Apple may have had a rough start with the Vision Pro headset, but the company has other plans to expand its product lineup (that's not an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch). According to Mark Gurman, Apple is working on a new smart display to cater to the smart home market.
The product is expected to launch "as early as next year." It will be a low-end smart display (dubbed J490) intended to make FaceTime calls and control home appliances. Gurman said the unreleased display will have Apple Intelligence baked in and run a new operating system called homeOS - a spin-off of the existing tvOS.
This corroborates previous rumours of the homeOS in the making. References to the mysterious operating system were discovered earlier this year in the source code of tvOS 17.4. Moroever, rumors of a smart display from Apple or a HomePod with a screen have been around for a while now.
Apple is developing another smart display, which will be on the pricier side and powered by homeOS and Apple Intelligence. However, Gurman previously reported that it will feature a large iPad-like display attached to a robotic arm that can rotate 360 degrees and tilt up or down.
The robotic device is expected to cost $1,000 or more when it is released. While Apple dreams of bringing Apple Intelligence to more platforms, Gurman notes that its current smart home lineup, including Apple TV, HomePod, and HomePod mini, doesn't have the required hardware to run on-device AI models.
Apple has an ongoing trend of having each of its hardware platforms have a dedicated operating system, be it mainstream products like iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, or devices like Apple TV and Vision Pro. HomePod runs a forked version of tvOS; it's expected that Apple will eventually combine tvOS with homeOS to run on every Apple home device, according to Gurman.
Source: Bloomberg
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