Apple Smart Home Hub to Feature iMac G4-Style Design

Apple's long-rumored smart home hub will have an iMac G4-style design and a host of unique features, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.

The smart home hub is said to feature a square 6-inch display, with variants that can be placed on a countertop or mounted on a wall. It features a single FaceTime camera on the front, with microphones and speakers in its connected base. Gurman described the design as follows:

The hub is about as thick as an iPhone, and its display is surrounded by a quarter-inch, black bezel reminiscent of older iPads. It has rounded corners and no sharp edges. The device lacks a battery, so it has to be plugged in at all times, and there are no volume or power buttons.

The product comes in Apple's standard gray aluminum finish and includes a USB-C port for power. The screen sits above a metal, round base with multiple rings of perforated speaker holes and connects to it through a polished metal arm. Users can manually tilt the display forward or backward. And the base has a rubberized bottom to help it stay on a table.

The standard version looks reminiscent of the famous iMac G4 from 2002 that has a large display that sits on a half-dome-shaped base.

Apple has also developed a second version, code-named J491, designed to be mounted on a wall. It has a thin, square-shaped base beneath the display that houses the speakers and microphones. The base sits flat on the wall below the screen. This version also must remain connected to power through a USB-C cable.

Apple envisions customers placing several of the devices throughout their homes. Users will be able to control smart home devices, make video calls and intercom-style messages, play audio, and view slideshows of photos. The device will also be able to serve as an information hub for the kitchen, with the ability to watch videos and look up recipes with voice commands.

It will also be able to recognize who is speaking to it or approaching it, and display personalized content and answers accordingly. The interface will change automatically depending on who is using the device, and there will be a mode for visitors that hides personal information.

The smart home hub will identify users by their voice or facial recognition, but the latter system is said to be less reliable than Face ID, and users will be able to enable a secondary authentication method via an iPhone if they wish. The iPhone will also serve as a fallback solution for when the hub cannot identify a user correctly. In dark rooms, a Mac-style Edge Light feature will illuminate the area around the screen to help the camera recognize the user.

The device purportedly blends interface elements of the Apple Watch, Apple TV, and iPad. Siri AI continues to feature the same dark visual style used on other devices. iPhone-style widgets are available and users can choose a wallpaper and rearrange apps and widgets by pressing and holding them, just like Apple's other devices.

The UI is heavily built around slideshows and clock displays, similar to the revamped StandBy Mode on the iPhone Duo. One clock is said to resemble "a lava lamp with an overlay of the time that shows the hour in digital form with minutes listed below." Users can then swipe up from the clock screen or photos to open the app launcher.

The device will include many of Apple's most frequently used apps, including Calendar, Messages, Photos, ‌FaceTime‌, Notes, Reminders, Music and Podcasts. The Home Screen features Apple Watch-style apps that open into iPad-style interfaces with multiple panels. For example, the Messages app has a two-panel layout like it does on the ‌iPad‌. When a user taps a thread in their list of conversations, a second pane opens to display the conversation feed. This interface is said to carry over to many of the other default apps.

The device is reportedly set to be introduced on Tuesday, October 13, alongside new HomePod mini and ‌Apple TV‌ models.