StumpyBloke
macrumors 603
And it still isn't reliable. Screen Time across devices doesn't work, iMessages sync across devices unstable etc.
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Apple Pulls iOS 16.2 Option to Upgrade to New Home Architecture
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And it still isn't reliable. Screen Time across devices doesn't work, iMessages sync across devices unstable etc.
Automatic Home upgrade will be a thing in the future.
Basically this MacRumors article is about Apple setting hh2ManualMigrationEnabled=no (it was already set to 'yes'). hh2AutomaticMigrationEnabled also exists, but it has been 'no' ever since iOS 16 betas and I haven't ever seen it as 'yes'. That probably won't change for a while...
Surf Monkey
Suspended
Of course. But under Jobs the overall efforts of the company were more focused IMO. Craig appears to be one of the only remaining executives who still sees things the way Jobs did. But it’s all just idle speculation. The Jobs era is long in the past, never to return.
Surf Monkey
Suspended
Cross device data has been a huge problem for Apple for YEARS.
One of the longest standing issues: iTunes/Apple Music play counts. Lots of us use a bunch of smart playlists to manage our music libraries. Many of these playlists are predicated on play count. The idea that Apple proposed to us is that interacting with media anywhere means interacting with media everywhere. Great! How hard could it be for Apple to update your play counts in real time across all your devices? Isn’t that EXACTLY what iCloud was supposed to be for? Yes, but evidently the simple act of synching play counts across various devices logged into the same Apple ID in real time is SO hard that after a solid decade Apple still can’t pull it off.
One of dozens of examples of current Apple software and services utterly failing.
I upgraded to the new architecture and for the first time in years, I’ve had everything working seamlessly. I can now add devices easily. Everything is operational and clean. I have over 60 devices. Two iPod minis three large iPods three Apple TV‘s. I’m running an eero system with five hubs. It’s working flawlessly.
StumpyBloke
macrumors 603
I couldn't agree more.
A company like Apple with almost limitless resources, and certainly the funds to pay for it, it is amazing and so disheartening and disappointing that their cloud services are some of the worst available. In my experience there is zero reliability in any of their main services. Be it Siri, HomeKit, music, messages, you name it. They are all inherently unreliable and flaky and this is absolutely unacceptable. I mean Christ, they can't even get autopunctuation, grammar, paragraphs working correctly with dictation still, after all these years. Really is pathetic.
HomeKit is yet one more example of terrible management, terrible coding and non-existent priorities.
I have to admit, this is a pretty poor effort. I have two houses, one being my main house and one being a weekender. I updated my main house and had planned to update my weekender on the … weekend and of course now I can’t. So I had an essence lost access to my weekender because I updated my main house and the old and new can’t do-exist.
appleCakes
macrumors regular
If it is helpful, you can still disable HomeKit on Apple TV by removing it from home; under Apple TV HomeKit settings, choose the option to select a room, and at the end of the list is the option to remove from home. May help at least temporarily.
allapon
macrumors regular
I just restart HomePod this morning and add one user to Home successfully!!!
I will try another user tomorrow since my sister will go to work and won’t come back late. I will update the process later.
One strange thing after I added user is my lock Yale Assure Lock with August Home didn’t work on second user. I need to add HomeKit to August App again to make it function. Another device on my home such as Old ikea Tradfri gateway and Eufy 2k indoor pan cam and tilt work perfectly fine after add new user.
All OK here after upgrade so far...
I have 60+ devices (LIFX, Meross, Hue, Tuya, Ikea, etc.), 8 Home hubs & bridges, two discrete wifi networks so relatively complex. I also run animations so all the lights change colour in sequences for Christmas etc.
So it looks like it can work.
One thing I did notice and used the free Eve app to fix up was some of the devices still had old names on them as their ID so at some point in the past when I have renamed them the name update appeared on the Home app screen but behind the scenes the old name existed which then caused duplicates confusing Siri.
I have 60+ devices (LIFX, Meross, Hue, Tuya, Ikea, etc.), 8 Home hubs & bridges, two discrete wifi networks so relatively complex. I also run animations so all the lights change colour in sequences for Christmas etc.
So it looks like it can work.
One thing I did notice and used the free Eve app to fix up was some of the devices still had old names on them as their ID so at some point in the past when I have renamed them the name update appeared on the Home app screen but behind the scenes the old name existed which then caused duplicates confusing Siri.
Morac
macrumors 68030
I’ve been doing some more testing and found that HomeKit secure video (HKSV) recording will work after restarting all my Home hubs as long as the camera is always set to record. If I switch to Stream for more than a few minutes, then when switched back to recording, recording won’t work until I restart the Home hubs again.
Basically HKSV recording is worthless for indoor cameras as it stops working unless recording is always enabled. At least with an Ecobee camera.
I didn’t test what happens if notifications are always enabled (though the only option I saw were at home and not at home, not always). Mine are only enabled when I’m not home which is the same as when I enable recording. Basically if the camera isn’t actively set to do something on motion (either record or send notification), it requires restarting the Home hubs to get that working again.
Does anyone have a camera that is not set to record all the time, that will record consistently after updating the HomeKit architecture?
Basically HKSV recording is worthless for indoor cameras as it stops working unless recording is always enabled. At least with an Ecobee camera.
I didn’t test what happens if notifications are always enabled (though the only option I saw were at home and not at home, not always). Mine are only enabled when I’m not home which is the same as when I enable recording. Basically if the camera isn’t actively set to do something on motion (either record or send notification), it requires restarting the Home hubs to get that working again.
Does anyone have a camera that is not set to record all the time, that will record consistently after updating the HomeKit architecture?
I don't have it running via Docker, but with the method you linked to at the end of your post.Mine's working great on my Synology Homebridge Docker Container. Well, just as well as it did before, so:
Old arch: works 80% of the time
New arch: works 80% of the time
Oh...uh. Were we not supposed to update Homebridge? I'm already on 1.6.0. I'm using this version.
I believe DSM 7, once I upgrade, will actually allow a native Synology package from the official Homebrige repo and removes all the Docker stuff. But that's neither here nor there.
The last working version is 1.5.1, with 1.6. Homebridge getd stuck during starting.
Huracan
macrumors 6502
I just have a few devices under Homekit (TV, HomePods, AppleTV and a few plugs and lights (Nanoleaf, Eve, Wemo). As far as I know all of them support Thread. I did upgrade the Home architecture and didn't have any big issues. Only issue I found is that my TV said unresponsive. In the end I had to remove it from Home and add it again and it works well after this. Other than that I haven't noticed any big difference to how things used to be. Perhaps because I was making the effort of re-adding the TV I noticed more things I could control through the Home App when it comes to said TV set. I understand some people have had frustrating upgrades, but just wanted to share that in my case it went pretty smoothly.
appleCakes
macrumors regular
When the day comes make sure you first update every single device for family and whoever you plan to invite. No mixed mode.
twistedpixel8
macrumors 6502a
Are you sure that isn’t just the stupid scenes bug that’s been around since day 1? If I set lights to certain colors and brightness, and then tap “create scene” and select those lights, the scene is a mess. It only saves the colors of some. This bug has been present for so long that it’s 100% clear Apple do not test HomeKit beyond the absolute basics of turning things off and on.
Total disaster— glad I saw this coming and haven’t updated yet. Over 70 devices here and can’t afford the “early adopter tax” on this. Apple wants us all to be beta testers — it’s horrible.
Huracan
macrumors 6502
Well, how do you know it would have been a total disaster for you if you haven't upgraded yet? In general it is safe to avoid being an early adopter. However, in some cases this strategy leads to missing on features for longer than necessary.
Tell us more. Please. 🙃
What must be factored into this is that new software mixed into an existing platform makes that platform much more complex. One can't expect a swath of new functionality to roll out perfectly on day one, no matter how much testing is done. Real-world users will *always* find issues that weren't discovered during testing.
I don't disagree with you that Apple needs to do more testing in real-world situations, but it's not a "steady downward slide", it's just normal software development. I'm running 16.2 on my iPhone and there are zero noticeable issues for me, so that is an example of how they've done an excellent job from my perspective.
Was this feature available in the public beta, or was it released as part of 16.2 without any public beta testing?
Never? I don't believe that. That said, there might be a distinction between "point" releases and minor releases.
Version: 16.2.3
- 16 — (major) Manual installation mandatory
- .2 — (minor) Manual installation mandatory
- .3 — (point) Auto-Installation, usually around 2am-3am in the morning.
Morac
macrumors 68030
If you upgrade to the new Home Architecture you also can’t disable Apple TV from being a HomeKit hub as the option to do so disappears.
I was looking for it today and it was gone.
Sadly it’s not that 🙁 I did/do have that issue, so when I make scenes I have to manually change each light multiple times to get it to save, but I have about 10 scenes that had thankfully been working fine about 95% of the time.
Now with the update, the scenes stopped working. I had to delete and remake the scenes (again, remake 2-3 times for them to finally save as intended) and now it’s back to how it was…
I only have Hue lights and I’m so thankful that the Hue app works 100% of the time flawlessly. At my old house I had a HomeKit thermostat that was made by a smaller Canadian company and surprisingly HomeKit could handle that fine, yet can’t seem to manage multiple lights from a reputable company.
I feel like my University comp sci department could team up with whatever other relevant departments are needed and create something way better than what Apple has given us 😂
Surf Monkey
Suspended
Sounds a lot like apologetics to me. And the blatant issues are not limited to HomeKit. They’re also present on iPad (Stage Manager anyone?) Apple TV (the ATV App is buggy and has a horrible redesign under 16.2) iPhone and Mac. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Apple has been rolling out features of questionable value while aggressively neglecting core functions that people actually use.
It was said earlier in the thread. Apple needs a “Snow Leopard” cycle in which they fix all these issues and don’t add anything new.
