Bloomberg: a bigger HomeView with a 9-inch screen on a robotic arm is planned for 2027 or 2028Bloomberg: a bigger HomeView with a 9-inch screen on a robotic arm is planned for 2027 or 2028

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter on 18 October that Apple is developing a higher-end HomeView with a screen of about 9 inches on a motorised arm, for release in 2027 or 2028.

This is a report from a journalist with a long record on Apple's plans, not a confirmed product. Nobody has independently confirmed it: MacRumors and 9to5Mac published within the hour, each working from the same newsletter, so it counts as one source.

What Bloomberg reports

The arm would let the display swivel through a full 360 degrees. According to 9to5Mac's account of the newsletter, the device would use voice recognition to tell who is speaking and turn the screen to face them, and its code name is J595. Gurman expects it to be sold above the HomeView Apple announced on 13 October, not to replace it. No name has been settled: he offered HomeView Max, HomeView Ultra and HomeView 360, which MacRumors calls "just speculative names for now". The newsletter, as reported, gives no price and no chip.

For comparison, the model that goes on sale next month has a 7-inch Liquid Retina display joined to its speaker base by a stainless steel hinge, which Apple's announcement says gives "a smooth tilt" for tables of any height. Turning it towards someone is done by hand. Its price, colours and the wall-mounted version are in our report on the HomeView launch.

How the J595 reports compare over two years

J595 is not a new name. In August 2024 Gurman described a tabletop device under that code name, with an iPad-like screen on a thin robotic arm that could tilt and spin, several hundred people working on it, and a target price of around $1,000, according to Cult of Mac's summary of that report. When Bloomberg previewed Apple's home launch on 30 September,we noted a higher-end hub with a 9-inch display on a robotic arm among the products still to come, with no date attached.

Set side by side, the two reports agree on the essentials: the arm, the full turn and the code name have held for two years. What moved is the date, by a year at both ends of the window. The consistency is the best reason to take the report seriously, and the slip is the best reason not to plan around its timing.

Our take

Anyone deciding whether to buy a HomeView next month should not wait for this one. Even if Apple has cut its target since 2024, $1,000 was more than three times today's price, and a motor, an arm and a larger panel do not get cheaper by being added. It is described as a second, dearer model, the way an iPad Pro sits beside an iPad, so the $299 HomeView is the one most homes would end up with regardless.

On size, a 9-inch screen of the same shape has about two-thirds more area than the current one (81 against 49, squaring the diagonals). That is the difference between a kitchen clock and a small tablet, and it matters most for the jobs where the current screen feels cramped: a recipe beside a timer, or a FaceTime call with more than one face.

The arm is the part APPDOOK finds more interesting than the size, because it changes what the device is for. The HomeView on sale is built to be glanced at from across a room. A screen that turns to whoever speaks is built for a conversation, following a cook around the kitchen or a caller around the table. It would also make recognition visible. Today HomeView identifies people by face to decide whose content to show, quietly. A screen that physically swings towards a voice announces that it is tracking someone, and how slowly, smoothly and predictably it moves will decide whether that reads as attentive or watchful. Center Stage already keeps people framed in calls by cropping a wide camera, without moving anything; adding a motor says Apple wants the screen itself, not just the picture, to face you.

The sign to watch for is software. Code for a motorised stand or speaker tracking in a HomeView update would move this from a report to evidence, as leaked setup screens did for the first home hub 13 days before Apple announced it.