A month after Apple unveiled its smart-home push, the day to buy into it has arrived. According to MacRumors, the HomeView smart display and the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K both go on sale today — each $299 — and Apple is opening pre-orders for the first Home Collection accessories at the same time.
The twin $299 tags are the story in miniature. The HomeView is Apple's first dedicated smart home display: a 7-inch touchscreen on the A18 chip, running Siri AI in beta and recognizing up to six household members by face. The Apple TV 4K does much of the same job from the living room — hands-free Siri AI, an A19 chip Apple says is up to twice as fast on graphics, and a Siri Remote that finally has Find My.
But the symmetry has asterisks. The wall-mounted HomeView costs the same $299, then needs a mounting kit that starts at $59.95, bought separately. And the Apple TV's $299 is a much bigger jump than it looks: the previous model started at $129, so the new one costs more than double.
The first units are already landing in Australia and New Zealand, where it's been Friday for hours — Australian shoppers are the first able to walk into an Apple Store and buy one in person, and MacRumors reports no shortages expected.
One market is absent from the list. HomeView is not sold in the European Union, because Siri AI is unavailable on iOS there under regulatory constraints. Apple says it is "working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward," but has provided no timeline.
Today is also when the ecosystem around the two boxes starts to fill in. Apple is opening pre-orders for the first three Apple Home Collection accessories, LG-made cameras and a doorbell: the Indoor Cam at $199.95, the Outdoor Cam at $299.95, and the Video Doorbell at $249.95, all shipping in December. The indoor camera tilts up when you're home so it isn't recording, the doorbell has a second camera aimed down at packages, and everything is end-to-end encrypted with no LG account required.
Yesterday's reviews set the terms of the debate: the hardware charms, the shared-screen privacy model has a crack, and Siri AI is still a beta in English only. What today answers is the commercial question — whether shoppers will pay $299, twice over, for an Apple home that finally has a screen in it.
— via MacRumors