In summary:
- Macworld reports Apple’s HomePad smart home display is delayed until fall 2026, primarily due to ongoing Siri development issues rather than hardware problems.
- The 7-inch wall-mounted device was expected to run tvOS 26 but will likely use tvOS 27 instead, featuring MagSafe wall mounting and doorbell integration.
- This delay highlights Apple’s continued struggles with Siri functionality, potentially impacting their competitive position in the growing smart home display market.
Apple’s first-ever smart home display, which the company hoped to launch this spring, has reportedly hit another development snag. It now won’t appear until the fall, according to the latest rumors, and you guessed it, it’s all Siri’s fault.
Writing for Bloomberg, analyst Mark Gurman claims Apple had previously planned for its first wave of smart home devices to run a “variation” of tvOS 26, the current Apple TV operating system, but has now pushed this back to tvOS 27. Like the rest of the 27 OS updates, tvOS 27 will be announced in June at WWDC 2026 before rolling out to the public in September.
Instead of launching in spring, as expected, the so-called HomePad, a smart home hub with an integrated display, is now slated to launch in the fall. This change of plan, Gurman says, is entirely due to issues with Siri; the hardware has been ready for some time. He bases this on the testimony of anonymous sources with knowledge of the matter.
If that sounds tenuous, it’s worth noting that Gurman’s claims are corroborated by another leaker. In fact Kosutami, who has made accurate predictions in the past, actually posted “Autumn. Home. Integrated with Pad. Now coming.” some time before Gurman published his article, so really it’s the latter who is corroborating the former.
Apple hasn’t announced anything publicly, but the company is believed to be working on a major push into the smart home space. This includes two tiers of smart home hubs: the stationary wall-mounted HomePad device with a 7-inch screen, focusing on HomeKit and FaceTime calls, and a high-end robotic hub featuring a display mounted on a robotic arm, which is expected to launch at a later date.
Both devices, however, will depend for their convenience and user-friendliness on effective voice control, which is why Siri is so key to their release, and why Siri’s current woes are such a problem. Apple announced a new and more sophisticated version of Siri back in June 2024, but the project has been afflicted by a disastrous series of delays.
On the positive side, the extra six months may give Apple a chance to tinker somewhat with the hardware side. In a separate post to Twitter/X, Kosutami adds that the device might have an intriguing “MagSafe snap-to-wall feature” and “it can [ring] your door,” which presumably means it lets you see who rings your doorbell. Both sound like useful additions, if Apple can ever actually launch the thing.
Author: David Price, Editor, Macworld
David has been writing about technology for well over two decades, and got on board the Apple hype train when covering the original iPhone launch in 2007. He is an enthusiastic Apple Watch evangelist and feels that the HomePod is misunderstood.