Apple's Rumored Smart Home Product 'HomeAccessory' with Square Screen and More

TapTechNews September 27th, a blog post by the tech media 9to5Mac yesterday (September 26th) based on reliable sources revealed that the smart home product being developed by Apple is named HomeAccessory, with the internal code name of J490, and is equipped with an A18 chip (the media speculates that it is to support AppleIntelligence).

Square screen

The source also disclosed that the screen of the HomeAccessory being developed by Apple does not adopt the rectangular design of the iPad but a square design. It is not yet clear whether it will be used in the final product.

Camera

TapTechNews citing the source, HomeAccessory also has a built-in camera that can be used for FaceTime and other video conferencing applications.

HomeAccessory can also recognize user gestures through the camera, so that in scenarios such as the kitchen, if it is not convenient to control the screen, users can control it through gestures.

The camera can even recognize the user in front of the device to fulfill Personal Requests, which is similar to the way HomePod recognizes different voices to fulfill such requests.

Support for independent applications and custom lock screens

Just like AppleTV, HomeAccessory can run applications and play media independently, but it can also be used as an AirPlay receiver.

The system has a customizable lock screen with multiple clock faces similar to the clock faces added to AppleTV in tvOS18.