Apple’s latest upcoming device is a wall-mounted display that can control appliances, handle video-conferencing and use AI to navigate apps, according to a Bloomberg report. The company is expecting to launch the device by March, and will position it as a command center for the home.
CEO Tim Cook said this device would make Apple “a force in the smart home segment,” an area where the company was lagging behind Alphabet and Amazon. He has made the device a priority for the company’s engineering and design departments, and is pushing to get it to market after more than three years of development.
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The device has a roughly 6-inch screen and looks like a square iPad. It’s about the size of two iPhones side by side, with a thick edge around the display. There’s also a camera at the top front, a rechargeable built-in battery and internal speakers. Apple plans to offer the product with silver and black options. While the product has a touch interface, Apple expects most users would interact with it using their voices, relying on the Siri digital assistant, and Apple Intelligence. The hardware was designed around Apple intents, which allows AI to precisely control applications and tasks.
The display will also reportedly use sensors to detect how close a person is to the screen, allowing it to adjust what it’s showing based on how far away someone is. There are also rumors that the display would support Apple’s Handoff feature that lets users continue tasks across different devices.
Apple plans to market this product as a way to control home appliances, chat with Siri, and hold intercom sessions via Apple’s FaceTime software. It would also be loaded with Apple apps.
This device is expected to compete with Amazon’s Echo Show and Echo Hub smart displays, as well as Google’s Nest Hub. The company is also planning a more expensive follow-up version with a robotic limb that can move the screen around. The higher-end product could be priced at as much as $1,000 depending on the components it uses, a source told Bloomberg. The display-alone device will cost much less than that, and would likely approach the cost of its competitors’ products.
Apple recently also announced it had put together a new team to build a “ChatGPT-like” app. This team, called “Answers, Knowledge, and Information (AKI),” is working to build an “answer engine” that can respond to questions with information found across the web. This could be a standalone app or provide search capabilities in Siri, Safari, and other Apple products. These developments seem to highlight Apple’s efforts in trying to catch up with its competitors as the AI race heats up.