Why Apple's HomeView relies so heavily on your iPhone

It all comes down to convenience and personalization without sacrificing privacy.

Billy Steele for Engadget

"There's no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone."

That's the statement newly minted Apple CEO John Ternus made during his opening remarks at his first iPhone event this year. It should be no surprise then, that the device holding so much of your data would play a vital role with a separate "intelligent personal hub" that stays inside your home.

This week marks the arrival of the HomeView, Apple's long-rumored smart display that was announced last month. As I explained in detail in my review, it's basically a combination of several gadgets in one. It's both a visual interface and a smart speaker that is always listening for your Siri queries. It's a smart home hub for a range of connected devices. It's a sous chef in the kitchen, and it's a FaceTime station when you need to catch up with friends and family. Heck, it's even a digital photo frame.

The HomeView doesn't run apps though. It performs all those functions, and more, by mirroring the apps that you have on your iPhone or iPad. Instead of allowing you to download software from the App Store, the HomeView's system works like CarPlay does in your car. It shows you the compatible apps you've already installed on your phone or tablet, as well as Apple's core suite, including Calendar, Messages, Reminders and Weather.

Billy Steele for Engadget

This is just one of the reasons an iPhone (or iPad) needs to be close by for the HomeView to work.

"When we design home products, we always keep three things in mind," Cecilia Dantas, a member of Apple's Home product marketing team, told me. "They have to be intelligent, personal and private."

Since Siri AI needs all those apps to be able to provide the very personal context that makes its answers more intelligent and conversational, Apple needed a way to grant it that access that didn't compromise your privacy. Having your iPhone be the only container for that information and requiring it to be around for your data to be accessible helps keep it safe from prying eyes when you're away.

As a more general home hub, the HomeView has to work for every member of your household so they can turn lights off or see who's at the door. But it shouldn't be showing them every text message you get from your parents or revealing your calendar invites and inadvertently ruining surprises. This privacy is why, in addition to the built-in face and voice recognition, the HomeView relies so heavily on an iPhone or iPad.

"Everything that feels natural on a phone is now available in a subtle, glanceable device that gives you what you need in the moment," VP of hardware engineering Matthew Costello said. "It recognizes you and shows you your information, but when you step away, it's gone."

Costello further explained that the HomeView offers the best combination of personal information with the convenience of a dedicated communal device. Since the iPhone is a user's hub for their personal content — and really, their life — it only made sense to "extend and link that intelligence" into products like the HomeView.

If the HomeView doesn't recognize a user, it will only allow them to perform basic tasks. And even if you are a recognized user, you'll need to have your recently unlocked iPhone or iPad nearby for the smart display to show things like your Messages or Calendar.

"Personal information only surfaces once you've been recognized by your face, and [if] your paired iPhone is present and recently unlocked," Costello noted. "We thought building on the contextual information and the intelligence, but also the privacy, was super critical and also very unique."

By tying what shows up for you on the HomeView to your phone, your data is displayed while you're interacting with the device and disappears with you when you do. As Costello explained, it's not "posted on or housed on the device in any way."

The heavy reliance on an iPhone or an iPad has additional benefits. Like you can on a HomePod, the HomeView allows you to hand off music, FaceTime calls and more. One of the device's best features is recipe integration in Safari that makes cooking easier. It's also powered by the hand off action, so you need that other Apple device to kickstart the process. But Dantas explained that Apple doesn't see reliance on your phone or tablet as a hindrance.

Billy Steele for Engadget

"It's not just dependency, it's also part of this ecosystem," she said. The HomeView's similarity to your phone doesn't just enable familiar apps, but also a familiar method of interaction.

Speaking of interaction, there's a reason why there aren't any buttons on the HomeView. Apple intentionally built it like this. I found it odd, considering the device is a bit of a hybrid of an iPad (touchscreen), an Apple Watch (square shape) and a HomePod (speaker), two of which have physical buttons. But Costello said touch input was always meant to be secondary.

"We always envisioned it as something that was voice first, then touch second," he explained. "As we [designed] the product, that's how we thought about it, so that eliminated buttons and physical controls."

For Dantas, one of the main challenges during the product development phase was restraint. The process of bringing a new product and new software to life was obviously a tall task, but the engineering team also had to determine which parts of Apple's existing devices and services to include and which ones to leave behind.

"We've had home products for a while, and we built on that foundation," she said. "I think it was really, really challenging to go through and decide what do we bring and what do we not bring [to the HomeView]. That was very intentional to deliver this experience that's powerful and that's simple."