Apple Home rumors, ranked

0:02Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Hello and welcome to VergeCast, the flagship podcast of the Apple HomePad, hopefully. I'm Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and on today's show, I'm joined by Andrew O 'Hara, a writer and video producer for Apple Insider and host of the Smart Home Insider podcast. With Apple's full hardware event right around the corner, we're going to talk about the Apple Home hardware rumors and whether the long-awaited, hotly anticipated Apple Home Pad slash Hub slash Smart Display will finally make Apple Home great. Again, we'll rank the top rumors that we think are likely to become reality and talk about the ones we are most excited to get into our homes.

0:41Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:But first, here's a look at everything that's happening on The Verge today. I'm David Amell, and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge for Thursday, September 3rd, 2026. Today, OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, which it says is a generational leap in capability, with state-of-the-art performance in computer use, browser use, software engineering, cybersecurity, science, and professional work. The model was released today to enterprise customers with Daybreak access, but it'll roll out to Plus, Pro, business, and enterprise users over the coming days. Hopefully this model doesn't break containment. NVIDIA has announced it's acquiring AI repository platform Hugging Face for nearly$13 billion.

1:20NVIDIA says it will keep Hugging Face an open platform for the entire ecosystem, and that NVIDIA Compute will not be required to build or deploy through the platform. The last official valuation of the company valued it at$4.5 billion, and the company previously rejected a$500 million investment from NVIDIA last year that would have valued it at$7 billion. Microsoft is slashing cloud gaming access to just 15 hours a month on Game Pass Ultimate plans. It previously included unlimited hours, but Microsoft says the change should only impact 4 % of users. It also announced it's releasing a new pay-as-you-go option for cloud gaming.

1:57Price-in for that has not been announced yet. You can read more at TheVerge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, September 3rd, 2026.

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3:15Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Welcome, Andrew. Thanks for joining me. Really excited to dive into this topic, one near and dear to both of our hearts, one we've talked about a lot in the past. I know, but this time it feels more real. It's like things are happening now. It is. It is. Things are happening. Apple Home is happening, hopefully. Fingers crossed. But just to kind of set the stage for listeners who are not clued in on the smart home, Andrew, can you just give me a brief rundown of what Apple Home is? I mean, Apple really jumped in the smart home space. It's been more than 10 years now when they first launched HomeKit.

3:53And it was, you know, kind of pitched as a very secure version of like the smart home because in the early days you had a ton of Amazon devices that were just kind of getting rubber-stamped certifications that were fraught with security issues and things like that. And Apple came out -

4:08Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Devices that connected to Amazon. Yes. Not necessarily Amazon devices. And the A-word assistant that we won't say. But there were so many concerns around stuff like that. And Apple came out with its own version of the smart home stuff called HomeKit. And they even had, like at the beginning, you needed a specific hardware chip that you had to buy from Apple, which not only slowed things down in acquiring these chips, but then also made things more expensive because you had to buy hardware components from Apple as part of their MFI program. And, you know, it was very secure. It made all that really nice.

4:40And it has since got a little bit more lenient with that as Apple figured out how to do much of the same stuff through just software. But it has grown up so much then. HomeKit became a large part of the framework for Matter, you know, the open standard now, including like the pairing process and onboarding process and all of that. And in kind of today's version of the smart home, It does support Matter alongside the other major ecosystems, at least to some degree. You know, there's little bits of, you know, inconsistencies there, like with cameras. But for the most part, Apple still kind of sticks with where they were.

5:14It's a lot. There's many more accessories now. It works similar to the other smart home ecosystems, but privacy, security, all of that is still very front and center with Apple Home. I mean, even cameras like until iOS 27 and all these launch, all the AI processing is done locally on your Apple TV or your HomePod, anything like that. So they've really put that as kind of their big push in the smart home space. And as we talk about stuff in today's episode, I think that's going to be kind of a common topic.

5:43Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Big differentiator, really, from the other major platforms, at least. But what is the one thing that Apple Home has really been lacking over the years? I mean, there's been many things. Okay, but the one thing that is very relevant to today, that I know you've been excited for for a long time, is a way to control your smart home without using your phone and without using your voice, right? So they have been behind in this. They have not had a smart display. And this is the thing that has been rumored for like three years now at least. And we're honestly surprised this didn't come to the fore sooner because Apple has been really lagging behind Amazon and Google here who have had smart displays for years at this point.

6:33Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:And I know that from your perspective as being a solely Apple home user, you've been quite jealous of the Nest hubs and the Echo shows, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. What would make it useful to you to have a smart display, do you think? I mean, there's a lot of them. And obviously, so I broadened out. I'm obviously now that Matter is much nicer to play with, with multiple ecosystems. I do have a Samsung smart thing set up. I do have, I have like one Amazon thing, but I don't even leave that plugged in, but it exists here in the house. And I do have like the, I can't even think of what it's called, but the Nest Max, the Google smart display.

7:12I have one of those as well. And I really like the displays. I even have like the Eufy E10, which is kind of like, you know, their version of a smart display. but I like that kind of just central home point for all of your devices an easy way to control things see your cameras without having like you said to pull out a phone or a tablet if you walk into something I just want to be able to control something just make it really easy to gain access to all of those things as well as other relevant information I think it makes obviously perfect sense because we've seen it with other products to include your smart home controls along with your daily necessities like weather, calendar, things like that.

7:52So to combine those things into a similar or a complete form factor is what I've been wanting. I want what all of these other ecosystems have had for years. But with Apple's magic touch on it, and I think as we talk about some of the rumors, Apple has some really cool little tricks that it does that is going to make this extra compelling to me compared to some of the other ones that have been out there for a while.

8:16Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Yeah, well, this is, as you can probably tell, this is the one that we are both most excited about, I think. We've already ruined the ranking. I know, I've ruined the ranking. Sorry. But in terms of likelihood, I'm on the fence a little bit on this one. But yes. Okay. So we have a Vergecast Rank-o-matic that's going to help us rank the seven Apple Home hardware rumors in terms of the most likely to be in our homes next week. and then in terms of which ones, maybe just be vaporware if they end up in number seven. So, okay, so I think, let's start with the smart display because that really is, as we said, the one that we're most excited about.

9:01Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Honestly, this is a really big lift, I think, for Apple. I think they have to do something really new here. And the rumors have been kind of all over the place. I mean, there's been a little consistency, but there's also just sort of been like, oh, it's going to have MagSafe. Oh, it's going to be removable. Oh, it's going to be a HomePod with a screen attached to it. What do you think? What do you think we're going to get and what do you actually want this device to look like? Basically, what I'm expecting is a 7-inch display. Based on the latest Bloomberg leaks, it sounds like it's going to be like that 7-inch size tablet on top of a half dome size.

9:37So kind of like half a HomePod or it's going to look like, you know, the iMac G4 back in the day. But essentially, you know, a little seven inch tablet on top of a dome. I think that is very, very likely. There seems like there's going to be two versions of this. I could see that happening of it being wall mountable versus the other one. And when they've said rumors about like MagSafe, that could just be essentially just means magnetic. I could see them doing some sort of like wall mount version that you screw on and then it just kind of snaps onto your wall that you could still pull off and charge or something like that to make it happen.

10:13Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Yeah. That's a whole other thing. But I'm very curious at how Apple makes a wall mount work because I cannot imagine Apple asking people to do any sort of wiring. Installation. It's a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's not going to do that. So I'm guessing it's going to be probably battery powered or with a cable that drags down. And then we're going to get third party options from like Belkin or something that will allow you to do like an in-wall wiring kit for those who are like extra ambitious to pull it off. But I do think it'll be roughly seven inch size. There'll be a tabletop version and some sort of wall version of it.

10:47I don't think that we're going to get any sort of app store at the beginning. My guess is we're going to get a bunch of the Apple apps like Safari, News, Home, Calendar, Reminders, all of those. FaceTime. Yeah, of course. All of that kind of stuff.

11:02Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Like an iPad, basically. But with a different interface. Yeah, it's going to be some sort of kind of like amalgamation of like standby mode and Apple TV is what I'm going to imagine. Kind of like a combination of those interfaces. because we see things like the screensaver interface for Apple TV that looks like it's destined for this device with a swipe up and changing them. Similar with Control Center, how it just slides over or slides down. It looks like it would be perfect on something like this. And it's also this new operating system is supposedly based on tvOS. So it would make sense there.

11:38But I don't think we're going to get a full-fledged app store, but I think that is part of the brilliance of this. I had been saying this and now this latest leak in the Mac OS 26.7 RC has seemingly confirmed what I've been saying for a year now, which is that Apple is going to take its widget and live activities interfaces that they brought to the Mac and put it on this.

12:02Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:That makes sense. You can already put any of your iOS widgets and live activities from your phone on your Mac, and it's not running anything on your Mac. I think it can do the same thing here. And with that, combined with all the app intense and interactive widgets that it's been able to do, you're essentially going to get apps. But developers would have to do nothing on day one to more or less make their things work. And I was looking through all of my stuff recently. Sonos just launched live activity with complete playback control. That could show up on your smart display. You get a full Sonos control on this day one.

12:39All of the major smart home brands already have very robust control widgets that you could use. Eufy, SwitchBot, Acara, Amazon has one, Google Home has one, of course, Apple Home. So all of those to control all of your third-party ecosystem things would be on this. Calendars. Every calendar company has their own, like, Fantastic Cal, Google, Amazon, whatever. Control security systems. I know I have one for Abode, ADT. I think all of them have those. So you could have those there.

13:10Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:So they wouldn't need to have their own apps on this device. No, they wouldn't have to do anything. And that would make it a lot easier to bring into your home and set up how you like. Because it seemed to me that it was most likely to just lock you into using Apple Home, using Apple Calendar, using FaceTime, but you're thinking this might give it a little bit more breathing room to not be so walled garden-like. Widgets are fully interactive now, so you can actually control stuff. Right. And yeah, it could just run off of your phone. And that rumor said it would show the widgets but hide personal information until it recognized you using the built-in camera and facial recognition.

13:48Once it recognized you, then it would show your personal information.

13:54Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:So it That's going to be key here because whilst we have that on HomePods, it's a little spotty. Too many times a day I get, who am I speaking to from my Siri? I'm like, ah. So, yeah, it'll be that's something that Apple really needs to focus on. And this is the problem that has been what we've had with using iPads as a home controller, which is something that people have been doing to date to try and fill this gap, is that they're not multi-user. And, yeah, it's not easy to switch. and so a visual interaction makes a lot of sense. Face ID, you see who it is. You also have a guest mode, you would assume, for people to be able to use and control devices.

14:33Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:I just want something simple. I want Apple to crack the simple smart home interface. I don't want to have to deal with tons of little buttons or taps. I want to be able to walk towards, say what I want, and it just appears and I can tap. Like, you know, turn the lights on and the brightness appears. And I think they've got, and hopefully there'll be some sort of motion sensing, UWB or something, so it recognizes you as you approach and adapts the display for you. Yep, some sort of proximity stuff, yep. Okay, so where do we think this is on the probability scale? Is this like one or two, or are we thinking later this year, maybe three or four?

15:15So this has been, I don't know what they're going to do without like spoiling the rest of our list here. There's other rumors for things like Apple TV and HomePod that are perhaps more likely. So like this would have to be a minimum of three. But I would be really surprised slash confused if Apple introduced like part of its smart home plan and not the other part. Like I know there's like a rumored October event where we could see this, but it just seems weird. It's like, here's an Apple TV and HomePod, but not the display. We're going to wait one month until we show that off. So I don't know.

15:52I think at a minimum, I'm going to have to say three. I think it's more likely than some of the other stuff.

15:57Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Well, and that was, so I think that leads us right into the new HomePod and the new Apple TV, which kind of feel like sure things. Like the rumors are that they've been ready for ages, but something's been holding it up. What might that be, Siri? What might that be? Yeah. So, yeah. What are we getting with new Apple TV and new HomePod mini here? So HomePod mini is so long in the tooth. What, six years old now? Really old. So, yeah, you got to do this one, Apple. You got to. There's no choice, really. Yeah, 100%. And so, Jen, here's, OK, switching to conspiracy hat a little bit. Part of me wonders when they do this.

16:40I wonder if they could do some sort of pairing with the HomePods and the smart display. Because right now, your HomePod is running off of Apple Watch chips, right? Just like the current ones are. So could they do something like bring Apple Intelligence and the new version of Siri AI to this home smart display and then relay the more complicated messages through this hub and not have to put a crazy high, Like, not an A17 Pro in here. But then again, also, like, the new version of Apple Watch does have kind of Apple intelligence on it now, you know, with watchOS 27. So maybe it'll do that. But we're going to have some form of Apple intelligence, I think, is, like, a guarantee.

17:24Like, Siri AI will be here. Because right now, Apple's assistant is so inconsistent. I don't want my HomePods to answer me when I talk to Siri.

17:35Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:I know. No, this is, it drives me nuts trying to add something to the shopping list. And my phone and then my HomePod and they'll be like competing with each other. The HomePod can't tell if you're stumbling over your phrases. The HomePod can't do, you know, almost any of the intelligent stuff that you can now do on your phone. And then the TV is a whole separate thing. It has an even more limited set of controls. We need that unification. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that no matter what, this is going to have to have some sort of, you know, Syriac. That's what this has been held up for. That's going to be your biggest thing.

18:08Other than that, like updated, you know, acoustic, probably second generation ultra wideband chip doing pretty like handoff experience. I don't know if they'll do anything with like people tracking in the home or if that's just like a pin it for possible later utilities with things. But I think likely upgraded chip. I don't know if they'll do it in N1. You don't really need Wi-Fi 7 on something like a smart speaker. Yeah. But they could throw it in because they just made a whole bunch of those N1 chips and just have them lying around. But other than that, it's probably going to sound better and have Apple intelligence.

18:40Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:And that's probably key. That's one of our other top seven is Siri in Apple Home. Because in case people weren't aware, it's a lot like the whole Google Home Gemini thing that's going on right now. is that the assistant that you use in your home with Apple is completely different from the assistant you use on your phone. And this is talking about the new assistant on iOS 27. I'm currently on the public beta for that. So, yeah. And that is a very frustrating disconnect because your home and your phone are not separate. You use the two of them together a lot. So, yeah, we really need that. And I think actually this may even bump the Home Smart Display to 4 because I think we're going to have a new Apple TV, a new HomePod Mini, and a new Siri in September because that lays that foundation, that lays that groundwork for making this Apple Home shift into new hardware.

19:36Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:I think that's a long time coming and pretty guaranteed that we're going to get that. And the Apple TV, we've actually had a number of updates recently. So what do we think is going to be about this one? Is it just the Siri AI bump or are we going to get anything else? and maybe more on-device Apple intelligence? Yeah, I think there's going to be a number of new things with this one. Now, compared to something like the HomePod mini, because they're definitely not putting an A17 Pro in there, the new Apple TV, I think, will have at minimum an A17 Pro to support actual on-device Apple intelligence.

20:13We've seen with the new versions of Apple software, they specifically have these powerful on-device models and some that are limited to the more recent devices. So I don't know where they'll land with Apple TV because it doesn't need quite as much. But my guess is A17 Pro processor enabling Apple intelligence. We will have likely Apple's N1 chip. I think there were some code references to Apple's N1 networking chip. So Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and still Thread, which is jumping to 1.4 with tvOS 27.

20:43Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Yay. Only one behind. Yeah. I know. About time. So we'll have those. There was also a late leak that showed we would be getting a new remote. Bloomberg first said this, and then this was in that Mac OS code. That's exciting. My husband won't use the Apple TV because he hates the remote. What is it? I think it's going to look basically the same. I'm just hoping that they put in Find My instead of whatever they have now. That's the one thing when I was reviewing the Google TV. I know. I really, really like it. The button is so nice. The button on the back that rings your remote. So simple. So good.

21:21Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:Apple, do it.