John Lockwood
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HomeKit will securely store videos in iCloud, explicit router support coming
Apple have announced a new HomeKit feature which is to provide 'free' video recording to iCloud for compatible security cameras. This is great news on the surface. The recordings are stored for 10 days, encrypted so only you can access them and do not count towards your storage limit.There is however a massive catch. The above might lead you to believe you can simply link it to your existing (free) iCloud account. After all if it does not count towards your storage limit then the fact your free account only has a 5GB allowance is irrelevant.Unfortunately the 'small print' says that you need a paid for 200GB account to allow using a single camera and a 2TB account in order to support five cameras. In other words you do have to pay for this feature.Whats worse is that it is not clear what happens if you have more than five cameras. I have already five (presumably) compatible cameras in that they support HomeKit and I already have plans that would involve adding another four cameras. How much would this cost me? The biggest possible plan is the 2TB one which Apple says only supports five cameras. This alone is going to cost me £6.99 a month aka $9.99 a month at least. This is if anything more expensive than the plans for non-HomeKit cameras.As a comparison Amazon's Ring offers plans for £2.50 for a single camera or £8.00 for unlimited cameras both with 30 days of storage. (Three times as long as Apple's offering.)Clearly Apple's Secure Video feature is not free. Apple may have strayed sufficiently beyond an honest description here to be guilty of breaking the law in terms of false advertising, or bait and switch sales tactics.
Apple's charging for iCloud has always been 'irrational' in that even if you have paid the Apple tax for multiple Apple devices you do not qualify for more storage which makes trying to backup multiple iPhones and iPads difficult unless you pay yet more.Now I am not saying Apple should simply make this feature completely and really free although that would obviously be welcome but I do feel they need to revise it to be a lot more honest. I would propose that they first stop trying to con people by saying it is free - clearly it is not and claiming it is free as mentioned could be breaking the law. Secondly they should revise the offerings, they should have say a basic level supporting one camera - presumably at the 50GB iCloud fee level, a middle level supporting between two and five cameras at the 200GB level, and an unlimited number of cameras at the 2TB level.This would then be fair, honest and competitive compared to other brands whilst still providing I believe a similar level of revenue to Apple.Note: Compatible cameras would not only include outdoor cameras but the new HomeKit compatible smart doorbells (with cameras) and of course indoor cameras. Hence it is much easier than Apple perhaps considered to exceed a total of five cameras.
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PSA: There are not (yet) any Retina-caliber external displays compatible with Apple's eGPU...
One of the problems is that Displayport 1.4 is still not available on Macs. This would allow running 5K displays over a single cable. Intel was believed to be to blame for this delay. Once Displayport 1.4 is available then PCIe video cards could use it like they currently do Displayport 1.2a. The new Dell 8K display uses Displayport 1.4, like the Dell 5K display you need to use both ports on the 8K display to a single computer to support driving the massive 8K resolution.
Due to the massive delay in shipping Displayport 1.4 chipsets from Intel Thunderbolt3 does not support Displayport 1.4 and hence even Thunderbolt3 cannot drive an 8K display.
Since Displayport can run over Thunderbolt connections it has a cascading impact.
Also contrary to what the article says, you can do 4K displays at 60fps over HDMI but you need HDMI 2.0 which can be done with some PCIe video cards and with Displayport to HDMI 2.0 adapters. HDMI 2.0 is however not able to do 5K displays, for that you will need HDMI 2.1 which it not yet available. Sadly it is still the case the Apple's support for PCIe video cards is appallingly bad, OS X apparently does not support HDMI 2.0 on the Nvidia GTX 980 card even though it does have a HDMI 2.0 port. It used to be that Apple could argue that a) the Mac Pro was discontinued and b) they never sold these cards themselves, however Apple have admitted they made a mistake with the Mac Pro 2013 and committed to a new 'modular' Mac Pro for 2018 onwards and this therefore is expected to use PCIe video cards. So Apple now have a need to properly support PCIe video cards again, although arguably their drivers have always been inferior even for cards they sold themselves.
Note: Where the term Displayport is used this equally applies to Mini Displayport.
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Logitech sees growth opportunity, seeks to build more HomeKit, Google Now devices
You are so right, especially as these days the overwhelming majority of AV devices - especially TVs have network interfaces as standard.polymnia said:How long until stereo receivers & TVs boast HomeKit compatibility? Logitech would be the designer of the remote UI and hardware. Apple would provide the common interface protocol to A/V components.
Is this the way (aside from high-end, professionally programmed systems) that we can FINALLY move to the promised land of direct query of device states and direct commands (and ability to confirm execution of said commands) via data connection.
I cannot believe it is 2017 and I still have a little computer attached to an IR emitter that tries to remember if the TV is on and what input it is set to, instead of just QUERYING THE DAMN TV!
Sadly the impression is strongly given by all AV makers that they still live in the 70s - almost pre-Internet, their user interfaces suck, they generally are incapable of offering software upgrades of even the most basic level and their using the term smart TV is an oxymoron.
