- New HomePod mini planned for late 2025
- Significant Apple TV update expected too
- Smarter Siri is coming… but it’s not AI
The HomePod mini 2 is definitely coming this year as part of Apple’s renewed smart home push. At least, that’s according to Bloomberg, at least, which has outlined Apple’s many plans for the coming year.
According to the report, (which doubles down on predictions Mark Gurman made back in December) this will be the year of “products [Apple] hasn’t touched in years”, including the Apple TV and the HomePod. New models of those specific products are currently planned for release “toward the end of the year”.
That’s good news, because both products have been languishing unloved in the Apple product portfolio: the Apple TV got a very minor refresh in 2022 and, other than some new (or re-released) color options, the HomePod mini hasn’t been updated since 2020. And this year’s update could deliver the one thing I really want: better Siri.
What to expect from HomePods (and Siri) in 2025
According to Bloomberg, the long-anticipated smarter Siri is coming this year in a new, “more conversational” version. Personally, I’m just hoping for a “less cloth-eared” version: on my HomePods and HomePods mini, Siri often struggles with very simple speech recognition. It’s a shame since sonically they’re still some of the best wireless speakers you can buy, but to say Siri is lagging behind a little in the voice assistance stakes it to put it mildly.
The results are sometimes funny – my dictated shopping lists sometimes look like I’ve created them during cheese-fuelled nightmares – but it gets very tiring to have to repeat myself so often, to correct misheard speech or to have Siri respond with a “hmmm?”
This Siri isn’t the AI Siri, mind you; that ChatGPT-rivalling one is still planned for 2026, so you’ll have to wait a while for Siri to tell you that glue is great on pizza, or that the first Wallace & Gromit film was shot on an iPhone 16 Pro thirty years before the iPhone 16 Pro was launched (both examples are real, and from Google’s decidedly hit-and-miss AI results).
The changes are part of a wider smart home push, as the smart home is an area where Apple has fallen behind. Other accessories are expected to include a HomePod with a screen, a wireless security camera and a Ring-style doorbell too.
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