Apple spent years positioning Siri as the intimate companion tethered to your iPhone, your iPad, your $299 HomePod—a voice assistant so deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem that accessing it without dropping serious cash on Cupertino’s hardware felt like trying to enter a country club without the right last name.
Then Aqara decided that gatekeeping voice control behind a subscription to Apple’s lifestyle brand was absurd, and the S1 Plus wall-mounted control panel now brings Siri to every room in your house without requiring family members to carry around Tim Cook’s blessed rectangles. Announced at IFA and rolling out this November, the device marks the first time Siri functions from a fixed wall installation, transforming Apple’s precious personal assistant into something approaching actual utility—a shared family resource accessible to teenagers, elderly relatives, and guests who committed the cardinal sin of not owning an iPhone.
Aqara liberated Siri from Apple’s hardware prison, transforming a luxury accessory into democratized infrastructure anyone can access from a wall panel.
The architecture is delightfully subversive: microphones and speakers built into the panel capture voice commands and play responses, while the actual processing gets forwarded to a HomePod or HomePod mini for execution. You still need one piece of Apple hardware, but suddenly Siri becomes democratized infrastructure rather than a premium feature reserved for those willing to finance their digital interactions through Apple’s payment plans.
The implications are quietly revolutionary. Children can adjust lighting without raiding their parents’ devices. Grandparents can check security cameras through voice commands without maneuvering iOS’s increasingly Byzantine interface. The S1 Plus handles everything from climate control to doorbell notifications from Aqara’s G4 and G410 models, plus AirPlay streaming and intercom functionality—basically everything HomePod does, except mounted where people actually congregate instead of gathering dust on a bookshelf. The panel provides total awareness of every connected device’s status, eliminating the guesswork that plagued earlier smart home implementations. The hub also maintains compatibility with Matter and Zigbee, ensuring broad device support beyond Apple’s walled garden. Unlike Amazon’s comprehensive Alexa ecosystem, which works across multiple protocols and countless third-party devices, Apple has historically limited Siri’s functionality to its own carefully curated product lineup.
The timing borders on comedic, given Apple’s reportedly developing its own smart home control panel. Aqara fundamentally kneecapped Cupertino’s forthcoming product before launch, proving that wall-mounted Siri access was technically possible all along but required a company without Apple’s institutional commitment to ecosystem imprisonment.
The monopoly didn’t break from antitrust action—it shattered because someone finally called the bluff.
References
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YixR45ckyQY
- https://www.t3.com/home-living/smart-home/aqara-upgrades-its-s1-plus-smart-hub-with-siri-support-apple-users-should-be-excited
- https://www.cepro.com/news/aqara-s1-plus-control-panels-add-siri-voice-control-in-uk/623917/
- https://homekitnews.com/2025/11/27/aqara-begins-rolling-out-siri-airplay-integration-for-panel-hub-s1-plus/
- https://forum.aqara.com/t/siri-just-got-a-permanent-home-introducing-the-s1-plus-with-built-in-siri-synergy/153059
- https://forum.aqara.com/t/siri-integration-with-the-s1/153999
