Gurman: Apple Delays HomePad Too

The ever-reliable Mark Gurman says that Apple’s problems delivering an AI-powered Siri assistant will impact other products, too. Most notably, the HomePad smart display that the company once hoped would ship this month.

Apple’s slow boil introduction of so-called Apple Intelligence features across its major platforms has been a source of controversy and debate since before the company even announced its plans last June. But my view on this is somewhat contrarian, given the criticism I see, and it hasn’t changed since last June. That is, where other firms continue racing to deliver AI features as fast as possible, Apple is doing so in the most Apple way imaginable by focusing on trust, not features. And with Siri not delivering the quality it expected, Apple simply fell into a familiar pattern we should all recognize: It will not ship this thing until it works well. I have my issues with Apple, of course. But I respect that.

For his part, Gurman has been a curiously vocal critic of Apple Intelligence from day one. And in the wake of Amazon’s surprisingly well-received Alexa+ upgrade–due later this month–he warned that Apple would likely miss its internal schedule for upgrading Siri to the more conversational, AI-powered version it promised last June. And then Apple did something unusual: It confirmed that rumor, revealing that the new Siri features would now roll out over “the coming year.”

In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman explains that Apple’s struggles with Siri have impacted at least one major new product. And while he doesn’t say this, I believe these issues might explain why Apple would ship a brand-new base iPad–its most popular model by far–without the ability to run Apple Intelligence features at a time when the company is promoting its new AI features above all else: It can simply use less expensive components, keep the product’s price low, and not worry about Apple Intelligence compatibility until after the new Siri is ready. In other words, we’ll like see a next-generation base iPad next year.

(How this explains the relatively expensive iPhone 16e is unclear; using my logic above, one might have expected a cheaper, Apple Intelligence-less model that made more sense as an iPhone SE replacement. But these things all have their own development timelines, and the iPhone 16e has been in the works for years.)

What Gurman does say is that the Siri delays have scuttled Apple’s plans to ship a new “smart home hub”–that most believe will be called HomePad–this month. The HomePad is code-named J490 internally and it is basically a smart display that resembles a 7-inch iPad. But it will rely on the new Siri features that Apple can’t seem to finalize. And so it can’t really ship the device this month, or anytime soon for that matter.

In the good news department, HomePa development is continuing, and Apple has opened up an internal testing program for the device so that some employees can take it home, test it, and provide feedback.

Gurman also expects Apple to back off from new Apple Intelligence features at this year’s WWDC in June. Instead, it will “likely lay out plans for bringing current capabilities to more apps,” he says.