Last week, Apple launched the HomeView, its first smart home screen thing, which is affixed to a speaker and rather obviously meant to compete with Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub. The HomeView is basically Apple realizing it needs to be in this space and not cede it to its competitors without a fight.
But it’s not a perfect product. It seems to be designed to be appealing only to people who have all of the other Apple products, and somehow didn’t buy any smart home devices from other ecosystems. That niche probably does exist and may be larger than you’d expect, but the HomeView…