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HomeKit Apple is asking me to buy a plane ticket to fix their HomeKit architecture issue **Update: Emailed Cook, received phone call

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WiiDSmoker

WiiDSmoker

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Sep 15, 2009
1,891
7,433
Dallas, TX
My main home is in Dallas. I live in London now. My GF lives at my Dallas home.

We updated all iPhones, iPads, Watch, Macs, and HomePods to 16.2. 48 hours ago I triggered the HomeKit architecture update. All HomePods are now stuck “configuring” two days later. She tried a hard reset (unplug/plug) and still no luck. She also lost her access to the HomeKit home. All 130 devices are offline. Lights, locks, cameras, switches, ceiling fans. All inaccessible.

I spoke to a Senior HomeKit Advisor and their only fix is for me to spend $1500 to fly to Dallas and back to fix their issue! My GF can’t truly do a hard reset on the HomePods because she lost access to the house AND only the home owner can add HomePods.

What the hell is this Apple? How do I make noise with this and get it higher up the food chain? Apple’s software quality is ****.

This is absurd!


update: Emailed Tim Cook two days ago. His team reached out to me just now and they are going to call me tomorrow with a hopeful fix and also connect me with some engineers.
 
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With the holiday coming up, why not visit your girlfriend and make them most of it.

I still don't know why she can't do a hard reset, and you have to be present? I'm assuming its related to your icloud credentials and so since she's living in your house, why not send her your password?

Sorry its so frustrating, but your situation seems rather unique. Not to many people live in two different continents and so apple's set up cannot account for that, AFAIK
 
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It does seem a fairly unique scenario. Do you or your GF have an extra Apple device handy at the house in Dallas that she could log into you AppleID with and complete the setup? When she's done you could change your password and have her log out, or even go online and directly remove the device from your Apple ID, if you are worried about keeping you personal account info secure.
 
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sevoneone said:
It does seem a fairly unique scenario. Do you or your GF have an extra Apple device handy at the house in Dallas that she could log into you AppleID with and complete the setup? When she's done you could change your password and have her log out, or even go online and directly remove the device from your Apple ID, if you are worried about keeping you personal account info secure.
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if we do this approach and change my password won’t that then now be an issue for HomeKit?

Plus I shouldn’t have to give my password out.
 
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WiiDSmoker said:
Plus I shouldn’t have to give my password out.
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I'm not trying to be coy, but there is an expectation that the home owner lives in his home. I get what you're saying, and it sucks that the update is all borked but there is reasons why apple wants to protect the homekit setup. I mean if anyone can and/remove items without the home owners password - that represents a significant vulnerability that people could easily take advantage of
 
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unplugging all the homepods (aTVs probably wouldn't hurt while you're at it), so they're all out at once before going back to plug them in, seems to help clean up weird homekit things (at least it used to). Having them all pull config from apple instead of passing them off one to another (not sure if that's what's really happening or not. but it does seem to clear things up)
 
waw74 said:
unplugging all the homepods (aTVs probably wouldn't hurt while you're at it), so they're all out at once before going back to plug them in, seems to help clean up weird homekit things (at least it used to). Having them all pull config from apple instead of passing them off one to another (not sure if that's what's really happening or not. but it does seem to clear things up)
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Doesn’t work.
 
have you tried rebooting your router/wifi also?

when I did the 16.0 upgrade, the HomePod at the house I'm also 1500 miles from lost it's wifi login info.
no one at the house had an iPhone, but as soon as I was there, my phone was able to share the wifi info with the HomePod, and it started working. (it's an empty family members house we're in the process of selling, have homekit for some cameras and basic light automations)


Can siri play music on those homepods? or handle basic requests like weather?
 
waw74 said:
have you tried rebooting your router/wifi also?

when I did the 16.0 upgrade, the HomePod at the house I'm also 1500 miles from lost it's wifi login info.
no one at the house had an iPhone, but as soon as I was there, my phone was able to share the wifi info with the HomePod, and it started working. (it's an empty family members house we're in the process of selling, have homekit for some cameras and basic light automations)


Can siri play music on those homepods? or handle basic requests like weather?
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HomePods don’t work at all anymore.
 
I had to Logged out of iCloud on EVERY device. Logged back in and with my ATV as a hub, I deleted the Home app on my iPhone and iPad.( I may have not needed to do that) Reloaded the app and was able to remove users. Wife then was able to be added back in and everything worked.
 
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Kenny99 said:
I had to Logged out of iCloud on EVERY device. Logged back in and with my ATV as a hub, I deleted the Home app on my iPhone and iPad.( I may have not needed to do that) Reloaded the app and was able to remove users. Wife then was able to be added back in and everything worked.
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How do you expect me to do this thousands of miles away?
 
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Like everyone told you on Reddit. It was a really bad idea to try to do this major of an update when youre so far away from home. Yeah it's bad that Apple's update didnt go as planned, but these HomePods are like 5 years old now. Everyone who owns them knows the updates have been a wild ride.
 
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WiiDSmoker said:
HomePods don’t work at all anymore.
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I think mine was stuck on updating also, but because they lost wifi, and were never able to update their status once they finished the software update.

the lady watching the house said Siri said something about having problems connecting when the top was tapped.

if they have an iPhone, have the person at the house open the home app near the HomePod, or even tap the top with the phone close by
 
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You could have her set up using any device which is signed in to your account…….. but that does open you up to snooping 😂😂😂
 
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It’s too late in this case, but I have an independent iCloud account I use for HomeKit, then share the home to my user accounts. Similar to how I never log into the admin account on my Macs.

If anything on the HomeKit network got hacked, I don’t want it tied to my personal account. In this case it would have let me share the password without much concern too.

Doesn’t help here though…
 
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Had the same issue and did this I just found on Apple Support forum and worked out!

1) Remove all homepods and then unplug.
2) Plug back in and after about 10 seconds push and hold on screen, red swirl will start spinning and say resetting homepod and to hold till you hear three beeps.
3) Do this to all homepods
4) Unplug apple TV's or any other HUBs that you have
5) Setup all your home pods again.

I did this and it resolved the issue and then plugged apple TV's back in. It is pretty poor that it seems that apple is aware of the issue and still pushing the update out. Thankfully I am still at 4 home pods, was about to add 3 more, but I am slightly worried since this happened on the 14.x update too and now this update. It must be something in their software that causes the issue. I would hate as I get larger house and more devices that I would need to reset, thankfully everything else homekit is through home assistant and so it is not affected, if I used matter and had to reset all my smart home devices, I would be very upset.
 
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Magnificent3 said:
Had the same issue and did this I just found on Apple Support forum and worked out!

1) Remove all homepods and then unplug.
2) Plug back in and after about 10 seconds push and hold on screen, red swirl will start spinning and say resetting homepod and to hold till you hear three beeps.
3) Do this to all homepods
4) Unplug apple TV's or any other HUBs that you have
5) Setup all your home pods again.

I did this and it resolved the issue and then plugged apple TV's back in. It is pretty poor that it seems that apple is aware of the issue and still pushing the update out. Thankfully I am still at 4 home pods, was about to add 3 more, but I am slightly worried since this happened on the 14.x update too and now this update. It must be something in their software that causes the issue. I would hate as I get larger house and more devices that I would need to reset, thankfully everything else homekit is through home assistant and so it is not affected, if I used matter and had to reset all my smart home devices, I would be very upset.
Click to expand...

Please read my original post as to why this won’t work.
 
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OP, I know you're frustrated but this is the price of going all in on tech sometimes. I work in IT, I hear it from coworkers. We find a way to use technology to update a process and it makes those processes much faster, easier & properly documented! Everyone loves it, until it's not working. Then everyone laments over how the old process was better. Funny how I never hear about how the old process was better until the new and improved one fails....

Either learn from this and build in a fail safe or waste time complaining on forums.
 
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