HomePad launch nears, Apple Watch Readiness score, Ternus wants to make Apple more nimble

Chance Miller (0:00)

How long at this point, Mayo, have we been talking about Apple's HomePod with the screen product? Oh, it's been at least two years, I think.

Benjamin Mayo (0:08)

Well, there was, I mean, if you go back to before the HomePod was announced, there was a whole debate about whether the original HomePod was gonna have a screen. Because there was, this is what, like 2017, there was mixed reports about whether it has a screen on top, whether it just has a light, and obviously what came out was the weird rainbow fog thing that the original HomePod had.

And then, yeah, I guess more recently, it's gotta be what, like two or three years at least, yeah.

Chance Miller (0:33)

A long time, yeah. And it's been, the ongoing reporting has been that the hardware is ready. It's literally sitting in Apple warehouses. They're just waiting on the next generation version of Siri. It seems like the stars have finally aligned, because Mark Gurman reports this week that Apple has set October 13th for the launch of this new HomePad smart display product. So that's, what, about two weeks from now, we can have from now, October 13th, alongside updates to the HomePod Mini and the Apple TV.

We've talked a lot in the last two to three years about the design of this product, but Mark outlines a few new things and he doubles down on the screen size. So he says the Home Hub will have a six inch square display. We have said before that this seems too small, and it also seems like every time Mark talks about this product, the screen gets a little bit smaller, like from eight to seven, and now we're at a six inch square display.

Benjamin Mayo (1:28)

Yeah, in the three years that this thing's been rumored, it gets smaller by an inch every year. It's about seven inches. Oh, it's roughly seven inches. Oh, now it's roughly six inches.

Like, presumably if he describes it as six inch square, it's six inch on the diagonal, right?

Chance Miller (1:43)

Right.

Benjamin Mayo (1:44)

That's not very big.

Chance Miller (1:45)

No.

Benjamin Mayo (1:45)

The width and height of a six inch square is like four inches.

Chance Miller (1:48)

Yeah, that's tiny.

Benjamin Mayo (1:49)

I mean, a six inch square screen is like not that. It's going to be like the same surface, like screen area as a iPhone Pro normal, right? Like not even the Macs. Like, obviously, it's a slightly different ratio because it's square rather than thingy, but that's pretty small. And for something that is meant to be like, you know, put in the corner of a room or like mounted on a wall, you have to like squint at it, surely?

Chance Miller (2:13)

Yeah. It's not going to be glanceable.

Benjamin Mayo (2:15)

The feature set that he describes in this article does not match the form factor that he writes because it's just too small. Like at one point, he mentions that the Messages app will have a two-pane layout, like a sidebar thing, like on an iPad. There's no way a six-inch square can fit two panels. Like how big are these sidebars going to be? They're going to be tiny because the font size of a smart display has to be bigger than the font size of a phone because the phone you hold in your hand and you hold it close to your face, the Smart Hub you're going to use at a much further distance. Like it really baffles me that it's going to be a six-inch square. Like we'll talk about the features that he lists here, but if it was like 10 inches, 12 inches, more like iPad-sized, then sure, fine, I get it. But a six-inch square is so small for something that's meant to be like a room product.

Like a TV is like a 10-foot experience, and this would be like a four-foot experience, whereas a phone is something you hold in your hand. So yeah, the visual fidelity here I think is very up in the air. Like maybe if it was six-inch measured as in six-inch wide and six-inch tall, so like it's a six-inch square and the six-inches is the actual like dimension of one of the sides, it'd be a bit more practical. But if it's literally means six-inch on the diagonal, then that's like 4.2 inch width and height, which is pretty small.

Chance Miller (3:31)

I mean, I'm sitting here, I'm looking at my M6 Mac Mini, which is a square, and it's five by five. And I think that would make it like seven inches diagonal. So I'm trying to picture a screen on the top of the Mac Mini, but make it even smaller. And I can't, like that's just too small for this product and what he describes.