Apple ships $299 HomeView smart display, skips EU on Siri AI

Apple opened sales of HomeView on November 13 in seven countries. The European Union was not one of them.

The $299 smart display, a 7-inch Liquid Retina screen designed to sit on a counter or mount on a wall, is built around what Apple calls "an entirely new version of Siri that is profoundly more capable and conversational." It launched in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US.

On the EU, Apple is blunt: "Apple HomeView is not available for sale in the European Union, as Siri AI is currently unavailable in iOS in the EU. Apple is working constructively with the EU in an attempt to find a path forward." Strip out Siri AI and the pitch collapses. Apple's description of what makes HomeView interesting leans entirely on what it can't ship there: "broad world knowledge," "onscreen awareness," and the ability to "draw on a user's personal context, such as their Calendar, Messages, and relevant information across their apps."

The rest is familiar smart-hub inventory. HomeView "recognizes up to six people by face and adapts to show their personal content in Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, Reminders, and Find My." Both the tabletop and wall-mounted models cost the same $299. Schneider Home wall mounts run from $59.95 for a USB-C version to $129.95 for a Power over Ethernet variant.

Apple's release names no executive and publishes no camera specs. HomeView lands in a run of Apple AI product moves, just days after its Harbor Mac-clustering tool for local inference, and in a week when EU access to Apple's AI stack keeps reading as the footnote on every launch.