tvOS 17.4 Code References Mysterious homeOS

[wanha]

Maybe they are planning an Apple line of thermostats, bulbs, and other smart home devices.

I doubt those would sell in high enough numbers to make it worth while to a company of Apple's size.

That said, I would personally love if Apple brought back their own routers and I think that could tie in with their smart home strategy really well, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[wanha]

I wish they'd bring back some form of Airport and Time Capsule. Make it a fully fledged home control hub, it could be great. But guess they couldn't do it in a way that makes financial sense.

I agree 100%.

Personally I'd love a product that is combination of a wireless router, a screen to control the smart home, and a speaker in one, an Apple HomeAirportPadPod but with more boring, sophisticated name.

 

[Antoniosmalakia]

Let's hope they rebuild it all from the ground up.

I've just had a nightmare week getting my Hue setup to play with HomeKit.

I primarily use Alexa, but she's inside and want control of my lights from my Apple Watch when I'm in my garden/swim spa. The Home app could see my Hue Bridges, and then one of them vanished, and I couldn't see it for several hours, and then it popped up again. Now it's all connected, it works, but you can only individually copy (not sync) scenes to it from the Hue app and that feels so unnecessarily gimped, slow and unintuitive, and I can't help but think it's down to the "sandbox" limitations of iOS and iPadOS.

They stick their fingers into a pie, get everyone to buy into it, abandon it half-baked (Siri, anyone?), and move on to their next big thing. It's actually depressing.

 

[MacFarmer]

I wish they'd bring back some form of Airport and Time Capsule. Make it a fully fledged home control hub, it could be great. But guess they couldn't do it in a way that makes financial sense.

Ah this would be amazing. I wish too that Apple would bring back wifi router with airport, maybe even 2 bay NAS, and the home OS. Some kind of home hub.

I was surprised that I need to have device always at home and connected to use Apple's home automation. And I don't have any of my 8 macs connected and online all the time, all the iPads or phone. So to I can't remotely control my house. And I would need either Apple Tv or some speaker to have it working. TV is **** and completely useless in my country, and I would never buy apple speaker without it having an audio in line!! I am not the consume that is always upgrading and throwing the money. Speaker is a "stupid" device and should resist time and tech changes. And with this airplay, I would bet that it will not last 5 or more yeas before there is a new standard and this is not supported. And BT quality is *****.

 

[SBlue1]

Why not just use an old iPad that is laying around. No need for fancy new hardware. Just want to hang my old iPad 2 mini on the wall. Can't use it for much besides surfing since most apps stopped working. They require a new iOS which Apple won't allow on it.

 

[Valmont11]

Who is Aaron Perris?

 

[chrono1081]

I am sure Apple could really iterate and make such a device stand out from Google and Amazon - but smart???
Siri is such a deal breaker. I asked her to set a timer yesterday and she started my Volvo. Outside of the deeply devout, no one wants any Smart Home powered by Siri - she can't even find shows well on the Apple TV or really do anything right.

I have to disagree with this. I and a few friends of mine switched from Amazon to Siri because in the past two years HomeKit actually got really good. It wasn’t always that way but it is now (and is the only thing Siri is good at anymore).

One of my biggest peeves is how ****** Alexa is at parsing meanings. She can’t understand “Alexa turn off the Christmas tree” is the same as “Alexa Christmas tree off”, but Siri can. I also can’t stand the constant “There’s no device with that name” from Alexa when it’s right in the app.

Alexa took a nose dive the last few years and HomeKit leap frogged her in my experience.

 

[tkaravou]

Theory time. homeOS will be the next generation of smart home software for Apple. The big selling point will not be the screen but rather, the shift away from Siri and onto AppleGPT. The current HomePods won't be able to handle on-device GPT and this new gen will.

 

[joecomo]

urgently waiting for Apple’s version of the echo show 15 (unfortunately completely locked down by amazon)

 

[dabirdwell]

It’s not impossible that A 1.5B parameter LLM trained and fine tuned for Home/Vision and Shortcuts explicitly would run on an Apple TV. The last 4K models have 4 and 3GB RAM, and the A15 Bionic, with the A12 Bionic a step back. A dense, focused version of the Ferret LLM could run your house easily if it could access your devices, files, Shortcuts, etc.

In fact, it it might be the thing that brings home automation to the masses; just describing to your home how and when you want it to exhibit behaviors.

 

[DarthDon]

HomeOS sounds like a new wireless router.

 

[icanhazmac]

Why not just use an old iPad that is laying around. No need for fancy new hardware. Just want to hang my old iPad 2 mini on the wall. Can't use it for much besides surfing since most apps stopped working. They require a new iOS which Apple won't allow on it.

I bought one of these for my OG iPP 12.9", was going to mount it in the kitchen but my wife stole the iPad for watching TV.

elago Home Hub Mount [White] - [iPad Wall Mount][Homekit Mount][Easy Installation][Scratch-Free][Cable Management Included] - for iPad Mini, iPad Air, iPad Pro

The elago Home Hub Mount was designed to mount your iPad to any wall to gain instant access to your Apple Home app.

www.amazon.com

 

[KENESS]

I think a smart home device wouldn't rely on Siri as much as you think. I have a pretty extensive Home set up and I don't remember the last time I asked Siri to do anything.

Agree... I have hundreds of devices across three "homes" (not actually three houses) and although I do occasionally use Siri, it's infrequent. (And often mind-numbingly disappointing.)

A re-engineered Siri using ChatGPT-like understanding of common speech could have a lot of potential. And there are rumors of just such a thing.

But for me it is all about scenes, automations, conveniences and well placed buttons.

 

[alexandr]

Agree... I have hundreds of devices across three "homes" (not actually three houses) and although I do occasionally use Siri, it's infrequent. (And often mind-numbingly disappointing.)

A re-engineered Siri using ChatGPT-like understanding of common speech could have a lot of potential. And there are rumors of just such a thing.

But for me it is all about scenes, automations, conveniences and well placed buttons.

150% agree on the last part! And totally up for seeing how the second part pans out