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iOS 26 Code Leak Reveals Apple Smart Home Hub Details
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Having just installed 2 dozen hue downlights to the existing hue collection, a screen on the wall to control scenes and individual lights would be great.
Pricing? Bet it is at least 500, and it will basically be a portal to Google and Microsofts Ai as we now know that is what is running Apples Ai now.
From what I have seen Home Assistant and doing it yourself is still the best and certainly most secure way for home automation. Everything can be run locally then. Will be interesting what this will do with no internet, can you still turn your lights on for example?
From what I have seen Home Assistant and doing it yourself is still the best and certainly most secure way for home automation. Everything can be run locally then. Will be interesting what this will do with no internet, can you still turn your lights on for example?
Dead on Arrival...
Please add multi profile feature to iPad and be done with it.
Please add multi profile feature to iPad and be done with it.
This device will either be a huge success or a huge failure, no in between
They already are. I’m pissed I bought 2 to get around it. So stupid.
Looking forward to seeing this new product along with the rumored Apple security camera. Think it will launch at WWDC. Hopefully these new products are available worldwide from day one itself.
Tell me a joke!
- Siri
Tell me another one!
- Apple intelligence 😂
- Siri
Tell me another one!
- Apple intelligence 😂
Well provisioned, with a decent sized LLM backing it, but running locally with say 128GB RAM and a chunky NPU. So that it was entirely home based with zero taking back to the mother-ship, this would have been ok.
I am personally less happy with the thought google get eyes into everyone's home.
I am personally less happy with the thought google get eyes into everyone's home.
Agree on HomeAssistant. I love it but it does require some in-depth knowledge to deal with some integrations or to customize the UI. I can see that being a bridge too far for many average consumers. Most won’t want to “tinker” with it, and that’s understandable.
But it does have some advantages such as the local operation you mentioned, UI can be customized how you want, UI is easily shared and accessible via app or plain web browser, easily use devices in automations to suit your needs (example: the power strip feeding my 3d printer setup gets disconnected from power automatically 2 minutes after the end of the print job), and the ability to integrate devices that support multiple communication standards, including some older ones (no need to buy replacements due to evolving smart home tech until the devices die or you just want to).
It's a mad mad place, something not even officially announced yet is getting hate and being wrote off...i call this MacMoaners more than MacRumors.
I don’t even bother reading the comments these days. I don’t think some of these people even own a single Apple product.
Oh, and posts like “nobody asked for this” are just rage bait. I asked for it.
Aaaaand . . . That’s why Apple has dragged their feet on iPad user profiles.
We ended up just having a "family" iPad, with an attached generic family apple account.
Some things I get, but this one I'm a little surprised to see the pushback on. It seems alright?
It's not for me as I'm in a mixed Android/Apple (mostly Windows and Android) household, but for all Apple homes, sure.
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I mean, nine HomePods? For that cost, you could buy a fantastic turntable like a Technics and enjoy amazing vinyl sound. I’m just speechless… nine HomePods!
Personally, I am just indifferent to this as I am all of its predecessors such as Google Home Hub, etc.
Sincerely, are you able to tell me what is exciting about this? I honestly feel a little screen/camera fatigue at this point.
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I'm not sure it'll be as long as WWDC. I'm thinking a smart home focussed event in March that Apple uses as a statement of intent that it's making bolder moves into this market. Such an event could include this new product plus the long-rumoured HomePod Mini and Apple TV updates (the latter being an option for a powerful AI-enabled home hub to keep as much stuff local as possible) and the new Siri . New Siri being ready is I suspect what is delaying these other product announcements. Perhaps doing all of that at WWDC might be the fallback position if new Siri slips still further but I'm really hoping that the spring timescale will hold.
I do think there is also a very good chance that a new security camera will also be announced at the event and I am also hoping that a FaceID doorbell might be in the mix as well. Announcing a whole slew of new and updated products all in one event would be a pretty powerful statement of intent in terms of Apple and the smart home and the ability to do most of the stuff locally plus Apple's reputation for protecting user privacy would be good differentiators for Apple vs the competition.
I think it’s just the fact that in order to approach what people do with voice assistants like Alexa or Google, people assume Apple will have to rely on Siri. Siri is a somehow bigger joke now than it was when it was new.
One thing this might have, or at least I hope it has, that would almost certainly differentiate it from an iPad with attached high quality speaker is the quality of the microphone array. I have used both Nest and Echo display devices and even though they have displays to show me results my input method is almost invariably by voice commands. I think some people underestimate how important the quality and reliability of recognising the wake word and accurately hearing what the user subsequently says is to the overall user experience.
For an iPad or iPhone it is far more likely (pretty much inevitable) that the user is going to be within less than a metre from their device and probably closer when they talk to it and if they know they are in a noisy environment most people I've seen will lean in a bit so that the device can hear what they are saying.
Even with a device like the one being discussed here, a HomePod with a display, there will still be setups where it will be the only HomePod in a room so someone might want to talk to it across a room, maybe with the TV playing in the background, to say stuff like "Siri, dim the lights" or "Siri, when is Jack due to arrive?" or "Siri, what time do I have to leave for my doctor's appointment?" or whatever. Would simply putting an iPad on a stand in the corner of a room have a good enough microphone setup to be able to handle those sort of interactions at 3/4/5 metre distances without the user having to shout at it? I suspect not.
Responsiveness to the wake word, even when spoken softly in a somewhat noisy environment, is pretty much the first thing I judge any smart-speaker based system on for smart speaker devices with or without a display. It's the main reason I now use Amazon rather than Nest devices despite Google Assistant still being way smarter than Alexa. That is also the reason, if Apple delivers high quality hardware (good audio quality for the size and good mic arrays in all of its HomePod products), why I plan to move to Apple devices as long as the new improved Siri turns out to at least be a match for Amazon Alexa and ideally as good or better than Google Assistant.
For an iPad or iPhone it is far more likely (pretty much inevitable) that the user is going to be within less than a metre from their device and probably closer when they talk to it and if they know they are in a noisy environment most people I've seen will lean in a bit so that the device can hear what they are saying.
Even with a device like the one being discussed here, a HomePod with a display, there will still be setups where it will be the only HomePod in a room so someone might want to talk to it across a room, maybe with the TV playing in the background, to say stuff like "Siri, dim the lights" or "Siri, when is Jack due to arrive?" or "Siri, what time do I have to leave for my doctor's appointment?" or whatever. Would simply putting an iPad on a stand in the corner of a room have a good enough microphone setup to be able to handle those sort of interactions at 3/4/5 metre distances without the user having to shout at it? I suspect not.
Responsiveness to the wake word, even when spoken softly in a somewhat noisy environment, is pretty much the first thing I judge any smart-speaker based system on for smart speaker devices with or without a display. It's the main reason I now use Amazon rather than Nest devices despite Google Assistant still being way smarter than Alexa. That is also the reason, if Apple delivers high quality hardware (good audio quality for the size and good mic arrays in all of its HomePod products), why I plan to move to Apple devices as long as the new improved Siri turns out to at least be a match for Amazon Alexa and ideally as good or better than Google Assistant.
Yes, if Apple can provide a quality easy to use system that STILL just works if the internet goes down, it could be worth a look. Home Assistant is powerful but can be complex and in depth.