Years ago, Marco Arment said something that I think about all the time:
Don’t bet against the smartphone.
It’s amazing how many products have run straight into this idea, like a sprinting outfielder who hasn’t slowed down in time to avoid the wall.
There are some obvious examples, especially in our AI-crazed day. The Humane AI pin never stood a chance. The Rabbit R1 is beautiful, but is at best a novelty. The friend is never going to escape the gravity of its own domain name.
I think there are some less obvious examples as well. Think back to 2014, when Tim Cook announced the Apple Watch, and Kevin Lynch’s wide-ranging demo that showed the Watch as capable of almost everything the iPhone was. Apple has since learned that the Watch is a peripheral to the iPhone for folks who want health and fitness tracking, as well as easy access to notifications.
I mean, how many times do you glance at your watch, see a message, and pull out your iPhone to respond?
The HomeView may be on a similar trajectory.
When I showed my wife Apple’s video featuring the new product, she turned to me and asked:
Why wouldn’t I just use my phone for that stuff?
I’ve been turning that over in my head over the last day or so, then heard very similar thoughts from Ben Thompson and John Gruber on Dithering.
It is way too early to know how this will shake out. Some folks will undoubtedly find the HomeView useful, and I do think there are real use cases where it will shine.
I highly doubt that any family will use their HomeView the way the family in that video did. Of course the iPhone will continue to be the most important product in Apple’s lineup, but that doesn’t mean the HomeView isn’t worth doing.
For some folks, it will really click, and it puts Apple in the home category in a new and fun way. I like that the HomeView is a little weird, and we should encourage Apple to experiment with products that are a little weird. For years, it felt like the company has been too conservative with new products, and I suspect John Ternus has more things like this on the way.
While it is doing some very clever things, it is an ancillary device, and one that not everyone with an iPhone will want or need. At Apple’s scale, even ancillary devices are big businesses. Even if most iPhone users look at this thing and shrug, it was still worth doing.