During the first days of June, Apple’s WWDC 2021 Keynote took place where the news of the next operating system is presented so that developers have time to adapt their applications before the final version comes out. All the new developments presented can be seen in this fantastic article by Applgilla. However, in this our entry we will review HomeKit’s new features in iOS 15 and our connected home.
We have seen some interesting developments such as the ability to add the key to our smart lock in Wallet (a little below you can read about this) but the truth is that not as many things have come as the users expected. In Reddit there are an interesting thread of collection of things we would like to see in Apple HomeKit… and we’ve been quite far away. Let’s hope that with the advance of the iOS 15 bakes you will discover interesting things and add some functionality that you have not yet presented.
I have to tell you that the photos are not mine, they are the ones that Apple has been publishing these days since only the first beta of iOS 15 has been published and it’s still a little green to put on my devices… but as soon as I mature a little and the thing is stabilized I will install them on my devices and I will tell you.
Timers through Siri
Siri brings some improvements to iOS 15. One of the most relevant is the possibility of talking to Siri without being connected (the typical offline users have been asking Apple for years). It’s not too relevant to me because luckily or unfortunately I’m always connected, at home with the Wifi or 4G and when I run out I take the Apple Watch with LTE, so the few times I ask Siri something and it’s not available is because I get uncovered or something… but well, we’ll see.
In iOS 15 Siri incorporates the possibility of putting a timer of the type ‘Turn on the input lights for 10 minutes’, although we can also launch a simple programming of the type ‘Turn off all the home lights at 6: 30’. We may also be able to get Siri to turn off the air conditioning when we get out of the house or something like that, we’ll see it as the betas go. The truth is that with this functionality we would save some automations, but you know I’m more in favour of making the house ‘react’ alone that we have to go to the HomePod or iPhone to interact with our connected house.
Secure Video now detects things!
Those with HomeKit-compatible home surveillance cameras may use the ‘Secure Video’ function that allows you to detect and identify faces. I mean, if we have the camera on and we’re being notified when someone comes in, we can tell him not to let us know if that ‘someone’ is our partner, children or cleaning staff, for example, which would only let us know if someone who is not identified comes in. This identification is made by the photos we have in iCloud that, as you know, identify the faces for many versions. It’s cool.
The case is that with iOS 15, Secure Video is able to identify more things like cars (if for example we have a camera in the parking lot and we don’t want to be told when our partner is parking the car but yes in the case of someone else parking in our square), pets (this is xD laughing) and also PATCHES! Yeah, Amazon packages for example… it really seems to me like a jock because the package is not going to come alone by magic, under normal conditions it will be a delivery man to put it on the entrance floor or something, so it will let us know when the delivery man enters the camera range as it is an unidentified person xD. Anyway, I’ll go.
s seeing as the beta of iOS 15 is evolving.
HomeKey
This is my favorite functionality and I’m waiting for the Nuki people to incorporate it into their electronic lock (though right now) Nuki neither confirms nor denies that it will be compatible in the future) It’s basically about being able to carry a key-card added to our Wallet just like we now carry credit cards, some point cards, plane tickets, etc. A few months ago, the possibility of taking the car key to the iPhone and the Apple Watch was presented with BMW, which is very interesting because in my case there are times I go down to the garage.
And I realize I’ve forgotten the key to the car at home… but the mobile or the Apple Watch is never forgotten! This way, just getting close to the car would open up and we could get it going.
With iOS 15 this functionality also extends to the home key provided the electronic lock is compatible. We can also use it in hotels for example, which have it easy enough to implement the system as many of the hotel’s electronic locks open by approaching the card by NFC, no longer need to insert it or anything like that. We’ll see how the system evolves, but I really want to try it!
Third party accessories will be compatible with Siri
Another interesting functionality that opens the door to the incorporation of new devices into our HomeKit ecosystem. I don’t need to tell you that there are not too many HomeKit-compatible cams today. There are actually many more compatible with Alexa for example. Even if we have Sonos speakers can ask Alexa for things through them because integration is exactly the same as if it was an Amazon Echo.
It seems that now the possibility is added that other manufacturers can integrate Siri, so we could have at home speakers compatible with those who ask for things directly as if it were a HomePod or an Apple device. I can’t think of any other integration because most devices don’t have a micro to ask for things and because I’ve already commented before that I like to automate things to just happen, but well, there’s the possibility and sure that makes it possible to have more HomeKit-compatible devices.
House at Apple Watch
Since I bought the Home + v5 app several years ago I have no longer used House in the Apple Watch. I find the list of accessories that currently comes out terrible. In my case I have a lot of connected devices, temperature sensors, windows, etc. I can spend a good time walking the list up and down until I get the device I want to interact with. They’re not even ordered by any logical order! With Home + v5 this is solved as, in addition to being ordered, you can mark some devices like Favorites and they come up to you, so you can have a mini-list with the devices that you interact most manually.
Well with iOS 15 this will change and the home app on the Apple Watch improves to order devices per room and with the possibility to create a list of favorites. This also makes me use House on the Apple Watch again for those specific cases where you want to play something manually without asking Siri and you don’t have the iPhone around (it happens to you sometime? not to me, I just open this list when I’m in bed and I don’t want to voice or take the iPhone from the nightstand).
Cameras on Apple TV
The House app on Apple TV isn’t that big either. I’ve always thought I should have your own functions, just like MacOS’s, which is actually a big copy of the iPhone. I don’t know, since you have a more capable device and a larger screen, it could include some other functionality that is not possible to manage from a mobile or from the Apple Watch. Besides, if you’re watching TV and someone gets to the entrance where you have a camera… you’re really gonna stop what you’re seeing to move on to the House app and see who’s in the entrance? I think it costs you a lot less to take the phone you’ll have lying on the couch and check it without stopping the
series you’re watching…
In any case, with iOS 15 the management of the cameras includes the accessories of that stay, which may be interesting if you see for example that someone is approaching the entrance and you want to turn on the lights (or turn them off to think you’re not home). In fact most cameras will do this automatically (the thing about turning on the lights I mean) or with simple automation, but well…
Compatibility with MATTER
I don’t know if you’ve heard of Project CHIP, an ambitious project that wants to become the new ‘standard’ for the connected home. It has recently been renamed Matter. This new standard is intended to be above HomeKit, Google and Alexa and simply create a layer that can interact with all of them, so any device that is compatible with Matter would automatically be with these 3 ecosystems. We will see if simultaneously or exclusively, that is, if you can have Alexa and Siri in c
and ask either of the two attendees to turn on the light of the living room… or if once the light of the living room is associated with HomeKit will become associated with that ecosystem and other attendees will not be able to connect. I think it deserves an entry on that, so I’m in for a little more detail.
I do not have too much hope in this type of standards that are compatible with everything. I don’t know if you remember a few years ago when we had Google’s HangOut, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, SMS, iMessage… the case is that each application had its own protocol and a standard protocol emerged to unify the 30 that there was at that time and be able to have an application compatible with any messaging system, so you could talk to whoever was without importance the application that was being used below from a single app. It’s a bad idea, isn’t it? Well, at the moment we have 31 messaging standards, it hasn’t disappeared any and the ‘new standard
r ‘has been left in water of drafts.
However, in the WWDC 2021, Apple said that iOS 15 will be compatible with Matter, so any device that is compatible with Matter can be added to the House application and managed with Siri in addition to being able to create any automation using this device. It’s kind of a HomeKit evolution that would make it compatible with many other manufacturers’ devices… but we’ll see, I don’t think Apple will abandon all the way and effort they’ve made with HomeKit to open up to any manufacturer however Chinese it is.
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