Apple has spent years looking weirdly passive in the smart home race, and that might finally change.
According to The Verge’s analysis of the current rumours and reporting around Apple’s roadmap, incoming CEO John Ternus could begin his run at the top with a much more serious push into home hardware. If that happens, Apple may stop treating the category like a side quest and start acting like it actually wants a place in your living room.
That matters because Apple has been slow here, bro. Over the past decade, Amazon and Google have flooded the market with more than 40 smart speakers and displays combined, while Apple has only shipped three comparable devices. Even with HomeKit and the newer Apple Home app in place, Apple’s own hardware lineup has felt thin for years.
What Apple has built is the platform side. The company has leaned hard into privacy and local control, and its backing of Matter has helped smart home compatibility improve a lot. That is a big deal for Malaysia and the wider SEA market, where plenty of people mix brands instead of going all-in on one ecosystem. In real life, many homes here end up with an iPhone, a random smart bulb from Shopee, maybe a Xiaomi gadget, maybe an Android tablet on the side. Better interoperability is not just nice to have, it’s the only way smart homes become less leceh.
The biggest rumoured device right now is the so-called HomePad, a roughly 7-inch smart display designed for home control, FaceTime, facial recognition and presence-aware features. Reports suggest Apple is testing two versions: one that mounts to a wall with a MagSafe-style setup, and another attached to a speaker base similar to a HomePod mini.
If that sounds simple, it actually solves one of the most annoying smart home problems: shared access. A smart home cannot depend on just one person’s phone all the time. A display fixed in the house makes more sense for families, couples and housemates, especially if the system can recognise who is around and respond accordingly.
There are also rumours of more dedicated Apple home devices, including security cameras, a video doorbell and a standalone sensor. These products could feed more context into Apple Home, letting the system know who is home, where movement is happening and when something needs attention. That would also support Apple’s bigger AI angle, where the home becomes more ambient and automatic instead of waiting for constant voice commands.
Privacy is the make-or-break part here. Apple’s advantage is that it already has HomeKit Secure Video, which can analyse activity without forcing users into open-ended cloud recording. For a lot of people in SEA, especially those living in condos, landed homes with gates, or multi-generational households, that balance between convenience and privacy is a huge selling point.
Then there is the more ambitious stuff. The long-rumoured tabletop home robot with a screen mounted on a robotic arm is still floating around Apple chatter, and it sounds like the company may want to give it more personality as part of its broader AI strategy. That product feels further out, but it shows Apple may be thinking beyond speakers and screens.
On the software side, Apple also seems to need a cleanup. A dedicated homeOS, reportedly combining parts of tvOS and HomePod software, would give the whole platform a clearer foundation. Rumours around a HomePod mini 2 and a next-gen Apple TV suggest Apple is also preparing newer hardware that can handle more processing locally, which is especially important if future Siri features are supposed to be faster and smarter.
And yes, Siri is still the biggest question mark. Apple’s delayed AI overhaul remains the glue that has to hold all of this together. Amazon and Google have already shown what LLM-powered assistants in the home can look like, even if the results are still messy. Apple is arriving late again, but the company usually bets that arriving late is fine as long as the final experience feels polished.
For Malaysian and SEA users, this is worth watching because Apple’s success here would not just mean more gadgets. It could mean a smarter, less fragmented home setup for people already living across multiple ecosystems. The tech is finally lining up. Now Apple just has to ship.
Source: The Verge