of smart lights and is like ready to go all in with a smart doorbell and a smart thermostat and a smart home, well, this ecosystem is still dwarfed by Amazon's and even Google's, and the value proposition of the display product that lives in your kitchen is not that different between them."

I think this is a rare miss from Brownlee and reminds me of two things: First, that he (presumably) does not live at home with a family and second, he's a multi-ecosystem guy.

The target audience for this product is as clear as day. It is for that "complete casual," sure, but it is also for families like mine that are all in on Apple's ecosystem, where Google and Amazon's offerings are atrocious. We have had a Google Nest Hub for four years. It has served diligently as our kitchen timer, clock, and occasional music player. There is plenty of untapped functionality left on the speaker because the hub is outside Apple and an awful experience.

We don't have any of our photos on the device because we don't use Google Photos. We could, but then it is managing our library in multiple places or updating albums. It'd be like the Aura Frames, which many of our family members have, and updating it with photos is a chore. We don't want to do that for our pictures.

Apple Music is an app on the Nest Hub, but man, it never works. Google never plays the music we want. It always tries to go to YouTube before Apple Music. My library isn't on the device or navigable in any intuitive way. My account is often logged out, which requires a song and dance inside the Google Home app. I swear they change the layout and location of settings every time I have to bumble my way through it.

Earlier this year, we bought a base iPad and I use that for cooking, timers, and music every time over my Nest Hub. The HomeView is an eagerly awaited replacement for the Nest Hub because I know all that friction with Google inside an Apple household will vanish.

This product is also for families like my parents next door. My dad is a Home Assistant enthusiast. The house has so many smart objects, alerts, and lights. He is the "super bleeding edge smart home enthusiast" that Brownlee describes. You know who is not a smart home savant? My mother. It's a source of tension when lights don't cooperate or devices don't respond to the incantation she's recited. A HomeView would give my mother a home base for visual digital buttons for those objects, alerts, and lights. It's the bridge between the enthusiast and their "complete casual" family.

Stephen Hackett describes the same scenario in his impressions article:

I run Home Assistant behind the scenes, but my family interacts with things like smart plugs and the garage door using HomeKit, usually via one of the HomePod minis I have placed around the house.

This has led to some frustration over the years when a HomePod doesn’t hear them correctly. Tapping a button would certainly clear that up.

The HomeView has Thread and the smart home standards you'd expect. I am sure this will fit in quite nicely to the enthusiast's—both Apple and smart—home.

Back to Brownlee's closer:

"So I just imagine anyone who gets this, after like the first two weeks when the novelty wears off, it's just going to be reduced to that LCD square attached to a speaker that lives in the corner somewhere. Once in a while you ask it for some some music or for a timer, or you ask Siri some stuff, and it's fine at that, but it doesn't really bring any extra value on top of that that's convincing me that it's worth the extra price."

That is what this product is for. It's the "Aura Frame." It's the kitchen speaker. It's the light switch hub. It's the ask-an-assistant-out-loud screen. It's the digital clock. There's no reduction. Doing all that seamlessly within Apple's ecosystem, for all the other family members inside the home, without having to deal with the ad-ridden, bloated, clumsy experiences of Google and Amazon is the extra value.1 All of that seems worth the price of admission to me and my family. I suspect it will be for many.

Footnotes

  1. Same with the Apple TV and all the streaming sticks/boxes. ↩