Apple's October 13 'Welcome home' launch is expected to bring a hub built for several rooms

In a house of four, the screen on the kitchen wall is supposed to show each person their own morning. According to MacRumors, Apple's hub uses a camera and a presence sensor to detect someone entering the room, recognise who it is, and show that person's widgets and apps ^[13]. MacRumors describes it as a cross between an iPad and a HomePod, built for several people to share for smart home control, FaceTime calls, video and calendars ^[7].

Apple has confirmed much less. The company announced the October 13 date, the New York location and the "Welcome home" tagline ^[1][2]. The Verge still describes the hub, the Apple TV and the HomePod mini as rumoured ^[3]. The reports do not compare the hub with smart displays from other companies.

The pitch, as MacRumors reports it, is a hub in several rooms of the same house ^[14], priced at around $350 ^[15]. A kitchen, a living room and a hallway at that price come to about $1,050 ^[16]. On launch day, a buyer takes home one hub. Apple's plan works for a household only if everyone in a shared room uses that first unit and the household then buys a second.

The HomePod mini refresh offers a second layout. MacRumors says its faster S-series processor will support Siri AI, and it gets new colours and the N1 chip for better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth ^[10]. A household could put one hub where people gather and refreshed HomePod minis in the other rooms. That keeps the newer Siri in every room and the screen in one place ^[8][10].

In my view the hub is for shared households, and the sensible first purchase is one unit in the busiest room. The cost of that caution is time: the household has to wait to see whether the per-room plan holds before spending a second $350 ^[15]. Who the hub suits comes down to two counts: how many people share a room, and how many rooms would get a hub.

One person, one room: the recognition camera has nobody to tell apart, and the hub is a HomePod with a 6-inch screen ^[7]. Several people, one room: the per-person interface is the reason to buy, so wait for launch reviews that test it with more than one person in front of it. One person, several rooms: each room costs the full price for a screen that only ever shows one set of widgets. Several people, several rooms: Apple designed the hub for this house ^[7][14], and here a three-room setup at about $1,050 is shared by everyone who lives there ^[16].