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Fair point. I don't have anything like it at home, and forgot that; my bad. I guess it's already been an accepted fact to have devices constantly listening with high tech and highly sensitive microphone arrays. Enjoy the new feature, I suppose!
The thing is, all of the speech recognition is done on device. No network traffic takes place unless the device is told to do something.
A device that can silently and invisibly update its own firmware is not one into which one should put full trust. As for me, count me out.

As for fear? You should fear Apple. You should fear every big tech company, otherwise you're not paying attention at all. They are not your friends and never will be.

Ah, what am I saying? Apple would never, amirite?
It is one of Apple's primary marketing points. If they violated it, that would destroy the company. Apple's internal motto is, "Privacy is a human right." People all over the world connect Wireshark to their networks and look at every single packet an Apple device sends out. Apple network traffic is very clean. If you look at the traffic coming out of a Microsoft or Amazon device, you would want to burn your home down, just to get rid of them. Apple traffic is even more privacy centered than Linux.
 
From that article:

I'm on the new architecture and this section does not exist.
I updated to the new architecture (the first time). So I believe I'm on the new architecture (and the setting to update is not available). However, am I really on the new architecture - how do you "really" know? I too do not have a "Safety and Security" setting to "tap on".

4/19 10:12 EDT - so must have taken some time to "push" the Safety and Security. It showed up this morning.
 
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hope it doesn't respond to infrequent short chirps or low battery chirping.
 
Here is the thing. Residential smoke detecters need to be replaced every 10 years per US NFPA fire code. In my home I have 10 smoke/co2 detectors. I can buy and install a fancy $100 smoke detector at a total cost of $1000 every 10 years or I can buy $10 dumb smokes at a cost of $100 every 10 years The HomePod turns my dumb smokes into smart ones at no additional cost. I have one of the Kidde smoke alerts monitors already, which works well, but was discontinued.


Thank you Apple!
Or buy 9 dumb detectors and 1 smart one as long as they're interlinked (which you probably want anyway).

I believe the rules for my area are one smoke/co2 on each level, and a smoke in every bedroom. Mine are all wired together but they offer wireless interlinking as well. That way if your alarm in your basement goes off and you're on the 2nd floor, that alarm goes off too. More warning to get out if your furnace/etc decide to make life exciting.
 
Or buy 9 dumb detectors and 1 smart one as long as they're interlinked (which you probably want anyway).

I believe the rules for my area are one smoke/co2 on each level, and a smoke in every bedroom. Mine are all wired together but they offer wireless interlinking as well. That way if your alarm in your basement goes off and you're on the 2nd floor, that alarm goes off too. More warning to get out if your furnace/etc decide to make life exciting.

Good point. All my smokes are connected via a third interconnect wire.

Are the smart smokes compatible with the hardwired interconnect? Or are they intentionally incompatible to force one to replace them all?
 
My stupid Homekit compatible FirstAlert OneLink (it's terrible, don't buy) went off last night and never sent me a notification (never has, even though it's set up in its own app as well as the Home app) and my HomePod which is 20 feet away in the same room never alerted me either. I can't seem to find the setting to turn this on, but will try when I can.
My OneKink does send to me
 
I restarted my iPhone, and the "Safety & Security" option now appears on the Home Settings screen, but it's greyed out and inaccessible with no explanation as to why...

Home-app-Safety-and-Security-greyed-out.jpeg
 
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FWIW, I enabled Sound Recognition on my iPhone 13 Pro just after updating to iOS 16.4 and it borked the click sound for shutting off the screen ("Lock Sound"). It also disabled the volume slider on the Sounds & Haptics Setting screen... volume was max no matter where you put the slider. Had to disable Sound Recognition and do a hard reboot to get the normal behaviors back.

I did not re-test this under iOS 16.4.1
 
hope it doesn't respond to infrequent short chirps or low battery chirping.

That might be a good thing. If one has multiple HomePods, perhaps the HomePods can do some sort of time of arrival location detection, so I don’t have to stand under each smoke for 10 minutes to figure out which one is chirping because of a low battery.
 
I updated to the new architecture (the first time). So I believe I'm on the new architecture (and the setting to update is not available). However, am I really on the new architecture - how do you "really" know? I too do not have a "Safety and Security" setting to "tap on".
My iPhone has an updated recently section from when I installed my AirPodIMG_5669.png
 
Now if only my homepod could alert my smoke alarm when I'm cooking so it doesn't freak out every time I brown a steak.
Same. At least it is a lot better in the new apt as long as we don't forget the venting fan. Even with the one in the old apt would go off, and it was way further from the kitchen than the new one.
 
Mine was grayed out, but some minutes later when I went back to main Home Screen, there was a white banner to enable it that I had to click on. Interestingly it only enabled 2 of my 6 HomePods; the ones that are classified as being in bedrooms.
 
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Or buy 9 dumb detectors and 1 smart one as long as they're interlinked (which you probably want anyway).

I believe the rules for my area are one smoke/co2 on each level, and a smoke in every bedroom. Mine are all wired together but they offer wireless interlinking as well. That way if your alarm in your basement goes off and you're on the 2nd floor, that alarm goes off too. More warning to get out if your furnace/etc decide to make life exciting.
I thought this when I bought my OneLink... I have 8 dumb alarms and one expensive "smart" OneLink. Turns out the OneLink only sends notifications when it is the one that senses the smoke, not if it's triggered. Perhaps it's different with other brands. My OneLink never sends me notifications anyway though... Doesn't even show me in history that it went off last night (in that case it was the one that triggered because I have disconnected its interconnect line).
 
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