This has been known for some time Apple wants to strengthen its position in the field of the connected home, and all indications are that the HomePod speakers may play a very important role in those plans. Although we will never officially know the reasons that led to this, let’s remember that a few months after the launch of the HomePod Mini, in October 2020, Apple decided to clear the inventory and remove the original HomePod from its catalog, which hit the market in 2018 and which was withdrawn in March 2021. However, in January of the same year, Cupertino confirmed the rumors that appeared in this regard by launching a new model.

As a long-time iPod HiFi user, I wasn’t too surprised that Apple did this in March 2021, but the arrival of the 2023 model made me think there must be more to it than just wanting to get back into the iPod market with high-end smart speakers. The doubt began to be resolved two days later, when we learned that in Cupertino they were working on a very special variant of the iPad, as it would be mainly focused on functioning as a smart screen.

Currently, The Apple device that plays a leading role in the deployment of connected home systems is the Apple TV, a very interesting device which, in contrast to the current trend, saw a drop in price with the arrival of the current generation. However, there is a limiting factor that is inherent to its very reason: to use the Apple TV, we need to connect it to a television, which of course does not happen with a smart speaker.

Now, in order to move forward in this sense, Apple needs to make its speaker more attractive, because its price (349 euros) distracts it from the interest of many, and in this respect the screen can make a difference. At the beginning of the year, it was leaked that it was already being worked on, and now, as we can read in Wccft, there is an interesting news, namely the Apple’s study includes a curved LCD screen on top of the HomePod. A screen that will primarily allow us to see notifications about the content we are playing, as well as the result of our interactions with Siri.

However, the screen (and especially the touch screen, although there is no information about this at the moment) provides a control experience that we do not get comfortably with a system based entirely on voice commands. From setting the brightness level and color of the RGB LED bulb with a potentiometer to quickly checking the status of a certain element, The possibilities of HomePod with a screen in the context of a connected smart home are very wideand very promising.