All the news from Apple’s ‘Welcome home’ event

This week, Apple is hosting its first-ever dedicated smart home event. While the company hasn’t shared details about what it will reveal at the “Welcome Home experience” in New York City on Tuesday, October 13th, it doesn’t take an army of internet sleuths to deduce we’ll get news about Apple Home — specifically, new hardware. Apple finally seems to be taking the smart home seriously.

According to Bloomberg, Apple will release a smart home display alongside a refreshed HomePod Mini and Apple TV. The display, which MacRumors reports may be called HomeView, is arguably Apple’s first dedicated Apple Home hardware since it launched the HomeKit platform in 2014. As exciting as this is, the real shift will be bringing Siri AI and Apple Intelligence into the home. Apple is years behind Google and Amazon in smart-home hardware, but success in the home depends far more on software. That’s where Apple could leapfrog the competition.

We are quickly coming up on Apple’s “Welcome Home” launch event, where we expect a host of smart home-related announcements. We are expecting refreshes to Apple TV and HomePod Mini, as well as a brand new smart home hub. We could also see the debut of a new platform called homeOS, and some partner devices from LG.

What we probably won’t be seeing is the long-rumored touchscreen MacBook, which Cupertino whisperer Mark Gurman says will debut later this month.

Apple has just announced a new October event, taking place in New York on October 13th at 9AM ET. The company is rumored to be launching smart home-focused products this month, and the event invite hints that’ll be the case: Apple is using the tagline “Welcome home.”

At the event, Apple is rumored to announce products including a smart home hub with a display, an updated HomePod Mini, a new Apple TV. The company is also reportedly teaming up with LG on new smart home devices that will launch at the event, including a video doorbell, thermostat, and indoor camera, and renders leaked yesterday that purportedly showed off some of those devices.