I Put Apple's HomeView Ad to the Test

Apple’s new $299 HomeView promises to be the ultimate family gadget: recognizing who's who, controlling your smart home and putting a smarter Siri to work. I spent a week with it at the center of my household, putting those promises to the test with three challenges—including disguising myself as the dad from Apple’s own HomeView commercial. So, does real life live up to Apple’s HomeView ad? Thanks to Mercury for sponsoring this video. Head to mercury.com/payroll to find out more. Chapters: 00:00 One week with the Apple HomeView 00:32 The wacky HomeView ad 00:55 What is the HomeView? 01:45 Challenge 1: Family Recognition 05:23 Mercury ad 06:23 Challenge 2: Smart home 07:44 Apple’s smart home fixes 09:49 Challenge 3: Siri AI 11:13 Siri’s problems 12:36 Conclusions, Apple’s Siri problem 📬 Our videos are free here, but support our work by subscribing to the New Things. You’ll love the newsletters! https://thenewthings.com/subscribe. 📙 Order Joanna’s new book at https://joannastern.com 💼 Want to sponsor our stuff? Email joanna.partnerships@smoothmedia.co 📰Read our editorial standards here https://thenewthings.com/standards ▶️ Subscribe here so you don’t miss future videos https://www.youtube.com/c/joannastern Who is Joanna Stern? Emmy winner. Pulitzer finalist. Professional asker of uncomfortable questions. New York Times bestselling author. Joanna spent 12 years at The Wall Street Journal making videos and writing columns before founding New Things. Before that, she helped start The Verge and worked at ABC News. She believes technology should work for humans—and that journalism should be fun. She is working on both. She also is the author of the new book I AM NOT A ROBOT: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything. As NBC News' Chief Technology Analyst, her reporting and The New Things content regularly appears across NBC's broadcasts and platforms. For Joanna’s full resume, see LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/joannastern Or on X here: https://x.com/JoannaStern Or on LinkedIn here: linkedin.com/in/joannastern