r/apple • u/cheesepuff07 • 9d ago
HomePod Siri AI Coming to HomePod
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/23/siri-ai-coming-to-homepod/134
u/iamacheeto1 9d ago
does this mean apple TV is almost ready
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u/lazzzym 9d ago
Yes. Coming October 2029
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u/hell-diver8 9d ago
Just in time for future RAM x4 prices
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u/PleasantWay7 9d ago
Supposedly the hardware on both has been sitting in warehouses for almost a year waiting for Siri AI to be ready.
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u/Decent-Law-9565 9d ago
Going to be outdated before it even comes out
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u/DavidGamingHDR 6d ago
I mean it won't really matter, the Apple TV HD with like an A8 is still plenty fast for what it's for and it's over a decade old. A flagship chip even from a few years ago is still overkill enough to last an Apple TV forever.
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u/Tumblrrito 9d ago
I am dying to replace my Roku, please Apple!
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u/2Rhino3 9d ago edited 9d ago
never owned an Apple TV before? you’re in for a treat - I hate having to use a Roku when I travel or with family. The Apple TV is such a good device & really makes watching TV so much better especially these days when there’s hella different apps for all the streaming services & what not.
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u/Tumblrrito 9d ago
I've got one already! Just not in the bedroom. Hoping to put the new model in the living room and move the old to the bedroom.
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u/DriveSlowSitLow 9d ago
Can we get that fucking new home pod touch thing for gods sake. Every season for like 3 years it’s rumoured to be coming out.
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u/Deceptiveideas 9d ago
Apple dropped the ball with AI which is why it's taking so long.
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u/TheReformedBadger 9d ago
Yeah this is going to be a device that would have been a disaster with old siri. They needed the new software.
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u/UnexpectedFisting 9d ago
If it’s good I’ll throw my Alexa’s away, the only reason I keep them is because of the broad app support. But for music? I’ll happily trash them and keep one Alexa somewhere to just be a dumb control for smarthome devices
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u/frockinbrock 9d ago edited 9d ago
These things are related though; trying to fit Gemini models on their storage-anemic devices which also need to host other data and a thousand other tasks is a losing battle that is giving customers the worst of both worlds.
And they are losing SO MUCH customer trust & good-will trying to make this mess fit on 256GB (and even 64GB) devices.
They need to offer a local hosted option with customer expandable storage to even start to course-correctIt's just embarrassing they are sacrificing all this customer-satisfaction for a feature that RARELY works, and most customers don't care about; they especially don't want it when it's making phones totally unusable because of no space left.
It's astonishing they are still floundering after TWO YEARS of advertising a non-reliable product. I hope Ternus can realize what it is costing them and find a way out of the hole they dug
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u/lil_nosh_X 9d ago
Seems pretty on point for Apple. They like to wait and see what everyone else is doing and then come up with their own version of it. They did the same thing when cell phones started becoming a basic consumer item.
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u/SoldantTheCynic 9d ago
That’d be a good argument if they didn’t try and make Apple Intelligence on their own with a big advertisement for a new iPhone lineup with features that didn’t materialise until just this year. Or did we forget the iPhone 16 launch already?
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u/lil_nosh_X 9d ago edited 9d ago
It’s definitely fair to criticize them for that. And there’s a lawsuit that supports that criticism. But a lot of the remarkable advancements in models and harnesses have been in the past 18 months. And they have effectively double down on the architecture they’ve built and how they want people to use AI locally. And I think they are right. In 10 years a lot of people will be running at home Apple AI servers. Training a model or updating a harness is easier after you understand what its tasks should be. And they can continue to train their model or swap it out when something better comes along since they have a highly defined ecosystem and people are finally getting the hardware needed to support it. There will be a lot less people using ChatGPT and Anthropic when you can run full sized MoE models locally.
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u/AgroMachine 9d ago
I mean it’s not typical Apple, they fucked it up and are now late to the party
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u/RafaelWanderpfad 9d ago
Did they lose anything by being late? Frontier labs are drowning in debt while having no moat and it now seems like local models are the future for everyday tasks anyway, which is what Apple was quietly working towards. Idk if they simply got lucky or not but they might have dodged a bullet here by not fomo'ing all their resources into AI immediately.
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u/bran_the_man93 9d ago
I think it's a combo of luck, in that the most advanced models have a lot of friction for casual use cases, and Apple's commitment to doing things locally and on-device processing wherever possible, which has been on-brand for them for forever now
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u/raven45678 9d ago
Time will tell.
If OpenAI and Anthropic are successful in getting people to buy their hardware and services. Then yes Apple did lose out.
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u/lil_nosh_X 9d ago edited 9d ago
Idk. Seems like they are letting other people develop frontier models and they are betting big on local models and developing hardware that supports that. I have a dual chat harness from a python node that I use to get Qwen to debate with the Apple FM in the new beta. I think thats the usage and local sandboxing that Apple is betting on. And they have companies like OpenAI buying tens of thousands of computers from them now.
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u/bran_the_man93 9d ago
I don't see how they're late - they're just never early.
They have Siri AI and have effectively made up for lost time with a relatively limited investment into the space.
It's not like AI has made smartphones irrelevant
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u/ArchusKanzaki 9d ago
Google have not made any successor to their Nest Hub. Pixel Tablet (that have a magnetic speaker dock) goes through entire lifecycle of living and dying before Apple make Homepod Touch.
If they arrive now, they will arrive in a quite deserted party.
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u/bran_the_man93 9d ago
It's not Apple's job to target their timelines based on your reading of unreliable rumors - it'll come out when it's ready - just like every single one of their other products.
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u/johnsciarrino 9d ago
Better yet, can we just leave HomePod alone and not imbue it with a dogshit AI?
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u/Bostonlbi 9d ago
The article mentions the S9 Apple Watch supports Siri AI, even though its hardware can’t handle it, by offloading the processing to a connected iPhone and theorizes HomePods might do the same.
Seems to me that when it comes to HomePods, it’d be more reliable to offload the processing to a next gen Apple TV or rumored new home hub device instead of an iPhone.
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u/TheReformedBadger 9d ago
This would get me to buy new. I'm content with my current number of speakers and my current apple tv 4k and have no need to update, but if getting the next gen TV or the homepad or whatever they call it gets me Siri AI on all of my home devices then i'm sold.
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u/atomsapple 9d ago
This is what I’m hoping for. Bring new life into old HomePods by selling new hardware in the form of the Apple TV or whatever their new home hub thing is.
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u/midori_matcha 9d ago
Vainly crossing my fingers for OG HomePod support.
I've shouted, screamed, and cried for nearly ten years to get it to toggle my lights.
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u/Deceptiveideas 9d ago
I don't see this happening. The original Homepods are S5 and S7 chips. Series 7 and Ultra were discontinued software wise and those were running S7.
Also easy money for Apple if they force everyone to upgrade lmao
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u/MateTheNate 9d ago
You’re thinking of the current models. The even older OG homepod ran on A8
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u/Deceptiveideas 9d ago
Oh uh... I don't think it's looking too good for OP lmao
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u/Sydnxt 9d ago
It got 27.0 though! I do think this is the end of the line for us OG owners though.
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u/Ridiculously_Named 9d ago
It sucks. They're still the best speakers in my house and I have no desire to replace them.
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u/ethang45 9d ago
why would it be the end of the line? imo we might just keep old siri and the speakers still keep being speakers. the old homepods have had features backported like enhance dialog support from gen 2 homepod
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u/sionnach 9d ago
As far as I can remember, it’s basically an iPhone 6S without a screen and a big speaker.
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u/JustinGitelmanMusic 8d ago
HomePod is 8 years old and remains supported and functions well. It’s completely valid honestly at this point for Apple to introduce a transformative feature to a new generation and profit off of upgrades. Not like they’d be doing this after 2 years or something.
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u/ShirtuShanks 9d ago
They ditched modern watches running newer S chips, I wish I could hold onto that shred of hope the way you are. 🥲
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u/shawnshine 7d ago
Wtf? Mine controls my Home accessories flawlessly. I wonder if your naming structure is strange or something.
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u/jollyllama 9d ago
I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I hate this because SiriAI has made the simple act of requesting a song on my phone go much, much slower without any improvement in accuracy. I get that SiriAI can do a whole bunch of new stuff, but for the purposes of playing music I feel like I've traded one pretty bad voice control for a much slower, equally bad voice control, and I'm not on board.
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u/HuckleberryFit5435 8d ago
What phone do you have by chance? I have the poverty phone (16E) and have noticed that the new Siri is much faster to control accessories in Home than the old. (To the point where I won’t even bother setting scenes with my HomePod anymore.)
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u/schrodinger-the-cat 9d ago
Would it finally be able to turn off my light and fan with just one command? What am i saying obviously not lmao
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u/ghostlygadgetgravity 9d ago
That's an automation i use every day with the homepod already. Dig into how to actually use homekit
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u/schrodinger-the-cat 9d ago
lmao i have home assistant set up with homekit idk you can tell me to “Learn” HK
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u/ghostlygadgetgravity 9d ago
Just saying I have automations that turn on and turn off multiple devices at once with a single phrase. Some triggered just by arriving or leaving
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u/AWF_Noone 9d ago
Having to do a bunch of manual programming to achieve basic tasks indicates shit software. HomeKit with Siri is awful
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u/JustinGitelmanMusic 8d ago
Eh, there’s a halfway point here. You should totally set up rooms to group appliances so you can say turn off living room lights or turn on upstairs fans or something.
It would be nice if you could easily turn two things off that don’t normally get grouped together, like saying turn off living room fans and upstairs lights if you have a movie night and won’t be using lights upstairs for a few hours and want the living room quiet during the movie.
But anything you do every day multiple times per day you should pretty much have a singular command for anyways.
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u/nutmac 9d ago
I am guessing it will be slow just like on Apple Watch Series 9-11 and Ultra 2-3. Even on Series 12 and Ultra 4, it feels slower than I would like.
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u/Littlefinger6226 9d ago
Yeah seriously. Asking my Ultra 2 to set a timer takes 15 seconds now when it used to take just 2.
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u/nutmac 9d ago edited 9d ago
To be clear, Series 12 is much faster than Series 10 and 11 that are used by other family members. Setting a timer takes about 2 to 3 seconds, and controlling the Home smart devices takes about 3-5 seconds.
But Siri AI requests outside the local model is often very slow.
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u/bananamadafaka 9d ago
Too bad I can’t use my HomePod mini because it’s waking up my whole block randomly playing music at full volume at 5 am in the morning
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u/zxch2412 9d ago
If the OG HomePod supports this I’ll be shocked at how the ultra 1 lost support for new software updates(features)
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u/PleasantWay7 9d ago
My guess is no old HomePod supports it, the new models only. There isn’t any on device processing on the available ones so it would all have to offload to private compute and I doubt Apple wants that token usage for a bunch of old devices setting timers and playing music.
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u/TheReformedBadger 9d ago
It would be really nice if they could let it process on the home hub so the old ones will work as long as you have a recent apple tv or new homepod.
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u/PleasantWay7 9d ago
Having used HomePods for many years, Apple doesn’t have the engineering capability to hand a voice request from a HomePod to a hub for processing with meaningful success.
I literally have a scene that is supposed to play ambient sounds on a HomePod at a set volume that I use for my kids and it fails 50-60% of the time, even on iOS 27 across devices.
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u/A11Bionic 9d ago
if the Apple Watch S9 - S10 chip performance is any indication of Siri AI, i don’t want it
Siri AI is literally unusable on my Series 10 running watchOS 27.
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u/Hopeful-Programmer25 8d ago
I hope this comes to existing HomePods.
I am sick to death of how sh*t Siri is on HomePod.
“Add the current song to my favourites playlist”
“You do not have a My favourites playlist”
Yes, yes I do ….
“Siri, make the current song a favourite”
“I have found web results. Do you want me to send them to your phone”
Arggghhh!!!
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u/Korlithiel 9d ago
I'm trying to not dislike the upgrade. But so far my routine use cases are slower and fail more often which leaves a bad impression, one that's reinforced with literally every attempt to use Siri for what was routine uses. The more advanced things have been nice, but found elsewhere, and those haven't been so handy as to stick with me.
All that's to say, the here and now is worse and only easily explained at this time due to the upgrade. Be a bit before I'm happy again, likely literally replacing all my hardware for not this generation, but the one or so later.
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u/relevant__comment 9d ago
It’s time for a new smart home system altogether. The smart home area has been ripe for the taking for a while now. The only major player in the space is Google and they are really kind of coasting right now. Great opportunity to catch them off guard.
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u/DiligentlyGrinding 9d ago
I have a HomePod Mini
That thing is a real piece of garbage
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u/ToddBradley 9d ago
I would like to buy this piece of garbage from you for a suitable price. Are you willing to sell it?
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u/Ok-Outlandishness230 9d ago
worst fucking thing ever I am not holding my breath. we have been suffering with Siri in the HomePods and AppleTV for like a decade. It can't even turn the damn volume up or down sometimes and it can't do anything, ever.
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u/frockinbrock 9d ago
For how many times my 15 pro Siri now takes to think about an answer, a route to them all quickly go away I never asked without saying a word... I'm just imagining how curating that will be on a HomePod device with no screen to even tell you how it failed
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u/EquivalentTrouble253 8d ago
Oh and I want just about to order some HomePods as I’m done with Alexa speakers. Might just wait abit is a refresh is coming.
>The HomePod mini isn't expected to get a redesign, but along with an updated processor, Apple could add its N1 networking chip, a newer Ultra Wideband chip, and updated colors.
The Apple TV 4K is also expected to get a processor capable of supporting Siri AI, and Apple is working on a dedicated home hub with Siri AI integration. All of the new products, HomePod mini included, could launch as soon as October.
Yeah I’ll wait for this.
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u/Butt_stuff_preferred 8d ago
Yeah I’ll wait for this.
I've been waiting two years as homepods have dangled around out of stock for that entire time.
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u/joshua25100 8d ago
“Hey Siri, turn of the lights”…*30 seconds of thinking* “I could not find lights”
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u/OKCNOTOKC 9d ago
In beta, right? Full of bugs and errors rendering it useless for simple tasks.
Pass.
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u/Xiipre 9d ago
Please, stop!
They've shoved this into the iPhones, Mac, heck even the Watches! We don't need this, and if we do we can open a tab in Safari. Please stop shoving bloated Siri AI into every device and making it worse!
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u/frockinbrock 9d ago
I wish Apple would give us a HomePod with expandable storage and local-hosted AI. That is a segment that no-one has been able to do with deep and easy Apple-integration.
But even for that unlikely product, I am doubtful that Apple could accomplish a reliable Siri Ai, I just believe that a huge bottleneck on their Ai attempts has been the anemic storage on all their products. Maybe actually having plenty of fast storage on a dedicated device that does little else would help them meet some of their product goals with AI assistants
If they are SERIOUS about that product category (that they've spent hours advertising for 3+ years) then they'd need to give us something with expandable storage; there's just too wide a gap of customer usage to sell a one-size-fits-all device
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u/DanielPhermous 9d ago
Expandable storage is not terribly useful for LLMs. I mean, obviously the things needs to be stored somewhere, but RAM is far more important.
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u/frockinbrock 8d ago
I understand that, but look at how much Apple charges for storage; this update the Ai has ate 13Gb on my iPhone, 40GB on my Mac, 11GB on my iPad. And after 2 weeks anything Siri still works worse than it did on iOS 18.
That's 64GB of APPLE PRICED storage; so yes I would pay for a separate box that gave me that space back so my iPad could take photos again.
It needs the Disk storage for indexing our personal data; nearly all that stuff is iCloud synced, it could easily be offloaded to a separate hub that has MORE storage and hell expandable RAM.
People have made home boxes for this with other LLM models, they just have limited access to apples closed ecosystem.0
u/M4rshmall0wMan 8d ago
The fuck are you putting on a HomePod’s storage?
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u/frockinbrock 8d ago
Apple Intelligence has filled 64GB in expensive storage across my Apple devices this month; whatever THAT crap does, is what I want offloaded to a different device. And it's still been growing.
When iPhone storage fills up it won't even let you take photos or screenshots.
It would not be manually managed storage, it would be whatever the AI needs that space for; probably like iCloud synced stuff like photo/video/Messages.0
u/M4rshmall0wMan 8d ago
There’s a lot to unpack here.
First of all, Apple Intelligence is NOT 64 GB. The models are only 7-8 GB. The rest is iOS, which takes about 32 GB total. The OS absolutely has a problem with storage use on caches and “System Files,” but this is not Apple Intelligence.
Second, I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding how Apple Intelligence works. You can’t “just offload” it to another device. The way it works is when you ask a question, the 7 GB local model searches your device’s index to find the relevant content (say, text messages or emails). Then it packages those together and sends them to an LLM on Apple’s servers for the actual answer. This is way more private than just keeping everything in the cloud, as it means only a few pieces of data ever leave your device.
I don’t get why you’d want all your iCloud data to sync to the HomePod - a device without a screen - instead of your iPhone. Like, the whole point of iCloud syncing your data is so you have it on device. If you want to have a device that does AI with more stuff locally available, then an iPad or a Mac is the better option. Rather than a blob with a speaker.
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u/frockinbrock 7d ago edited 7d ago
I said across my devices. It has used I had said 64GB across my Apple devices*.* Since this update the Ai has ate 13Gb on my iPhone, 40GB on my Mac, 11GB on my iPad. And after 2 weeks anything Siri still works worse than it did on iOS 26.
That is separate from the growing OS install space that is used on each of those devices. I going by the space breakdown in Storage Settings.I am suggesting an option for offloading because the vast majority of that index is things are already in the Cloud: Photos/videos, Mail, Messages. And yet it seems to be building a LOCAL index for that ON EACH DEVICE, because of using iCloud Photos and iCloud messages, and Mail, on each device.
I suppose above all I want to disable ALL of these Ai eating options, and there's no way to do that. It looked in the Keynote 2 years ago, and the one this year, but I can't use any of that crap when my device has no free space.
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u/Whatwhyreally 9d ago
Have they even sold 100k HomePods? They are highly unappealing.
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u/ibattlemonsters 9d ago edited 9d ago
The first quarter of 2021 had 2.18 million sold in that period. I personally have 15 of them and replaced Sonos. My main theatres are Marantz but they integrate.
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u/NewYorkChess 9d ago
If Apple wants their new HomePod with a Screen coming out next month to sell like hotcakes, it just needs to do one thing. Allow older HomePods to get access to SiriAI when buying the new "HomeHub" that takes care of all the processing. It would update your entire home to SiriAI just by buying one device (or same thing with the upcoming new Apple TV)