HomePod mini
4 stories filed under HomePod mini on Spoot: Spotted Early. The newest of them: “Apple finally built a smart home hub, and it brought some friends”, “Apple's smart home finally gets a front door, and we're already inside”, and “Apple's smart-home anchor finally has a date, and a mini entourage to match”. Apple finally built a smart home hub, and it brought some friends. Apple's smart home finally gets a front door, and we're already inside. Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns,… The list below is every HomePod mini story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
Apple finally built a smart home hub, and it brought some friends
Apple finally built a smart home hub, and it brought some friends. The HomeView is Apple's first smart display, and it arrives with a 7-inch squircle design that looks like a gargantuan smart speaker grew a face. It costs $299 and preorders are open, which is nice because Apple has been threatening to make a smart display for years and years without ever actually doing it. The HomePod Mini 2 also finally exists after nearly six years, coming in at $149 with preorders open and a Friday launch date. Spoot already has a tab open on that one. The whole "Welcome Home" event dropped a slate of new smart home and security accessories too, built with trusted third-party manufacturers. It is the most serious hardware push Apple Home has seen in a long time.
Apple's smart home finally gets a front door, and we're already inside
Apple's smart home finally gets a front door, and we're already inside. October 13th, 9AM ET, New York. "Welcome Home" is the name, and it's doing exactly what Apple event names usually only promise: giving the company's scattered home gadgets an actual address. We're expecting refreshed Apple TV and HomePod Mini boxes, a brand new smart home hub, and possibly the debut of homeOS, a platform that sounds suspiciously like the thing Apple should have built five years ago. LG partner devices could show up too. What we probably won't see is the touchscreen MacBook, which Mark Gurman says is waiting until later this month. That's fine. A proper hub matters more than a laptop you can poke.
Apple's smart-home anchor finally has a date, and a mini entourage to match
October 13th. Circle it, charge the HomePods, and clear a spot on the wall. Apple's long-rumored smart home hub finally has a date, and it's bringing a mini entourage. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says the new 6-inch display hub, which mounts or sits like a tiny countertop Picasso, will debut alongside a fresh HomePod mini and an upgraded Apple TV. The whole crew is built to flex Siri AI, Apple's overhauled assistant. The hub is reportedly about as thick as an iPhone, with bezels that'll make you nostalgic for older iPads. That's a delightfully chunky little anchor. It's a new category for Apple, so the skepticism is warranted, but the specs here feel right. The real question is whether Siri finally catches up.
Apple's own code just whispered three new gadgets before the year ends
Apple's code just whispered three new gadgets before the year ends, and honestly, that's the kind of gossip we live for. MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris dug up images and details pointing to a refreshed HomePod mini, an iPad mini 8, and an Apple TV 4K, all expected after this month's iPhone 18 Pro and folding iPhone Duo debut. The HomePod mini 2 reportedly keeps the original's shape from late 2020, which is fine, but I'm side-eyeing the color situation. The current model pops in orange, yellow, and blue; if the leak's images suggest a muted palette, that's a quiet downgrade for a speaker that made brightness its personality. We'll see what ships.