This Week's Sponsor:

Crickets

The first alarm app for families.


Apple Teams Up with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric to Offer the Apple Home Collection

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple revealed today that it has partnered with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric on the Apple Home Collection, a range of smart home products including sensors, thermostats, cameras, and a smart lock that will be available beginning in December and into 2027.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

LG has developed a video doorbell, a floodlight camera, outdoor and indoor cameras, a thermostat, and a temperature sensor, along with a smart lock that supports Ultra Wideband for hands-free door unlocking. Schneider Electric will offer a smart thermostat and temperature and humidity sensors. Device installation will also be available through a partnership between ADT and Apple Retail in the U.S. for an additional fee.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Standout features include:

  • the ability of the cameras to pick out faces, animals, vehicles, and packages,
  • iCloud+ support for HomeKit Secure Video,
  • the ability for the indoor cameras to tilt down when a household member returns home,
  • adaptive temperature on the thermostat that adjusts heating and cooling according to whether someone is home, and
  • the ability to shift heating and cooling use (U.S. only) to when available energy sources are cleaner.
Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Pricing for the devices is as follows:

  • LG Video Doorbell Wired: $249.95
  • LG Floodlight Cam: $399.95
  • LG Outdoor Cam Plug-In: $299.95
  • LG Indoor Cam Plug-In: $199.95
  • LG Smart Deadbolt Lock: $349.95
  • LG Smart Thermostat: $199.95
  • LG Temperature Sensor: $39.95
  • Schneider Home Smart Thermostat: $199.95
  • Schneider Home Room Sensor: $39.95

The cameras will be available in the U.S., Canada, and the UK, with other devices limited to the U.S. and Canada.


The Apple TV 4K Gets Siri AI, an A19 Chip, and a $299 Price Tag

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple also updated the Apple TV 4K today. Last updated in 2022, the Apple TV 4K’s fourth-generation update is focused on bringing an improved surround sound experience to the Apple TV, along with Siri AI. From the outside, the new Apple TV 4K looks like the old one: a nondescript black box that sits under your TV, but on the inside, the components have been upgraded. The Siri Remote has been updated too.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The updated Apple TV features Apple’s A19 chip with an AV1 decoder and three far-field microphones. The A19 chip has a faster CPU (a claimed 50% boost) and GPU (a claimed 2x improvement), which may come in handy when playing games. The microphones allow a user’s voice to be picked up by the Apple TV despite background noise, and Apple says Siri AI will enable new ways to discover what to watch on the device. It’s worth noting that Siri AI is available on the second- and third-generation Apple TV 4K, too. Other upgraded specs that are notable include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple has also expanded the surround sound capabilities of the Apple TV. It can now be paired with four Apple HomePod mini 2s or second-generation HomePods or two pairs of each HomePod type. As for the Siri Remote, it now supports Precision Finding and can play a sound when used with the Find My app.

The new Apple TV 4K is a steep $299, which is disappointing but understandable given the update and 128GB of storage and can be preordered now in the U.S. and 29 other countries, with delivery and in-store availability on November 13.


Apple Reveals HomePod mini 2 with New Colors, Richer Sound, and Siri AI

As part of today’s announcements related to Home (including the brand new HomeView, which we’ve covered here), Apple also announced HomePod mini 2, an update to its popular line of diminutive speakers for the home first launched in 2020. The new HomePod mini comes in new colors, will support Siri AI in select markets with a future software update, has a new ‘Sound Glow’ top panel that intelligently adapts colors shown to match what is playing, and offers more integrations with the Apple TV 4K and Mac – all while delivering improved and richer sound compared to the first-generation model.

Read more


Apple Unveils HomeView: A Smart Home Display Powered by Siri AI

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple announced the highly anticipated HomeView, a Siri AI-powered device for controlling your HomeKit devices and accessing other apps and services like Apple Music, your calendar, Reminders, Apple Podcasts, and more.

The table top HomeView's screen tilts. Source: Apple.

The table top HomeView’s screen tilts. Source: Apple.

HomeView comes in two configurations, each of which is $299 and will launch on November 13 and can be preordered today. The first sits on a flat surface and has a domed aluminum base and a 7-inch Liquid Retina True Tone display that tilts. The base houses a downward-firing woofer and two force-cancelling passive radiators and the display has two drivers that support Spatial Audio.

The Wall Mounted HomeView. Source: Apple.

The Wall Mounted HomeView. Source: Apple.

The second HomeView model is meant to be hung on a wall, but the functionality of both is roughly the same. The main difference being that the wall-mounted version lacks the other model’s base and its woofer.

HomeView faces. Source: Apple.

HomeView faces. Source: Apple.

The HomeView features a series of customizable faces that are navigated by swipe gestures. There are faces for photos, weather, a clock, for example, which are reminiscent of Apple Watch faces. There are also tiles for controlling HomeKit devices and widgets for things like the weather and your calendar, which are similar to the iPhone’s StandBy Mode widgets.

As for apps, Apple includes a selection of their own apps like FaceTime, Music, Podcasts, TV, News, and Messages along with select video and audio apps from third parties. As a smart home hub, HomeView allows users to watch HomeKit camera feeds and control locks, thermostats, lights, blinds, and other compatible devices. Of course, Siri AI is a big part of the HomeView story, too, serving as a means for navigating the device’s UI, interacting with apps, and requesting information conversationally.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Under the hood, the HomeView is powered by an A18 chip with Secure Exclaves for processing audio and video data. According to Apple, Messages and Calendar content are only available when a user is recognized and their paired iPhone or iPad is present and recently unlocked.

Overall, I love the look of the HomeView and have been thinking about where I’d place it in my home as I write this. I also like the blend of concepts that draw from the Apple Watch, StandBy Mode, and widgets. My hope, though, is that the third-party developer story expands beyond the limited audio and video apps mentioned in Apple’s press release.

Preorders are live now in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S. and will begin on Thursday, October 15, at 9 a.m. SGT in Singapore. The HomeView is not available in the EU because Siri AI is not available there.

For the wall-mounted version, Apple is offering a $59.95 USB-C Wall Connector and a $79.95 AC Wired option, both of which are available for preorder now in the U.S. A Power Mount PoE option will be available in early 2027 for $129.95 in the U.S., too.


Apple Kicks Off Indie Games Week with Six New iPhone and iPad Games, Plus No Man’s Sky Preorders

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Today, Apple announced Indie Games Week, a celebration of some of the best games from independent game studios. To kick things off, the company announced seven big titles that are making their iPhone and iPad debut today or are coming soon.

Apple’s Carson Oliver, the head of App Store Worldwide, had this to say in the company’s press release:

Indie games are constantly pushing the boundaries of creativity to deliver unique gameplay experiences to Apple users, and we wanted to take a moment to celebrate these games and the teams that take creative risks to push gaming forward.

Sifu.

Sifu.

The games available today include:

  • Sifu ($7.99), a stylish martial arts fighting game where you play as a kung fu student out for revenge.
  • Vampire Crawlers ($9.99), a deck-building spin-off of Vampire Survivors where the dungeon battles are playable at your own pace.
  • Little Kitty, Big City (Free with $9.99 full-game unlock), an open world game where you explore a cityscape as a cat.
  • Dome Keeper ($9.99), a mining and defense game where you must mine for resources while keeping an eye out for enemy attacks on the surface.
  • Yes, Your Grace 2: Snowfall (Free with $4.99 full-game unlock), a kingdom-management game that poses moral dilemmas as you are forced to make choices to save your empire.
  • 9 Kings (Free with $8.99 full-game unlock), a card-based strategy game where you assemble your army for battle with rivals, managing troops and resources.
Coming Oct. 28: No Man's Sky.

Coming Oct. 28: No Man’s Sky.

Also announced today is that No Man’s Sky is making its debut on the iPhone and iPad on October 28th with preorders available today. Originally announced as a 2022 release for the Mac and iPad, the game has clearly taken longer than expected to adapt to Apple’s platforms.

For those who have been patiently waiting, though, the news is very good. The iPhone and iPad versions support all of the past updates to No Man’s Sky and will work on every iPhone from the iPhone 11 forward and the iPad Air (3rd generation) and later. The game will also feature touch controls, and both mouse and keyboard and controller support. However, similar to the game’s Switch debut, it will not include multiplayer, Settlements, cross-save, or cross-play at launch. No Man’s Sky will be free to download and try with a full-game unlock offered as a $19.99 In-App Purchase.

Dome Keeper.

Dome Keeper.

I’ve had a chance to play each of the games available today on my iPhone and iPad and it’s a great collection. What sets them apart from previous releases on other platforms is the attention each has paid to the unique features of Apple’s platforms. Many, including Dome Keeper, Sifu, and Vampire Crawlers, support Game Center and Family Sharing. By and large, the touch controls are well done, too, but I appreciate the games that offer controller support the most since that’s my preferred way to play.

I’ve had a lot of fun trying the betas of each of these games and am looking forward to No Man’s Sky later this month. There’s something great here for anyone who loves iPhone and iPad gaming, but be sure to check out the other gems Apple is highlighting in this App Store editorial feature, too.


Crickets: Bring Your Family’s Morning Alarms Together [Sponsor]

Getting your whole family up and pointed in the right direction every morning isn’t simple. Everyone’s on a different schedule, and schedules change day to day. It’s a mess that’s solvable with the help of Crickets, the first alarm built for the realities of everyday family life.

Crickets lets everyone in your family see the alarms others choose to share and, with permission, change them. So instead of asking everyone when they need to be up the next day, you already know. If you’re the first one up, that’s a superpower. Whether it’s a flight that got delayed in the dead of night or a 5:00 AM message from your kids’ school about a schedule change, you can adjust alarms without waking a soul. And it works both ways: when a practice is canceled or a trip departs later, anyone you’ve granted edit access can push your alarm back while you sleep in.

Crickets even gives you tomorrow’s weather as you head off to bed. That way, you’ll know things like whether you should get up a little early to deal with the snow that’s forecast overnight.

Everyone in your circle is right there on your Home Screen and Lock Screen, too. Plus, with widget and Live Activities support, you can keep track of who’s already awake and who’s been hitting the snooze button. You’ll see your morning coming together without even opening the app.

Each person in your circle stays in control. They decide which alarms to share and which to keep private, and they can grant or revoke editing access whenever they want. People can belong to more than one circle without those circles merging, too. That way, parents can be in a circle with their kids, but their kids’ friends circle remains theirs alone.

A single subscription covers every member of your Apple Family Sharing group, allowing you to coordinate everyone’s alarms at once, while keeping each person’s sharing choices their own.

For a closer look at Crickets and a more coordinated start to the day, visit cricketsalarm.app. And, for a limited time, MacStories readers and AppStories listeners can get 50% off for six months with code MACSTORIES2026. Select Redeem on the paywall and enter the code.

Our thanks to Crickets for their support of MacStories this week.



Our Favorite Indie Apps for iOS 27, Vol. 3

We have another collection our favorite indie apps that take advantage of Apple’s latest OS features. Today, we’re highlighting: Haven, Structured, Capture, Scrappy, and Fin.

Haven

Haven is a HomeKit and Matter pairing code utility by João Franco for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch that added Siri AI features this fall. The app is exactly what you want with this sort of utility because it makes storing codes for safekeeping fast and easy. Later when you need to re-pair a smart plug behind a couch or a lightbulb in a hard-to-reach spot, you’ll be glad you dropped the codes into Haven.

Retrieving codes is made even simpler, thanks to Haven’s Siri AI integration. Just ask for a code based on the name of your device in Haven, and Siri will fetch the code for you without opening the app. The feature works with both HomeKit and Matter codes and is compatible with natural language queries. The app also supports tagging and the ability to use Apple Intelligence to suggest a tag from among your existing tags.

In addition to the new Apple Intelligence and Siri AI features, Haven can track the home where your device is installed, its room, category, brand, model, serial number, protocol, power source, and status. You can mark items as favorites and add notes and attachments, like a photo of the device, too.

That’s a lot, which will appeal to the HomeKit nerds out there, but as a free download that offers unlimited pairing codes for just $6.99, it’s worth setting up Haven even if all you do is name your device, add the room where it’s located, and then search for it when needed via Siri. Siri AI is perfect for databases, and as anyone who is deep into the HomeKit world knows, a database is the best way to keep your smart home humming.

Structured

I had the pleasure of meeting the Structured team at WWDC this year. It was fun to walk through the app with them, learning about all their plans for the summer development season. But it’s been even more fun to actually play with the final product on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.

Structured is a day planning app with a beautiful and unique design that made it a finalist for both the 2025 iPad App of the Year Award and an Apple Design Award. I have a bad habit of overstuffing my workday, which is precisely the problem that Structured is designed to solve by visualizing your day and work on a timeline. The app can integrate with Reminders, your calendars, handle recurring tasks, start focus timers, and more.

As for Siri AI, Apple’s assistant can now assist Structured users with creating and editing tasks. There’s also a color prediction feature that’s in beta that learns from your past color choices to help suggest the color of a new task. Plus, Structured got a Liquid Glass update, which makes the app feel right at home among other modern apps without sacrificing the app’s simple design and legibility. If you need help organizing your day and want to see everything in one place, you can’t go wrong with Structured.

Scrappy

I’m always on the lookout for new ways to save random things I find on the Internet. I’m a digital hoarder by nature because you never can be sure when a link, image, or article that piques your curiosity will become something more in the future. The trouble is keeping these sort of bucket apps organized.

With Scrappy, by developer Steve Harris, you can save it all: notes, images, PDFs, links, videos, photos, screenshots, and more. Harris is also the developer of Keep It a notebook and document organizer app that we’ve covered on MacStories before. There are similarities between Keep It and Scrappy, but the thing that unique about Scrappy is that it’s much more visual.

The app, which works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, puts a handy shelf just off the edge of your Mac’s screen where you can drag items, and across all platforms, it feautures fast search and smart lists. Plus, thanks to Siri AI, you can search and open what you’ve saved and create and edit notes. There are filtering and sorting options, along with an extraordinarily long set of Shortcuts actions that make the app uniquely suited for automation. Scrappy also has a wonderfully modern card interface that takes advantage of Liquid Glass, and it displays previews of links, images, and other content. There are lots of “bucket apps” on the App Store, but Scrappy is one of my favorites.

Capture

Apps like Capture are a unique obsession of mine as the online world relentlessly accelerates. Capture acts as an inbox for text, links, images, files, and tasks that works on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, and Apple Watch. While you can store information in Capture long-term, it’s really meant to act as an inbox because the app has nearly 60 integrations with other third-party apps.

Capture has been building a deep library of integrations for a long time now, which I appreciate. It’s the sort of user-first approach that also made the app a perfect fit for App Intents. That integration makes it simple to find, create, and edit items with Siri. There is also an extensive set of Shortcuts actions, making the app a great fit for cross-app automations. Capture also offers creating, finding, and editing via Siri AI, note transcription using Apple’s on-device model, and a voice-based agentic mode.

Fin

Finally, I want to shout out Fin, the personal budgeting app for iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, and Apple Watch. Getting data into a budgeting app quickly and easily makes all the difference in the world when it comes to sticking to your budget. Fin excels at quickly recording and organizing your expenses in a clear, colorful interface that takes advantage of Apple’s modern design language.

With the latest version, Fin adds onscreen awareness that lets you ask Siri questions about what’s onscreen. The app also exposes transactions and accounts to Spotlight making it easy to pinpoint data in both. Plus, Fin lets you search, import, export, and add data to the app using Siri. There’s an extra large chart widget too. If you’re looking for a simple on-device way to privately manage your expenses, Fin’s a great choice.


Apple Announces October 2026 Event

In a post by Greg Joswiak on X and email to creators and media outlets, Apple has said it will hold an ‘Experience’ in Tribeca, New York on Tuesday, October 13 at 09:00 am Eastern.

Speculation and rumors have circulated for months that a home hub product is imminent. The latest reports from Mark Gurman suggest it will sit on a semi-circular base reminiscent of an iMac G4 and control your HomeKit devices, incorporates SiriAI, and uses voice and facial recognition to identify with whom it is interacting. There have also been rumors that a new HomePod mini and Apple TV 4K may be launched. The ‘Welcome home’ tagline of the event certainly seems to suggest the announcements will be HomeKit-related.

As always, MacStories will be covering the event, so stop by next Tuesday for all the news.