Oddly enough, you’re proving my point. Apple refuses to acknowledge an issue publicly, instead claiming they are “one-offs” that “Engineering needs to investigate.” That can work for hardware, because there really is no real troubleshooting or fixing a customer can do. Where this utterly fails is in software support, with the most recent case being the HomeKit debacle. Apple would prefer to substantially increase the response effort of customers (e.g., come to a store) and quietly pull the update than just publicly say, “We messed-up and will expend our own effort to correct it.”
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Apple Adds iOS 16.2's Home App Upgrade to Internal List of Major Issues
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Like crypto, smart home tech will become a thing of the past.
Smart homes just aren’t needed and are not reliable. Not everything needs to be “smartified.”
The smart speaker is a good example. After years of releasing updates and not making a profit, Amazon has decided to exit the market.
The same will happen with the smart home tech, just watch.
Smart homes just aren’t needed and are not reliable. Not everything needs to be “smartified.”
The smart speaker is a good example. After years of releasing updates and not making a profit, Amazon has decided to exit the market.
The same will happen with the smart home tech, just watch.
Expecting all issues to be sorted out in the next few months.
Is this your first software upgrade from Apple?
It has been a mess from day 1, and terribly limited with few devices supporting.
I'm not sure why anyone uses HomeKit....surprised there are this many comments to be honest. SmartThings, Google Home, Alexa... all work flawlessly and always have and support 1000% more things. Matter will slowly correct this to a point, which is good, because most device makers have abandoned HomeKit or never got on the train in the first place.
Sure. My Logitech cameras all had to be re-added. HomeKit secure video stopped recording events on all of my cameras (Logi and Euffy.) Automations involving Hue lights have become unreliable. The system chooses the wrong ATV to act as hub necessitating rebooting the incorrect ATVs to force the right one to take over again. Motion sensors have all become CRAZY sensitive so that all my motion based automations are constantly triggering for no evident reason.
I mean, I can go on. Those are some of the highlights. My whole system, which was working well before, is a disaster now. I don’t have a single HomePod by the way.
It’s extremely awful. The shared user function is broken. HomeKit secure video has not worked ever since the upgrade despite numerous effort to make it right. I gave up already. I don’t f**king care what Apple is going to fix it anymore. I just use the manufacturer’s app now.
I flagged a ton of them in the beta program… and then this:
Craig Federighi Admits Apple's Beta Programs Don’t Provide the Interaction and Influence Many Users Desire
Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, has admitted that the company's beta testing program, which offers...
www.macrumors.com
So it’s clear that Apple flat out ignores the beta program’s feedback.
Great choice… unless you use Logi cams that can’t be downgraded once they’re set up as HomeKit Secure Video.
Apple is absolutely clueless when it comes to the smart home. It’s not good.
Well, this just isn’t true. My smart home setup is highly useful (when it works) and I’d never want to give it up.
I think it goes beyond the Home team. There has already been a shakeup on the Home team recently. It kind of seems like they’ve set release date targets and they just can’t make them but they’re shipping anyway. They’ve set too aggressive a schedule company-wide. Everything is based on iOS and it’s getting out of hand.
They need a Snow Leopard year but every year that goes by fewer people even get that reference and it seems decreasingly likely that they’ll do it.
Siri is very dumb now. I’ll say turn off the lights and she asks what time I want to set the alarm.
I don’t mind hiccups, but every upgrade seems to take a step back.
Their OS’s have been notably more buggy post-COVID. In my opinion, pump the brakes on new features (all they seem to do lately is add more half-baked Siri crap anyway), and making a release date. Snow Leopard across the board for all the OS’s.
True... I just got my Philips hue and color lights last year when the pack got a crazy sale one day on Amazon... and having dimmable warm toned lights at night really helps you drift into sleep and relax... at least for me.. and they're nice also when watching movies, setting the light low.. (they remind me of candlelights except without the flickering and toxic smoke polluting the indoor air) them turning on and off on certain schedules and when I leave and arrive home is a nice and nifty bonus.. so is the Adaptive Lighting feature. I've very much enjoyed even just one of the beginning "steps" of a smart home, so to speak.. with smart lighting.
SO glad I waited and didn't apply this update though. 😬
I had a few issues after updating including adaptive lighting disappearing from my Hue lightbulbs and a Wemo switch duplicating itself. I managed to fix all but one issue. I have an Ecobee camera and if it switches from “stream and record”, which I have it set to do when I am home, then recording won’t work when it switches back to record until I power cycle all my Home hubs (ATV 4K 2nd gen and 2 HomePod Minis).
If I could just get recording working again without having to reboot my HomePods and Apple TV I’d be happy as everything else works.
I will say though that it seems slower than it did previoidly. Lights take longer to turn on when I ask Siri and sometimes my Home and Ecobee thermostat both respond, which didn’t used to happen.
If I could just get recording working again without having to reboot my HomePods and Apple TV I’d be happy as everything else works.
I will say though that it seems slower than it did previoidly. Lights take longer to turn on when I ask Siri and sometimes my Home and Ecobee thermostat both respond, which didn’t used to happen.
No diagnostic tools is definitely a classic Apple move. I fear for when they remove the port on iPhone. Diags will be impossible by the end user.
There’s an app that generates logs for HoneKit. I have no idea how well it works but it is the first of its kind. The dev’s other apps are solid tho, for what it’s worth…
HomeLog for HomeKit
HomeLog is the best way to track and find issues in your HomeKit homes over time. Log changes in your HomeKit accessories, track when a device is unreachable and Features: • On the Mac, you can log changes even when the app is hidden with our specially crafted powerful logging system. • A...
apps.apple.com
This is exactly my experience.
The architecture upgrade process was hideously broken - but finally once we got things ironed out, it has been working fine.
At this point I’d rather have a root canal than talk to Apple “support”.
After the Home update, my Ecobee camera stopped recording. I used the Support app to contact support and somehow got routed to the media department who didn’t know what a HomePod was. That person routed me to iOS support. That department doesn’t support Home, so I was routed to the Mac department. I was then escalated twice to an “advanced senior tech”, who from what I can tell did a couple of web searches and proceed to give me inaccurate information about needing to subscribe to the Ecobee service plan. Finally he told me to remove the camera from Home and wait and hour and add it back to Home. He gave me a link to contact another level 3 support agent if I still had problems.
Well I did so I contacted them again. That person was absolutely no help at all. I kept suggesting maybe he wanted to gather some data since I could reproduce this problem at will as well as temporarily resolve it. He wasn’t interested in doing that. He wasn’t really interested in doing anything. He was friendly, but completely unhelpful.
I rarely call support, but I did so a few times this year and that’s been my experience. No one gathers data and sometimes they don’t even call back for scheduled calls. What a huge difference a few years make as when I contacted support a few years ago, they always either ran diagnostics or collected data. Now they seem to be glorified wellness counselors, trying to make you feel better as opposed to trying to resolve the issue.
On A side note, I’m also convinced Apple doesn’t read feedback reports. Years ago, I used to get responses to them. It might take awhile, but I would. I haven’t gotten a response to any feedback I’ve made for I’d say 4 or 5 years. This includes reproducible iOS bugs which are still broken to this day. For example, Wi-Fi calling on a cellular model iPad with no cellular service stops working after a reboot. I have a work around (turn off calls from iPhone before rebooting). That’s been broken going on 2 or 3 years now. I‘ve reported it both through the Apple feedback app and Support, but the later refused to do anything unless I did a restore of my iPad through my Mac and not restore the backup. I refused to do that as it’s a software bug.
I have a work around for this, though it’s not ideal. Set up at least one camera to record all the time and then restart all you Home Hubs and pray the primary one stays primary. If your cameras get switched off recording mode, then it will require restarting all the Home hubs again to get it working.
This has probably been written about every new technology at some point. But I have been using smart home devices for nearly a decade now and I’m not going back.
It’s so much better.
This has nothing to do with smart home
technology.
Amazon is leaving the market because their strategy didn’t pan out.
People love Alexa and use it incessantly.
Just not to order things from Amazon.
Their model was that they sell the devices at a loss - hoping that they would increase sales at Amazon.
They didn’t. People use Alexa for everything - except buying stuff.
That is very different and unrelated to whether or not smart home devices are going to stick around.
I think the opposite, I think smart home technology is just getting to the point where it will start taking off.
But Apple definitely botched this “upgrade”, that’s for sure.
But I’m not giving up my dozens of smart lights, cameras, water leak sensors, thermostats, door & window sensors, pet devices, smart switches and outlets, etc etc.
I’m one of those affected and I only have a pair of HomePod-s and a LG TV. Playing music became a nightmare since one of the speakers is randomly off and I have to restart it on hourly basis, handoff from my iPhone to a speaker doesn’t work most of the time or when working takes 30 seconds, gapless playback is broken, turning the TV on/off from my Apple Watch Ultra doesn’t work anymore, my wife and daughter can’t command Siri anymore, and many other small issues with Siri I won’t bother mentioning.
I guess that’s WFH quality for you… Apple are such a joke lately.
I guess that’s WFH quality for you… Apple are such a joke lately.
My mains water shut off valve and leak sensors have proved there weight in gold on a few occasions.
On a positive note, it´s the FIRST TIME in the entire homekit existence that Apple has marked it´s status and bugs as a top priority situation internally (MAJOR ISSUES category), so maybe they really are going to do something about it now.
I wonder if some of Apple´s higher ups actually started to use homekit in their own home and were horrified by the results.
I wonder if some of Apple´s higher ups actually started to use homekit in their own home and were horrified by the results.