home hub

The new smart home products produced by LG Electronics in partnership with Apple will feature a “tap to set up without power” feature, according to a leaker who spotted the reference in iOS 27.

Also, LG Electronics apparently won’t be the only second-party manufacturer Apple works with to create new smart home products. The same leaker says Schneider Electric, a French company with its North American headquarters in Boston, will produce thermostats, temperature/humidity sensors and possibly more.

Apple invited select media and creators to an event in New York on October 13. With “Welcome Home” as the theme, the invitation strongly hints that its long-awaited smart-home push is finally about to begin.

Rather than being held at company headquarters, the event will be in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood. And it’ll start at 6 a.m. PT.

Apple partnered with LG Electronics to create an array of smart home devices, including a doorbell, a thermostat, a smart lock and indoor and outdoor security cameras, according to a new report.

The devices will work with Apple’s long-rumored smart home hub, which supposedly will launch next week. Although the LG-produced gear won’t arrive for several months, it should bolster Apple’s attempt to catch up in the smart home game. And new images purport to show what three of the devices will look like and function.

Apple appears ready to make a serious push into the smart home market with a new screen-equipped hub reportedly coming at a product launch event as soon as October 13.

The device is for those who want to put the new Siri AI at the center of their home, as well as those who are serious about Apple’s HomeKit smart home accessories. Or both.

Here’s everything we know about Apple’s smart home hub in the days before it is expected to launch.

This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: New Apple CEO John Ternus reportedly wants to make Apple lean and agile. He wants to eliminate bloat — and push out more products at a faster tempo.

Is he tamping out his own “bozo explosion” at Apple? Or is the “hardware guy” just bringing a more engineering-focused eye to Cupertino’s top job? There’s plenty to discuss!

Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:

• The long-rumored (and long-delayed) Apple home hub, which reportedly arrives in a couple of weeks, will lean heavily on the new AI-infused Siri. Is the virtual assistant up to the task?
• And finally, it’s official: AirPods 5 are the “least unrepairable AirPods yet,” according to DIY gurus at iFixit.

Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in Apple’s Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. Or watch the video version, embedded below. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!)

Apple’s long-rumored smart home hub is shaping up to be more than just a smart speaker with a screen. It could double up as a really nice digital photo frame.

Code buried in an iOS beta details a “Photo Face” step during the setup process. It’s a display that shows your photos whenever the hub isn’t busy answering your queries or running your smart home. So instead of a dark, bland screen on your counter, you could see your own memories.

Apple’s long-awaited entry into the smart home is finally about to become a reality. The company is reportedly preparing to launch its first dedicated smart home hub on October 13.

The device could give Apple its first real answer to products such as Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub, according to an unconfirmed report published Wednesday.

Apple reportedly will unveil the new product alongside two other smart home devices: updated versions of the HomePod mini and Apple TV set-top box. All will be designed around the new AI-powered Siri digital assistant.

Apple is clearing shelf space for a new era of smart home gear. The company is reportedly preparing a significant overhaul of its retail stores this fall. The changes point to more than a routine refresh. And at the center of it all sits the rumored Apple home hub — its first smart display built for the home.

The retail work targets the “Avenues,” the perimeter walls in Apple’s newer stores. These walls showcase HomePod, Apple TV, AirPods, and Beats gear. Store-layout teams are reportedly rearranging these sections and adding new accessory bays. The scale of the project suggests Apple needs room for something significant.

Apple is reportedly developing a smart display that would act as a smart home hub, and details of the upcoming product’s widget gallery appear in code buried in the latest macOS beta. 

The discovery paints a clearer picture of how Apple’s first true smart display might work. It also gives us an idea of how the widget gallery might pull content straight from your iPhone, mixing Apple’s own apps with third-party widgets.

Everybody loves Pixar’s beloved toy-lamp mascot, Luxo Jr., right? Apple just made a new lamp-like robot prototype that looks super similar. The iPhone giant’s machine learning research team developed an expressively social robotic prototype in desk-lamp form, according to a recent paper, blog post and video.

The new robot could figure into rumored plans for a robotic home hub — and it could reshape how we interact with smart home devices.

Aqara highlighted new HomeKit-enabled smart-home devices at CES 2024 Monday in Las Vegas — the new Hub M3, Border Router Plug and Smart Lock U300 — plus an AI chatbot interface for the Aqara Home App.

The devices support both Matter and Thread networking standards. And the hub may help you control your whole smart home.

As if HomeKit and other automated home appliances weren’t bad enough, now you can buy a HomeKit-enabled light switch. That’s right. Instead of just walking into a room and flipping the switch on the wall to turn on the lights, you can now walk into a room, flip a switch on the wall to turn on the lights, and also deal with firmware and connection issues for the rest of your life.

If you’re a home automation fan, then you’re going to love Apple’s new HomePod speaker. Not only can you use it to control your HomeKit setup with your voice using Siri, but you can also use the speaker as a Home Hub. That means that you can leave it at home taking care of business, letting you dial in to tweak things from wherever you are in the world.