I’d begun to doubt this thing would ever come out. Maybe it hadn’t even existed. And if it had, it would take an Indiana Jones character to fly into Cupertino, California on a biplane to bring it out of Apple’s lair to see the light of day. But here, years after its development was first rumored, Apple has announced the Apple HomeView.

You can pre-order it at Apple for $299 ahead of a November 19 release date.

so, the rumors were true after all

The HomeView is a smart home hub like a Google Nest Hub or Amazon Echo. Where those use Google Gemini for Home and Alexa, respectively, the HomeView will use Siri to receive voice commands, link smart home devices, and answer silly questions. Siri received a major upgrade in smarts last month, and I’ve been using it on my iPhone ever since.

There’s a HomeView with a stand, for plopping onto a shelf or countertop, and a wall-mounted version. Both cost the same and are available in Silver, Space Gray, Rose Pink, and Starlight (grayish gold). Like any decent smart home hub with a display, it’ll be able to recognize several users (six, for the HomeView) and personalize the experience for each one, so that one person isn’t getting another’s reminders and calendar events.

The adjustable-tilt display is 7″, which is on par for a smart home display these days, and is the familiarly sharp and beautiful Liquid Retina display that Apple’s been putting into its devices for many years. The 500 nits brightness rating isn’t all that high, and so the screen may look washed out and hard to read if placed in bright, direct sunlight, but it’ll automatically adjust all the way down to 0.03 nits, so if you keep it on your nightstand it’ll dim to barely nothing so that it doesn’t glare while you try to sleep.

As to whether this new-and-somewhat-improved Siri is smart enough to run my home, I don’t know. I have my reservations. Siri, on my iPhone at least, is a bit smarter but still frustratingly dumb. But then, so again is the Google Gemini for Home that I’ve been using on a Google Nest Hub, ever since Google slowly rolled it out and edged out Google Assistant.

The attraction, then, is that the HomeView will at least be able to tie into the Mac and iPhone I use daily in a more integrated way than the Google Nest Hub or Amazon Echo are able to. I could get my Apple Notes, Calendar, and Reminder notifications on the HomeView, and I could tell the HomeView to add tasks and reminders to my Apple account, which I could then see on other Apple devices.

Smarts aside, that’s the potential big draw for me, and it’s high time that Apple jumped into the deep end of the smart home pool. The screenless HomePod just wasn’t enough to compete with Google and Amazon. Perhaps the HomeView will change that.

HomeView is available for pre-order now at Apple.