Can I control my Hive thermostat with it?

No, you can’t.

Can I use my Ring doorbell with it?

No, you can’t.

Will I be able to use Pocket Casts for podcasts?

No, you can’t.

It doesn’t have third-party app support.

So I can’t use YouTube?

No.

There is a workaround, though.

You can open YouTube in Safari and watch videos that way.

Right.

Will it work if I unplug it and take it to another room, or will it turn off and then have to come back on?

It will turn off, and you would have to plug it in again.

Okay, so what is it, other than just a slightly differently shaped screen for my iPhone that doesn’t let me do as much as I do now on my iPhone or, indeed, an iPad?

Silence followed from the Apple rep in the Apple Store today as she tried to persuade me that the Apple Home View is worth purchasing at £299.

My wife and I really did like the device.

We loved the look of it.

The build quality felt good, and it had that retro design of one of the earlier Macs.

The problem, as you can see from the questions I raised above, is that the Home View isn’t really anything.

It’s kind of like a fancy lifestyle device that you buy if you want to complete your Apple collection or, to be frank, if you’ve got more money than sense.

My initial thoughts around it were that it could be useful on my desk as I work from home.

It could play podcasts.

It could play music.

The speaker certainly sounded quite good.

And I could check things like the weather, have a desk clock and do some other minor things with it.

I wouldn’t be able to read the news, for example, because it only supports audio content, so it will show a few current news articles which you can play rather than read.

And I was left kind of perplexed by what this device actually is.

It’s kind of the best of no worlds.

It’s like an extension to your iPhone that takes away a lot of the stuff you do on your iPhone.

The lady did suggest that I could buy HomeKit products to replace my Hive and my Ring doorbell, which, to me, sounds quite ridiculous.

I get that Apple’s all about privacy, and it would be nice to have everything a little bit more private because, obviously, Amazon doesn’t fall into that category. But seriously, it’s like…

A very nice product on the surface, but the moment you start digging below, you start to wonder why you would’ve spent £300.

We left the store after another quick play with the iPhone Duo, which only cemented my view that it’s a very, very oddly designed phone. It doesn’t make too much sense in the real world outside of your home.

It also cemented the fact that it’s not only the price that would bug me, because I realised that if I had the choice between the iPhone Duo for exactly the same price as my 17 Pro Max, I still think I’d go for the 17 Pro Max because of the compromises of the Duo and the potential fragility.

So the Home View was out, even though I felt emotionally very positive towards it.

But until it has third-party app support, it’s a bit of a no-go.

Categories: Apple, Articles, Product Reviews