Apple wants its smart home pitch to look like it already happened in your kitchen this morning.
Apple posted four videos to its YouTube channel today promoting the products it announced alongside HomeView, its new smart home hub, the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K, and the HomePod mini 2. The longest clip follows a family through a morning routine, with Siri pulling a French toast recipe out of a Messages thread, finding misplaced keys, and checking the evening's plans before a FaceTime call with grandparents. A second HomeView video shows off the device's 7-inch Liquid Retina display, customizable display faces, and support for up to six personalized user profiles with FaceTime, Spatial Audio, and smart home controls. Separate clips cover the HomePod mini 2's five finishes and multiroom audio, and the Apple TV 4K's Dolby Vision, HDR10+ playback, and hands-free Siri control.
The timing is the real story here. HomePod mini 2 can be pre-ordered now and ships October 30, but its marquee upgrade, a smarter Siri, is listed as arriving in a future software update rather than at launch. HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K, also open for pre-order today, don't ship until November 13. Combined with the new Apple Home Collection of cameras, a door lock, thermostats, and sensors built with LG and Schneider, this looks less like a single hero product launch and more like Apple assembling a full smart home stack to compete with Amazon and Google.
Apple has made this kind of coming-soon Siri promise before. Believe the demo once the software update actually ships.