Apple’s promotional film for the new HomeView smart display (“Welcome Apple HomeView: Designed for life at home”) has drawn unusually sharp reactions. The roughly three-minute piece aims to show the $299 device — essentially a 7-inch square Liquid Retina screen on a speaker base or wall mount, powered by an A18 chip and the new Siri AI — handling a busy household morning. Instead, many viewers found the production choices and the family dynamics it stages more distracting than convincing:
The most immediate complaint concerns the size and shape of the display itself. The HomeView’s display is deliberately small and square, closer in proportions to a large Apple Watch face than to the rectangular panels on Amazon Echo Shows or Google Nest Hubs. In the video, actors repeatedly lean in close to peer at it, swipe, and interact. This staging draws attention to how little usable area the screen actually provides for recipes, calendar details, messages, or anything else that benefits from readable text or a wider view. Critics noted that the production effectively advertises the device’s compactness as a limitation rather than a feature; tighter framing, smaller hands, or different camera angles could have mitigated the impression. One widely shared reaction put it more bluntly: the people on screen look as if they need strong corrective lenses simply to use the thing.
Hands-on coverage has reinforced the point—reviewers describing the unit as smaller than expected and noting that a square format forces awkward cropping or scrolling for video, group FaceTime, or recipe steps.
Beyond production craft, the family scenario itself has struck many as off-putting. The video depicts a chaotic morning: arguments over French toast (and its origins), a FaceTime interruption, someone hunting for keys via AirTag, calendar checks for evening plans, and general rushing amid barking and doorbells. At the center is a stay-at-home father handling cooking and household logistics while the rest of the family appears largely self-absorbed or lightly mocking. Viewers have described the father figure as passive and ineffectual in an out-of-control household, with the overall tone suggesting little mutual respect. One observer called the portrayal of this “emasculated” dad and his self-centered relatives disappointing as an attempt at relatability; others found the whole scene more like a pain box than an aspirational home. Additional commentary has pointed to the father’s lack of reaction to a teenage visitor arriving for the daughter before school, and to the general sense that the technology is papering over dysfunction rather than improving ordinary life.
There’s also the hole drilled into the table, which has not gone unnoticed:
"Introducing subtle table hole for HomeView" https://t.co/F0Q0jNCMXU
— Quinn Nelson (@SnazzyLabs) October 13, 2026
Comparisons have already been drawn to Apple’s earlier “Mother Nature” sketch as another high-profile cringe video that landed as awkward and tone-deaf rather than warm or useful. Same producer or team of producers? If so, how many septum rings are we talking here?
These reactions sit alongside broader product critiques that the video does little to dispel. The square screen is poorly suited to most video content (horizontal films/TV or vertical short-form), and HomeView cannot natively run Apple TV, many other video apps, or a full App Store experience. Certain Apple services (including Apple TV, some audiobooks, and Apple Music Classical) require an iPhone nearby and AirPlay or CarPlay bridging; third-party options are similarly constrained. Personal features such as private messages or calendars rely on facial recognition plus a nearby Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone. The device functions as a Matter controller and Thread border router, but its ecosystem is narrower than competitors’, and the $299 price exceeds many existing Echo or Nest options that already offer larger or more flexible screens. Reviewers have variously called it a “glorified clock-sized Apple Watch,” “nothing inspired,” and late to a category Amazon and Google have occupied for years. Some early hands-on impressions are more positive about design, multi-user privacy, and kitchen controls, but even those acknowledge the form-factor compromises and limited native apps.
Apple has long excelled at polished product films that make hardware feel highly desirable if not inevitable. This one, by contrast, has been called one of the company’s worst by multiple viewers — an assessment to which the visible production choices, the strained domestic tableau, and the device’s real-world constraints all contribute. The HomeView may still find a niche among households already deep in the Apple ecosystem, but the launch video has done little to expand that audience and quite a bit to invite scrutiny of both the storytelling and the product it ostensibly seeks to promote.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer, and contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, this video is ill-conceived and off-putting, but, again, at just $299, it’s relatively inexpensive to just take a flier on one and see how much use it gets in our household.
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If there is ever a time for an actual keynote, explaining a product; it would be when you introduce a NEW product category to market. The lack of the keynote on the product, now makes the consumer dig to find out the possibilities and potentials. Hopefully they create an informative video, and not a sitcom type video in use. Explaining all its features. What is coming soon. What the vision is. How it will improve your life. THAT is missing from this release so far.
Hell yes. The ‘launch’ this morning was an awkward series of web pages, released almost like tweets, showing us the product. I’m assuming someone at Apple Marketing F’d up, but this morning was very odd. This video popped up about 2 hours later, and explained everything that had be previously revealed.
If Apple wanted to be a presence in the home, why not show us it working in a demo home like they did in years past? Odd.
SteveJack, you’re nicer and more eloquent than me, but I agree 100%!
I bet $1000 not a single person in the MARCOM team at Apple that came up with this promo reel, ever grew up in a well adjusted family. Dysfunctional. Divorce. Single Parent. Drugs. Affairs. Sexual abuse?
Whatever the case, the technology was so overshadowed by the absolute distain for a functional nuclear family. It was absolutely toxic.
Instead of embracing an awesome healthy nuclear family that could use this technology that people would want to aspire to, they mock it. And clearly someone at the very top and marketing absolutely hates family because they might have not ever had one and they are jealous of it and therefore hate it. It is that obvious.
John Curtis should immediately can the commercial rewrite the whole thing and in two weeks come out with a new version in aspirational version of what a stable nuclear family with a husband and wife that actually say they love each other and kiss and hug before they leave to go to work would look like!
Even the funny – is not. It comes across as hate layered in sarcasm – because it is. Horrible Apple.
Do better Ternus.
Effects of Woke sensibilities !
Nailed it!
I agree the “family” is weird, but no weirder than nearly all TV sitcoms so I guess that is where the writers came from.
It is disappointing that after having spent years developing this hardware and software this is the video they came up with. You would think they had a clearer idea of who the customer is and how this will be used.
This is especially a problem for this product. As pointed out above, this is a new category which needs more explanation. Also, it is a complicated product which also should require more detailed explanation. Among the Watch, iPad, iPhone this is the first mutiuser product (save the Mac) which should require more explanation. It also intentionally interacts with many more third party products which should require more explanation.
This short video would be suited as a short commercial for something that had already been on sale for a few years.
Understand that this product is not for the people that read this site. This will resonate with its market and will sell well. I do agree having a little
More explanation would help.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one … perplexed …. by this. Apple commercials are great because they focus on using the product and more importantly, on how you FEEL using it. Instead I got to suffer through a chaotic family that this product did NOTHING to help. With slight tweaking, this would make a great spoof video on SNL. This is an utter failure of a device and in their messaging. I was going to just bite the bullet and get it because I would like a new kitchen speaker but then I found out it does’not even have access to the App Store and that just kills it for me. I could care less about home automation. WOW….i hope apple and their new leader learn from this shitshow.
septum ring involves is all you need to know they all ‘woke’ in their own selfish mayhem of was apple promoting something?
bad products decision. is this what we have to look forward to. you can move on to the next ceo now!
what is the use case for these products? what value do they offer that’s not already in the market in all sorts of ways. what service is bake in that is different from others. why was the ipad not just emphasize as the central device for this?
you have to been over and/or down, oh this is poor designing.
Forget about the “woke” family for two milliseconds.
What problem does this device solve that couldn’t be solved with an iPad mini on a stand on your kitchen counter? Given the larger screen, an iPad mini would probably be a better solution to the problems presented here.
“woke” you mean people that are awake?
mostly woke people are the people that use any device.
not too many people use a device in their sleep.
I only used the term “woke” cause others used it in the thread.
To me the family dynamic in the video was just plain dumb and unamusing.
No. We mean retarded liberals.
Almost all of whom have higher educational and professional qualifications than most other demographics.
Most notably the semi-literate numbskull Trumper Hoarde, who wouldn’t read this article or understand it if they did — let alone buy the product. Heaven knows they’ve never darkened the doors of a bookstore.
Yet you have the wretched, jealous gall to call intelligent liberals “retarded”. It’s the other way around, pal.