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Comment by santah | Hacker News Reader

It's shocking to me it doesn't support apps from the AppStore nor any kind of (video) media streaming.

Otherwise looks like an ideal kitchen TV/Movie playback device.

I was so ready to buy one of these things on day one to replace the iPad that awkwardly sits on the side in my kitchen and they completely missed that relatively simple target. All I really want is a device that will accept AirPlay video in my kitchen with a decent speaker or two.

Seems like a great way to sell you the homeview two times.

Finally a device to watch movies in the comfort of my kitchen...

I wouldn't watch a movie in my kitchen but I regularly watch YouTube or a TV show on an iPad while cooking or cleaning.

Because that would require a lot of RAM for the multi-user switch to work flawlessly. They cheap out and force the processing onto your iPhone. It's a glory square CarPlay screen ..

To me it looks more like an overgrown Apple Watch than a CarPlay screen.

It's a bit of both, but they meant that it's an actual CarPlay screen: it supports "select" audio/video apps and the technical way it does that is essentially CarPlay-ing them off your iPhone.

Do we know that? I would expect it works like Apple Watch apps do where compatible apps have an Apple Watch App extension on the phone that the thin Apple Watch App (which is basically just a SwiftUI GUI) talks to, rather than having the phone render and stream the whole screen.

edit: OK, some media outlets are saying Apple has told them "developers can bring over existing CarPlay apps", but there's no mention of it in anything Apple themselves have put out publicly which is why I was confused

The most concrete report I can find is Wired: (https://www.wired.com/story/apple-homeview-smart-display/)

> It doesn’t have an App Store. Instead, Apple has a curated selection of apps, including FaceTime, Messages, and Safari. A handful of third-party media apps like Spotify are available, and developers can bring over existing CarPlay apps.

I wonder if this works as a screen mirroring device, so you could mirror your iPad to this device. Wouldn't work very well, but that might be a way to watch media

I would expect not, because why would it?

Yeah, I expect not also, but let's say you wanted to watch a video while doing a workout or doing the dishes and you wanted to make it follow you around? (I can't find anywhere whether or not it has a motor to rotate, but that is what was rumored so I am going off of that info)

Looks like the cost-cutters must have killed that swivelling idea, or at least it wasn't chosen for this initial iteration.

It otherwise does look quite a bit derivative of the iMac G4 though.

I think it does/will? There's an image of it showing the Pluribus image an S1E1 listing. Unless that is acting as a remote for an Apple TV?

That is an image of listening to the Pluribus podcast about Pluribus. It shows that it supports the Podcast app.

But the general impression from a lot of this is HomeView seems to be trying to position itself as something like WatchOS where it hands off stuff to/from a user's iPhones/iPads. So it should likely support apps, but they may be more like Watch apps/faces/complications and CarPlay apps.

I bet it'll use the CarPlay model, you have YouTube on your iPhone, it'll appear on the HomeView

Otherwise, my Google Nest is going nowhere

Looks like a terrible TV/Movie playback device. But potentially a nice device to quickly glance at information, or show information based on what you ask

It could've been wide screen I agree.

Again, dumbfounded they completely passed on this use-case ...

To me it seems like the perfect device to watch the Odyssey, as Nolan intended.

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