CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple on Tuesday opened pre-orders for the HomeView, a $299 smart display that the company introduced in Cupertino, Calif., and that is scheduled to ship Nov. 13. The device has a 7-inch display. It runs Siri AI, which is in beta.
The feature the company emphasizes most is face recognition. The display can recognize up to six people, according to coverage of the launch, which is a number that sounds generous until a household counts its relatives.
Enrollment is where the product begins to outrun the household. Lorraine Akers, 52, a school bus dispatcher in Lake Ternby, Minn., said she spent Monday evening working through the setup screens on a store demonstration unit before deciding to pre-order two. The display asked her to enroll her husband, her two daughters and her mother, and she did so without difficulty.
Then it asked about Dylan.
Dylan is Akers’s nephew, who is due to move in with the family in January. “I said he hasn’t come yet,” Akers said. “It said it already recognized him. It showed me a photo from my cousin’s wedding. It recognized him in a photo from my cousin’s wedding, which he is not in. The wedding was in 2009. He was born in 2011.”
A store employee confirmed the unit was a demonstration model, Akers said, and told her the enrollment process was “the same for everybody.” The employee did not say where the wedding photo came from.
Akers said she tried to enroll the remaining slot with a houseplant, to see whether the display would object. It did not object. She said it has not asked about the plant since, and that she finds this more unsettling than the photograph.
“My husband asked whether it could unrecognize Dylan until January,” Akers said. “I checked. The menu has a button for removing a face. It does not have a button for removing a face that is not here yet.”
Akers said she has since told Dylan’s mother, her sister, who was not concerned. “She said he has been early to everything his whole life,” Akers said. “She said that explains the wedding.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center has tracked enrolled faces per household since it began following the category in 2019, when the average was one. As of this month, the average is 2.4 enrolled faces per household, and 2.4 people, Teller said.
“The number of faces and the number of people now match,” Teller said. “We have not yet determined who is still being recognized.”
Teller said the Center’s researchers attempted to reconcile the figures by counting households twice, once in person and once by display. The two counts differed by a single nephew, and the Center has classified the discrepancy as a rounding matter pending further review.
Teller said the Center has applied to study the households that are still waiting for a face to arrive, and that the application is pending.
Akers has ordered two units, one for the kitchen and one for the room her nephew will occupy in January, which is currently a sewing room. The display ships Nov. 13. Dylan has been enrolled since Monday.