Hacker News Reader

Comment by BurritoAlPastor | Hacker News Reader

I can’t believe nobody’s brought this up yet, but the HomeView fundementally exists for one reason: to be a Matter hub for smarthome stuff. No iPad – or any portable Apple device - can be configured as a home hub for managing Matter-protocol devices. There’s no significant advantage to a HomeView over an iPad if you don’t have any Matter devices.

That’s why this device has multi-user support: you’re only supposed to have one of them, which everyone uses. The Apple TV also has good multi-user support, because Apple doesn’t expect you to connect one Apple TV per user to your television.

View on HN

But if you already owned an apple tv or home pod, then they already double as a matter and thread hub and you can manage all of apple home from your phone or ipad. Is this being marketed to a family with absolutely no other apple devices?

It’s an alternative to a HomePod mini, adding a display with touch screen. It’s for people who like that (like people who buy the equivalent Google and Amazon devices), regardless of whether they already own or don’t own a Home Hub device (also taking into consideration that existing ones don’t support Siri AI).

How many people are in the market for that is a good question.

The market is: people with homes and an iPhones. That is to say, a fair number of people.

I have a home and an iPhone and I have no use for this device.

Well then, that settles it, someone call up Ternus and tell him to cancel it, layer8 doesn't have a use for it. Pack it in folks. It's dead! Dumb product! Useless!

Well, I'm a big Apple fan and and also have an iPhone and a home (and various cameras in it) and I am not even considering getting this device. I am considering dropping 9x as much on a new iPhone, on the other hand...

Well, I’m also a big Apple fan with an iPhone and a home with various cameras in it and I’m considering this device.

Now what? More anecdotal “I’m maybe not the target customer therefore there is no market for the product” comments?

Alexa home, and its various iterations, is not a product I’d ever consider buying, yet lots of people, millions even, have purchased one.

“Who is this product marketed toward?”

“All these millions of people with Apple products”

“I have an Apple product and I won’t buy one”

Ok?

OP said

> The market is: people with homes and an iPhones. That is to say, a fair number of people.

The point of comments like mine and @layer8's is that the market is actually much smaller than this. The fact that you are considering one does not mean the market is any category that includes you. It means that it is some category that includes you (and excludes me and @layer8). We don't know how big that market is, but if longtime Apple fans are not even considering the device, then probably it is not "all people with iPhones and homes". It could still be a big market, but it's glib to say that it's so large.

Ok now take all of your arguments and reverse them. Two random people on the Internet claiming they aren’t considering a purchase is completely meaningless and has no bearing or relationship to the market opportunity for this or other products. Software engineers, particular on this forum, are very often and usually wrong precisely because what they consider in products isn’t what others care about.

That's now how the logic works. If someone asserts "the market is XYZ" then they have to show that actually is the market. When people say "I'm in XYZ and I'm definitely not the market", that shows that the hypothesis is wrong. When someone else says "I'm XYZ and I'm in the market", that is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Sure it is. You’re familiar with anecdotal evidence, right?

When someone says market size they don’t mean 100% of people fitting some characteristic must purchase some product. Please stop mindlessly arguing about dumb things.

I am aware that anecdotes are not as good as large-scale evidence. That does not defeat the point that you are confusing necessary and sufficient conditions, rendering your own anecdotes even more useless than mine and @layer8.

Really weird that you keep insisting that you're right here. Some guy on the internet made a conjecture, other people disagreed with him, and you feel the need to keep boosting his claim. Yet every argument you make equally damages your own side, rather than showing that your side is stronger. Really weird approach.

[flagged]

I'll let you continue being wrong in peace. Have a good day, and keep dreaming those sweet, sweet AAPL dreams!

Wrong about what? That Apple’s TAM is probably “all users with an iPhone”? Sure I’ll happily be wrong about that lol

Thank you for being a voice of reason. Just wanted to say I appreciate it!

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

"iPad? Big deal, it's just a big iPod Touch!"

If anything, this convinced me the product will succeed. Like the iPad it fills an unnoticed awkward gap, between old iPads and Apple TV.

Apple is splitting out a valuable use case that is confusing to people when lumped in to a “do everything” product (iPad).

Any portable device as a Matter hub would be pretty useless.

The Apple TV and Homepod mini already support Matter.

How so? A Matter controller just needs to be powered on and exist somewhere on the [wireless] LAN to do its job.

An old iPad on a stand on the table in the breakfast nook is conceptually fine as a Matter controller until someone picks it up and leaves with it, or unplugs it and lets it run out of battery.

Apple forbids this kind of use because it defiles the majesty of their garden and its walls (or something), but that's just Apple doing Apple things.

> How so?

Expectation of usage. An iPad designer assumes it will be taken all around, leave the house, put in a book bag, etc.

While an old iPad being used as an entertainment management surface won’t, that’s not the prime use case intended for iPad.

Apple decided to focus on products whose primary purpose is a stationary device, like a speaker or a TV-attached device. Sure, you can move them place to place, but most won’t.

Right. It's a design limitation, and is not at all a capability limitation.

And the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the functionality can never be tested by real people, because at Apple: Design is everything.

iPad used to be able to act as a HomeKit hub before Matter support, it was phased out starting in iOS 16 and fully removed this year.

They used to support iPads as HomeKit hubs before matter. I think because there is no thread radio in iPads?

It would be pretty terrible if my security cameras stop capturing video streams because the iPad would be out of battery or taken somewhere else.

So leave darned old thing plugged in at the breakfast nook, then. Physically tether it if you or others can't otherwise be restrained from moving it.

If the only problem here is "But it could be moved!" then solve that problem.

(Of course, that is not the only problem. We can't get to that point to begin with because Apple is Apple.)

The problem with repurposing these devices as perma-plugged-in hubs is they have a battery that could eventually swell from staying plugged in 24/7. You have reports here and there from people whose tablet-on-a-wall (not necessarily iPad) swelled up and bulged against the wall.

Even if the iPad recognizes it's always plugged in and discharges from 100 to 80 occasionally, it's still a use case that increases the chance of battery swelling.

I don't mean this as "Apple knows best, psh, silly customer" but a bit of "that's one reason this exists" and a bit of being annoyed that you can't run tablets battery-less off AC to prevent it.

Yeah, it's kinda sad or at least annoying to me when Apple creates the problem and then "solves" it for me by taking away functionality. They essentially invented the no-user-serviceable-battery concept, or at least proved its tolerability by the masses.

It would pretty obviously be easy to add a wizard that prepares the iPad to be repurposed as a stationary home hub, setting the battery to be held at 50% and neither charged nor discharged, sending a notification to your phone if it's unplugged, choosing a slideshow to double as a digital frame, etc. But to be fair to Apple, no other companies would build such a thing either, it's just the consumption oriented system we live in.

>No iPad – or any portable Apple device - can be configured as a home hub for managing Matter-protocol devices.

hasn't apple been shipping thread radios in devices for a few years now, with no actual use for them? the only thing blocking iPads from being a home hub for managing matter protocol devices is that apple hasn't turned that feature on.

iPads used to be able to function as home hubs but they explicitly removed that feature a few years ago and made it Apple TV exclusive .

You can also use a HomePod/mini.

AppleTV does support multiple users, but it’s terrible.

I have an AppleTV on the main television, with Apple accounts set up for each member of my family. It makes almost no difference which user you have selected.

Now, maybe I just haven’t spent enough time trying to set this up, and I’d be delighted to be wrong, but AFAICT:

All users share the same Home Screen layout

All users share the same screen saver

Third party apps have zero integration with the AppleTV accounts. This means I have 4 users on the AppleTV, then 3-5 users on every single app installed on the Apple TV, and any AppleTV user can use any app user.

All together this means the AppleTV users are useless to me. They don’t help me with parental controls. They don’t help me switch between personalized content collections. They don’t even help me log into third party apps!

This should be so much better than it is.

That is because even though multi-user support exists, the third-party apps with content don't care. They do not map Apple Accounts to their own profiles, or persist profile selection against an active user account.

But many also haven't updated their custom input code to support the current remote design either.

But I have a HomePod mini that I use for all of my Matter devices, why would I need a massive device with a screen just for that?

The only difference I can see is multiuser support of which Siri works just fine for me controlling the matter devices in the house that are on my partners Apple account. I can't justify buying a product just for multi user support and have another bulky device sitting in the house.

Apple would've been better off putting a FaceID camera in a Homepod mini or Homepod to get the same functionality.

Apple TV has multi-user support, *good* is a stretch I think.

Apple TV and HomePod have supported acting as a relay for years, but IIRC only if you have another Apple device to use the Home app on.

I haven't had an Apple TV in years.. it has no home app?

It has camera access. Voice for most other things. Without a touchscreen, it would be annoying (to me) to use the remote to move around multiple rooms and devices.

Ah, apparently you can hold down Home on the remote or use Siri to access smart devices from the TV itself.

> to be a Matter hub for smarthome stuff.

Why though? Doesn't anyone into Apple ecosystem enough to buy this already own an Apple TV?

You want control your home's heating via your TV ?

The "Apple TV" is not a television set; it's a small always-on computer that sits near one. The newer ones include a Thread radio and serve as a border router / gateway for IoT devices to be controlled and automated through Apple Home (usually managed via a user's phone or tablet).

This is not about controlling your smart home. You can do that from your phone, tablet, computer, specific devices like thermostats and switches, voice via Siri, etc.

This is about being able to act as a Matter/Thread hub, which the Apple TV can do regardless of the control mechanism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com