by Jason Snell

Apple’s new home hub is ‘HomeView’

Mark Gurman has last-minute Apple product details in his Sunday newsletter:

The centerpiece is a new smart home hub called the HomeView. Equipped with a display and an A18 chip, the product essentially serves as the Siri command center for an Apple-powered household…

The HomeView comes in two versions: a countertop model with a metal speaker base and a wall-mounted version with a flat, square base that sits against the wall beneath the display. The countertop offering will come in four colors: space gray, silver, starlight and pink, while the wall-mounted version will be limited to space gray and silver.

The name dovetails with a MacRumors report that Apple used a shell company to trademark “HomeView” last year. So much for my prediction of a re-use of the base HomePod name.

Gurman also says the new Apple TV remote will have a speaker, and the new Apple TV itself will have a microphone to enable it to receive Siri requests directly.