Apple confirms something new is coming this week, and it could provide competition for Amazon and Google

A little over a month after unwrapping its first-ever foldable phone, Apple is poised to launch another all-new product never before seen on the shelves of an Apple Store. The £3.7 trillion company has sent out invites to a launch event on October 13 in New York City. To drum-up excitement for the event, Greg Joswiak, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, shared a short video showing the company's iconic logo being embroidered on social media. Interestingly, Apple is using its traditional rainbow logo, used between the 1970s and late 90s, a throwback its Macintosh days, which has some people wondering whether there's something retro planned for the event. It also includes the cryptic tagline 'Welcome Home', which seemingly nods to rumours about what the secretive company has up its sleeve. According to widespread rumours, Apple will debut three new gadgets designed to make your home smarter. First up, whispers point to an all-new device that combines its HomePod smart speaker, first launched back in early 2018, with an iPad mini-like screen. This will compete head-to-head with the likes of an Amazon Echo Show or Google Nest Hub, digital photo frames that include hands-free access to an AI assistant to queue up your favourite tracks, playlists, and podcasts. These gadgets serve as the nerve centre for your smart home, letting you control smart lightbulbs, thermostats, and check on video doorbells. Timers, reminders, and calendar appointments appear on the touchscreen display, providing more information at a glance than you'll get from a speaker design, like an Amazon Echo, Google Nest mini, or Apple's own HomePod mini. Amazon and Google both include front-facing cameras with some of their Echo Show models, so you can make video calls. You can also stream video content, including step-by-step cooking instructions or must-binge boxsets. Dubbed HomePad — a portmanteau of HomePod and iPad — in most of the rumours, this device will put the newly-rebooted Siri AI front and centre. With access to personal details from your text messages, emails, calendar appointments, and notes, coupled with up-to-date real-world knowledge, and ChatGPT-like reasoning powers, this capable Artificial Intelligence (AI) will help you to recall important details and coordinate your life. - With so much concern about AI, should you trust Siri to access everything stored on your iPhone? You'll also be able to use Siri AI to control your lights, central heating, blinds, and security cameras, to name just a few. Photos can be displayed from your existing library, and you'll be able to join FaceTime calls with friends and family — helpful if your hands are busy cooking or cleaning, for example. ### LATEST DEVELOPMENTS - Lifeline for Sky Q viewers as satellite dishes won't stop working in 2029 - iPhone 18 Pro review - Paramount+ and HBO Max to be combined into a single streamer - Vodafone throws down the gauntlet to Sky with a new TV box and £10 price - Samsung's new AirTag rival works with your iPhone - Your Disney+ is getting more expensive after the fourth price hike in just 4 years According to the oft-reliable Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, Apple's one-stop-shop smart home device will be able to recognise multiple people and adjust what's shown on-screen, including photographs and calendar appointments. The software will borrow iPad-like full-screen applications, Apple Watch-like icons, and widgets like those displayed on an iPhone when in standby mode at night. Sources speaking to Bloomberg suggest the design will be very different to what we've seen from Google and Amazon. It won't look like a photo frame. Instead, it will be closer to the iMac G4, with a six-inch touchscreen display — square-shaped, rather than a more traditional rectangular one — with a half-dome base that houses the speaker drivers and an adjustable metal arm connecting the two. Apple will sell a variant that can be wall-mounted. Next up, an updated Apple TV 4K. This streaming set-top box hasn't seen an update since 2022, so it's definitely overdue for one. This new box competes with the latest Fire TV Stick 4K, which was rebooted with a slimmer design, faster internals, and smarter AI capabilities with Alexa+ in a refresh at the end of last month. Expect a faster processor, which could unlock console-quality video games on the big screen, and access to Siri AI to control smart home devices, make appointments and reminders, send messages and much more. This would mark the first time that Apple Intelligence features are built into the Apple TV 4K. In the current iteration, which starts from £199 and maxes out at £249, Siri can also be used to search across all of the streaming services on your set-top box, including the likes of Disney+, Paramount+, Netflix, Prime Video, and Apple TV. Of course, GB News has its own Apple TV app too. It lets you stream live broadcasts or catch-up on shows, watch exclusive documentaries, and unmissable clips. Playback is synchronised across your iPhone and iPad too. Lastly, HomePod mini 2 will be the final new product announced at the 'Welcome Home' event, according to those with knowledge of Apple's plans. This compact smart speaker — a smaller version of its £349 HomePod — costs £129 and is available in a choice of five vibrant colourways. The new shades will be Pink, White, Green, Blue, or Black. Like the Apple TV 4K, the big change will be a new system-on-a-chip that's much faster than the current model, which uses the S5 silicon that debuted with the Apple Watch Series 5 back in September 2019, that can unlock support for Siri AI. Whether you choose the refreshed Apple TV 4K, HomePod mini 2, or all-new HomePad, these new devices will let you control a swathe of household gadgets with hands-free voice commands, tap into the vast library of photos already stored in your iCloud, or make calls via FaceTime without your iPhone nearby. If you've already invested in several Apple products and services, these new gadgets should prove a popular way to make your smart home smarter. It also provides fresh competition to Amazon and Google, which have gone largely unchallenged in this space for some time. Earlier this year, Amazon confirmed that it had sold more than 600 million devices capable of supporting Alexa+ worldwide, so this is a popular product category. GBN Tech will be in the audience of the 'Welcome Home' event on October 13, so stay tuned for the latest news and analysis about Apple's rumoured entry into the smart home space. Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter