iOS Today 824: Home Sweet HomeKit

Uh, today we are talking about, uh, Home and the HomeKit.

I thought it'd be a great time for us to check in with the Home app after being away, uh, at least in, in talking about it for, for some time.

And part of that is because Apple has announced, uh, its rumored new Home devices that are both made by the company itself and then also what people are calling its second-party devices, which are made in partnership with LG and Schrader, I think.

Uh, we'll talk about that-

Mm-hmm

...

though when we get to it.

Um, so first and foremost, uh, let's talk about what's new in the Home app in iOS 27, and then we'll get into the, uh, the, the actual nitty-gritty of it all, of what Apple announced today.

Because, uh, Apple is, or Apple did roll out, um, some upgrades for HomeKit Secure Video, and part of that is a better [laughs] means of providing notifications and understanding.

So first, uh, for people who've used Amazon's Ring, you will be familiar with a feature that uses AI to better, uh, provide notifications.

Apple now does generated video descriptions with HomeKit Secure Video so that users can quick...

Excuse me, this is a direct quote from Apple, "Users can quickly understand what happened across a sequence of video clips, even without watching them." So, "Rosemary was seen on a podcast along with Myke Sargent," uh, would potentially be a webcam, or would be a, a HomeKit Secure video camera that was s- watching this episode of iOS Today in someone's house, I guess, would be the way [laughs] that would pop up.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you could also search in clips.

So you can type in, like, package delivery, and it will use the smarts to roll back and find where that happened.

And then it also has what is called noteworthy clips.

Uh, at the top of the search page, the Home app elevates noteworthy clips that users may want to review so they can quickly see important moments.

Now interestingly, the way that, uh, Apple showed that is kind of funny.

Uh, one of the noteworthy clips in this person's house was a mariachi band that for some reason showed up on that [laughs] person's doorstep and was playing.

I would also call that a noteworthy clip, for sure.

Um, on top of that, you have real-time notification updates, and the way that it works is that it kind of, um, takes notifications and it starts to send them to you, but then as things change, it will update the notification that already is there instead of popping up and saying, "Someone is walking to your door," "Someone is standing in front of your door," "Someone is moving their hand toward your door," "Someone is walking away from your door." It will s- uh, kinda pop up with the original notification and then just add a little bit of, uh, detail after that so that it's very easy to do.

Um, it is...

Oh, those are the, the two kind of, uh, big feature, um, improvements in iOS 27.

Of course, along with a f- higher price tag for some of this stuff-

Mm-hmm