Jiří Filip In recent months, the Internet has been flooded with information that Apple is allegedly working on a smart display to control HomeKit and, by extension, other services in the home. Although a similar product would make me personally very happy, because we use HomeKit extensively in our apartment, I am quite frankly convinced that we will never see it, for several reasons that Apple has been showing for a long time.
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Vratislav Holub The idea of a smart display that you attach somewhere and then you can easily control a smart home through it is great on the one hand, but on the other hand, I can't get rid of the impression that something like this simply already exists. And that is the first reason why I don't have much faith in the implementation of this project. I can't quite imagine that Apple, in an effort to present a product aimed at smart home fans, would simply cut down the iPad, because what else would this display be than the iPad cut down with a lot of hardware and software functions. At the same time, it can be used to its full potential for these purposes already now. On eBay and other marketplaces, it is not a problem to find a variety of holders with integrated charging, which can be used to hold iPads virtually anywhere and keep them always on for smart home control purposes.
Another reason why, in my opinion, the display will not arrive goes hand in hand with the previous point, and that is the price. What are we talking about, Apple products are simply not cheap (even more so these days) and it is therefore hard to imagine that Apple would show a cut-down iPad at a price that would make sense. In other words, Apple would have to put such a price tag on the display so that users would not say that they would rather pay an extra hundred or thousand and buy a full-fledged iPad, which they will use in the same way as a smart display and, if necessary, use it to some extent as classic iPad. In addition, the price tag of the basic iPad is still relatively low, which does not give Apple much room to "undershoot" it. Yes, CZK 14 for a basic iPad is not a lot, but let's face it - for this price tag you get a full-fledged device with a full-fledged OS, on which you can do almost the same things as on an iPhone or a Mac. Therefore, in order for the display to control the home to make sense, Apple would have to go with a price - dare I say it - a good third to half lower, which is hard to imagine. After all, even the development itself will swallow a lot of money, and moreover it is already clear that the sales of a similar product would not be widespread.
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If we were to look at the whole situation surrounding the smart home and Apple from a slightly different angle, we would find that it is true that its focus on this segment is increasing over time, but quite frankly we are talking about a very slow increase. After all, what has Apple done for the smart home in recent years? It is true that he redesigned the Home application, but to some extent only because he needed to unify his native applications in terms of design. Moreover, apart from the design, he added almost nothing new to it. If we then looked at HomeKit control via tvOS, for example, we would find that there is practically nothing to talk about here, because everything is extremely limited. Of course, for example, turning off the lights via Apple TV probably wouldn't be done by many people, but it's simply nice to have this option. After all, even my LG smart TV equipped with the webOS system is capable (albeit elementary) of controlling my Philips Hue lights according to rooms, not just according to scenes. And I honestly find that quite sad.
We must not forget the unlocking of the thermometer and hygrometer in the HomePod mini and HomePod 2, but here again one can argue about how big a step forward this is in the smart home. Please don't take this to mean that I wasn't happy with these news, but in short, I think they are completely minor compared to a number of other options. Of course, smart light bulbs, sensors and the like are probably not something you can ask for from Apple. But now that he had the chance to make the 2nd generation HomePod make a lot more sense for the smart home fan, he blew it. Its price is once again high and the function uninteresting in a way. At the same time, at least according to discussion forums and the like, Apple users have long been calling, for example, for the restoration of AirPorts or the possibility of using HomePods (mini) as part of mesh systems. But nothing like that is happening and it won't happen.
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Flying around the world with Apple Bottom line, sum up - there are quite a few reasons why I don't quite believe that we will see a smart display from Apple's workshop for HomeKit control in the foreseeable future, and although I wish I was wrong, I think that Apple is still on this type product is far from ready ground. Perhaps in a few years, which he devotes to gradually filing a smart household in all directions, the situation will be different. However, the situation now, both in terms of hardware and software, is such that to some extent it would be a shot in the dark, to which very few Apple users would respond. And even in a few years, I don't think the situation will change enough for this product to make sense.
