This is what Apple need to release as an iPad accessory if they want this idea to work. Few will ever be interested in paying the premium to buy another display.
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HomePod With 'iPad-Like Display' Rumored to Launch in 2025 at Earliest
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It would be safe to say that is very off Apple's radar, but who knows for sure
Personally I prefer AIO devices that solve problems. Having a display permanently attached to a speaker and in your kitchen, for example, has its advantages.
The whole point is to have this fixed in place so it's always there. iPads are already portable and are best kept that way, not tethered. This is entirely the opposite. It's like saying, "why does my car need a display on the dashboard, when iPads and magnetic connections exist?" Wouldn't' it be more useful if you could carry the display away and put it to other uses? Not really. The answer, of course, is car needs a display permanently fixed because it is a display for your car. This would be a display for your home, not the people in it, per se.
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All they need to do to get me to buy a homepod or two is add the ability to work outside of the Apple Ecosystem. an Aux in port and normal Bluetooth pairing so my friends with android phones could send music to it when they are visiting would get me to buy one. It would be extra cool if it could send the other channel over a stereo pair to the other speaker when using the Aux input or bluetooth so you just connect to the Right one or something and the other one just picks up the left channel.
But the fact that it's portable means you can just use it in the kitchen too or leave it in the kitchen if you want a dedicated kitchen device. This really feels like a problem that doesn't need solving.
Seeing this image reminds me of how much I disliked the preponderance of floating pallets in the UI design of Classic Mac OS and the early years of Mac OS X, from Adobe apps to Office to others. Toolbars and sidebars/panels docked to the window is a much cleaner experience (and scales better to today's larger displays)
Honestly it looks like a G4 iMac which is a beautiful design. Just make it where the iPad is removable, have it connect with like a MagSafe device and then it all starts to make sense.
With a base like this, add a wireless keyboard and mouse and you a defacto modern G4 iMac. That would be able to do word documents etc, put on of those tracking motor things so the neck rotates the iPad towards your direction. Heck add some of those harmon Karman old school transparent speakers and your all set.
I’m sure it’ll be wildly overpriced and thus sell poorly and just end up stagnating like HomePods and AirPods Max, etc
And when someone else takes to other room the kitchen is then left without it. It's a user-facing display for a HomePod, that's really what it is. The display wouldn't need to be huge. It can be used for cooking recipes and video conferencing and the arm will follow you, and so forth. You'll ask it a question and it will turn toward you with the answer. And any clever ideas down the line that someone had could be added with updates. It's a kitchen computer and speaker. Anyway, whether it is released or not, the world will still turn.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Like what (advantages?) vs.- say- just putting a HomePod in the kitchen and mounting a retired iPad or iPhone nearby?
Don’t remember this making it even 2 years though.
Honestly it looks like a G4 iMac which is a beautiful design. Just make it where the iPad is removable, have it connect with like a MagSafe device and then it all starts to make sense.
With a base like this, add a wireless keyboard and mouse and you a defacto modern G4 iMac. That would be able to do word documents etc, put on of those tracking motor things so the neck rotates the iPad towards your direction. Heck add some of those harmon Karman old school transparent speakers and your all set.
Next year I'll be in the hunt for a HomePod to control my domotics so let¡s see what 2025 brungs
fine i’ll buy one but what i really want is a soundbar appletv/homepod hybrid like the roku streambar with 2 homepod mini’s as surround
They don’t know what they are doing. Remember they discontinued the HomePod just to bring it back months later.
Glad you posted this picture or I would've. It's just so similar to such an iconic design
We have an Echo Show in the kitchen and it’s great for timers and recipe lookup (plus the wife likes to have shows on while cooking). If Apple came out with one we’d dump the Show that day. After all, it’s still an Amazon tracking device with ads and not apart of the Apple ecosystem. It would be nice to be able to control HomeKit devices from it as well. It maybe niche but I think there’s enough of us out there that would buy it that it would make it value added to Apple.