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Apple's Intercom Feature Works on iPhone, iPad, HomePod, Apple Watch, AirPods, and CarPlay
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So I have this set up, but, my phone only has the option of never.
My iPad Pro allows me several choices.
My iPad Pro allows me several choices.
If you have your phone at hand, you can initiate a Siri request via the side button without having to utter the word Siri.
It is? Are you sure? It seemed like it would send a recording of your voice to the other speakers. And it seemed a bit awkward when replying, having to say "Reply" first. I'm sure they tested a bunch of different ways of doing it. But I wonder if there is a way of doing it where it's actually real-time. Or maybe have 2 options to choose: the recorded single-message version, and then a version where it becomes a 2 way channel until you turn it off.
They show this working with HomePod as the sender or recipient of intercom messages, and all the iOS/iPadOS (and AirPod) devices working with it too (including an out-of-the-home device on CarPlay). So what if you don’t have a HomePod - will you still be able to use Intercom amongst your other devices? Or do they arbitrarily block it if there’s no HomePod on your network?
On real intercom you have to push a button to reply. This is no different.
for HomePod it is not recorded though. It is the records when you try to listen to the message on iPhone.
Social distancing was already a thing in our house for years
.Excited to pick up 5 of these and a regular HomePod for the living room.
No we are reviving NuTone home intercoms, a staple of a suburban mansion up until smartphones became a thing.
Seems like you could kind of do this already with Siri and audio iMessage, for the personal device part of it. The homepod to homepod function is more unique (and it’s good it extends out to personal devices), but it would be missing out on a lot of usefulness if you can’t choose to enter into a real time conversation, like a real intercom. If both people have to preface every message with “hey Siri respond”, then wait for her to understand, then send, then recipient has to manually play it, then the conversation will get very cumbersome very quickly and will be no different than a voice iMessage conversation. It would then only be useful for one or two messages. Whereas a real intercom is more like a walkie talkie and useful for actual conversations. But maybe there’s some technical limitation that prevents this functionality.
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Does the recipient have to accept and play the message? If so then it is different. Real time means the recipient hears the message at the same time that you speak it, which is what real intercoms do. I’m hoping that’s what this does, otherwise it’s just an audio iMessage conversation via Siri which already exists.
No it’s not. It sends the audio the same way you can send a voice clip in iMessage. That’s not real time. It’s quick, but not real-time.
I know in iOS 14 Dictation is processed on-device, and I think that might be the case for Siri, too. So the actual speech recognition is already on-device.
It’s not real time. It’s recorded and played back exactly like Google broadcast.
if people pay attention to the demo, you’ll see it broadcasts the audio automatically, you don’t have to accept it. But it’s not real time. It’s sending audio the same as sending a voice clip via iMessage but the difference being is it auto plays that message. It’s not real-time Audio.
My BF and I do as well. His office is in the house next door and it really comes in handy. The examples were all "tell everyone", but that makes me think there is a "tell someone" mode that will work with the U1 chip to only message the room/location/device needed to talk to that person.
I also think that is a precursor to two-way conversations (one-to-one is easier to implement).
Ah ok, then that should be somewhat useful, though not as useful as real time intercoms (also walkie talkies). Having the delay of having to finish your message before it sends and plays on the other end impedes on the flow of conversation. Also I assume all that voice data has to be sent to Apple then back to one’s home. It would be great if it could never leave the home.
Of course even more cool and ideal would an option to go into a phone-like conversation where you can not only hear speaking real time but you can talk over each other, like the person is in the room with you, until you say “hey Siri end call” or something. And none of this data would be sent to Apple or a phone carrier ideally.
Yeah I’m still unclear how some of this works. Can’t wait until we can test this out. Though I probably won’t be able to test out any feature that depends on the U1 chip as I have regular homepods and don’t plan on getting minis. Maybe one, we’ll see.
