Gurman on HomeView: ‘Finished Units Have Been Sitting Boxed Up in Warehouses for the Better Part of a Year’

Mark Gurman, today, in his weekly Power On column for Bloomberg (gift link):

Without a serviceable version of the new assistant, Apple couldn’t deliver the experience it had envisioned. That left the hardware ready to go, but the software nowhere near finished.

So Apple postponed the HomeView repeatedly — first until spring 2025, then summer, then fall, and then again throughout 2026 before finally unveiling it this past week. And the hardware betrays its age. With thick bezels, an A18 processor and 8 gigabytes of memory, this is clearly a product conceived years ago. Finished units have been sitting boxed up in warehouses for the better part of a year, waiting for the software to catch up.

The A18 chip and 8 GB of RAM aren’t a sure sign of delay; this year’s MacBook Neo has the 18 Pro chip and only 8 GB RAM, and wasn’t delayed. And if a kick-ass MacBook can get by with A18-class chip and 8 GB RAM, surely a HomeView can too. HomeView only does a fraction of what a Mac can do, and the MacBook Neo is perhaps Apple’s best new product, full stop, in years.

But I have no reason to doubt Gurman that this hardware was finished and production started long ago. His reporting on this product has proven out going back two years. Parts of Apple clearly — and disastrously — believed that a credible version of Siri AI would ship in early 2025. You might recall my writing about that. HomeView clearly depends on having a credible version of Siri AI behind it. But Siri AI didn’t ship until last month.

One revealing sign of how long this thing has been in development: I spotted several posts on social media from former Apple employees proudly touting their work on the HomeView. These weren’t people who had just left the company, either. Some hadn’t worked at Apple in quite a while, yet were still able to point to the newly announced device as something they helped create. That tells you plenty about how long ago much of the work was completed.

That’s juicy, but it might have been good to include some links here?

★ Sunday, 18 October 2026