Apple’s Home Hub won’t be a HomePod with a speaker, but a separate display
A report suggests that Apple will wait until a revamped Siri with contextual app data access launches to reveal its Home Hub project — likely in 2026.
The so-called Home Hub has been rumored for almost as long as the HomePod has existed. Users are interested in a “HomePod with an interactive display” similar to Google’s and Amazon’s products.
It seemed as if Apple would launch such a product line sometime soon, but according to the Power On newsletter, that launch will now occur in 2026. The Home Hub product is inherently tied to the contextual Siri and Apple Intelligence features that rely on app intents, which were delayed into the next year.
It’s unclear when Apple will release the contextual Siri update, but we’re likely to hear more about it during WWDC 2025. The annual developer conference starts on June 9, and while release windows likely won’t be discussed, it should give some insight into how far along the feature is.
Delayed Apple Intelligence
Apple’s reluctance to release the Apple Intelligence feature likely stems from the backlash it received around notification summaries. The hallucinations that feature produced around news headlines prompted the BBC to push back on the feature, which resulted in Apple pulling news notifications from summaries.
The contextual AI features that tie back to Siri are even more sensitive and cannot be allowed to be incorrect beyond a tiny threshold. Users can’t be expected to double-check the work of the on-device LLM every time it asks for time-critical data.
Imagine if Apple’s favorite demo of a mother landing at an airport getting the time, gate, or even day incorrect. If the user can’t trust the result and has to go double-check, then there’s not much point in the feature.
A leaked internal meeting suggested that the company at least had the feature working, and developers have been able to target the app intent system since iOS 18.2. However, the results were accurate only 80% of the time.
Perhaps Apple could try to be clever with the feature, as the “artificial intelligence” technology and underlying LLMs are far from foolproof. Instead of needing 100% accuracy in the text response, Apple could show data snippets in a refined GUI.
Yes, the text readout from the Apple Intelligence could still get things wrong, but the user could see the real data gathered in one place. Going with the previous example, instead of being told just a summary of data about your mother’s flight arrival, be shown the ticket, iMessage snippet, and calendar data as a kind of on-screen bento.
Such a solution would require a display, which is where Home Hub comes in.
Home Hub, eventually
When Apple released the original HomePod, the headlines reflected that Siri wasn’t up to the task of having its own device. Things haven’t improved for the assistant much since then.
It’ll be hard for Apple to overcome the negative optics around Siri, so releasing a new Siri product today with no changes to the assistant would be a poor choice. And turning the big ship that is Siri takes time.
The initial launch of the Home Hub is expected to be a simple square-ish display that can be carried and mounted throughout the home. It will integrate with the user’s data to show now-playing music, weather, and step-by-step recipes from Apple News.
A follow-up product to that initial inexpensive model is expected to act as more of an Apple Intelligence hub with a robotic arm. That arm could be powered by the technology demoed by Apple earlier in 2025.
That said, the report seems to contradict itself. If the model with Apple Intelligence is expected later, and that’s the one that will rely on the contextual Siri and AI upgrades, then it may be unnecessary to delay the non-AI model.
But since Siri as a whole is seen as broken thanks to viral issues like it not being able to tell you today’s date, it may not matter. Shipping a product built for Siri today would likely have it labeled as broken as the current Siri is on day one.
Apple needs new optics around Siri before it can sell people on the next Siri product. Which is why a delayed launch to 2026 makes sense, even if it is disappointing.
