The Apple Home Hub

Apple is reportedly working on at least three new smart home products for 2025. The two obvious ones — an Apple TV and a new HomePod mini — aren’t expected until later this year. However, reports last fall suggested Apple would be releasing a home hub as early as March 2025.

The new device was expected to be akin to an Amazon Echo or Google Nest Hub: an iPad-mini-like “command center for the home” that could be mounted on a wall or propped dup on a tabletop in a common area. It reportedly includes a camera for FaceTime, a rechargeable battery, and internal speakers. In addition to controller your home, it’s also said to include apps for web browsing, news, music, and even access to notes and calendar information.

Sadly, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who provided the original insight and predicted March launch date, Apple has fallen behind on this one. The problem isn’t so much the hardware, but the software, which seems to be plagued by the same problems Apple has been having with smartening up Siri in iOS 18.4.

Apple wants to distinguish the home hub by having it rely on Apple Intelligence, including the App Intents feature that will let you ask Siri to do things inside third-party apps. This is critical to powering a home hub that can be interacted with using voice commands, but Apple is reportedly still fine-tuning things.

It’s unclear when it will crack this nut, but since the hardware may be nearly ready to go, it’s still possible we could see Apple’s Home Hub this spring if it can work out those software details. Put this one into the wildcard category; we certainly hope it arrives sooner rather than later, but we’ve also been waiting for an Apple Home Hub for years, so what’s a few more months if Apple takes the time it needs to get it right?