Apple to push new and refreshed home hardware across 2025

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in Future Apple Hardware

Apple's work to create its own networking chips will lead to updated and new home products, including an updated Apple TV 4K, HomePod mini, and more.

Wall-mounted modern security camera with sleek design, featuring a rectangular lens against a beige background and a partial view of the sky.
Netatmo and other home security cameras are already compatible with HomeKit Secure Video -- image credit: Netatmo



As AppleInsider has previously reported, the company has developed its own wireless networking chip, called Proxima, that would replace networking technology currently supplied by Broadcom. The chips will debut in updated home products across 2025.

In addition to connecting new and updated devices to an existing home network, the Proxima chip could potentially serve as a wireless access point itself, according to Bloomberg. The company plans to use the chip in both new and refreshed home devices, possibly including its own line of security cameras.

The chip will also be used in future iPhone and Mac models, but its potential Airport-like networking functions would be employed primarily for home products, including a reported smart lock doorbell that incorporates Face ID.

More home security and control



For years, Apple has supported leveraging iCloud to store video footage from compatible home security cameras via a feature called HomeKit Secure Video. The purpose of the feature was to save Apple users money by offering additional storage for home security video as part of their iCloud subscription, rather than having to pay expensive third-party hosting services.

Users who pay for the 200GB level of iCloud storage can store up to 10 days worth of encrypted security footage from up to five supported cameras without counting against their storage limit. Likewise, 2TB iCloud subscribers can store up to 10 days of recordings from an unlimited number of cameras.

A number of third-party home security cameras already support HomeKit Secure Video, and Apple may choose to release its own branded security cameras as soon as late 2025.

A long-rumored "smart home hub" control device, which is likely to be announced at the annual WWDC event in June 2025, is reportedly capable of being mounted to walls and providing summaries of information from at least some third-party devices. Apple plans to update its own home products to report to this hub.

In addition to the long-rumored home hub, Apple will add the new chip and other smart-home technologies to a refreshed Apple TV 4K set-top box, an updated HomePod mini, and other products. It plans to emphasize the encrypted video and general privacy of its smart-home products as a selling point and marked contrast to existing offerings from Google and Amazon.

Rumor Score: Possible

Read on AppleInsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    omasouomasou Posts: 646member
    Finally!!!!

    Now I can truly deGoogle my home!

    NEST was so nice but Google's touch destroyed it.
    rob53hmurchisonwatto_cobra
     3Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 2 of 8
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,679member
    I certainly won't deny that Nest and Alexa devices work well. But the amount of personal data they collect (and then sell) about you and your family is really far beyond what most people would imagine. That data -- every idle thing you might say when it is listening, intentional or not -- paints a profile, and Google and Amazon draw conclusions about you from that profile -- not always accurate ones, either -- that lawyers, law enforcement, future employers, marketers and foreign entities (to name but a few) can access if they wish.
    lolliverrob53watto_cobrabeowulfschmidt
     4Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 3 of 8
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,679member
    chasm said:
    I certainly won't deny that Nest and Alexa devices work well. But the amount of personal data they collect (and then sell) about you and your family is really far beyond what most people would imagine. That data -- every idle thing you might say when it is listening, intentional or not -- paints a profile, and Google and Amazon draw conclusions about you from that profile -- not always accurate ones, either -- that lawyers, law enforcement, future employers, marketers and foreign entities (to name but a few) can access if they wish.
    As you're aware but for whatever reason say otherwise, Google doesn't sell personal data. Full stop.

    Employers, current or pending, cannot get personal data from Google any more than they can get Apple to give it to them.  Marketers can't have your personal data either. Google may collect more than Apple does, and both companies connect it to an advertising number for anonymization, but it does NOT mean it gets handed out for the asking. What you entrust to Google stays with Google, no different from what you entrust to Apple stays with Apple. Both companies have a history of fighting to protect your data from hackers, marketers, law enforcement requests and government demands. 

    But both Apple and Google will release personal (identifiable) information such as that contained in messages, emails, profile details, and other unencrypted data if presented with a legal order to do so. That's the law, with details varying from country to country.
    Note that encryption policies differ between Google and Apple, particularly as concerns cloud backups. What may be automatic on one may require opt-in on the other. Verify your settings.

    I'm not familiar enough with how Amazon collects and processes data to make or dispute any claims about them.  You apparently are so I'll defer to you as knowing the facts. 
    edited December 2024
    dewme
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  • Reply 4 of 8
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,444member
    I wonder if the lock technology is going to be based on the defunct Otto IP by Sam Jadallah. 

    Assa Abloy just acquired Level Lock which I use and honestly the best smart lock is the one you don't 
    realize is a smart lock. 

    2025 the year I can DeGoogle and it feels great. 
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 5 of 8
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,679member
    I wonder if the lock technology is going to be based on the defunct Otto IP by Sam Jadallah. 

    Assa Abloy just acquired Level Lock which I use and honestly the best smart lock is the one you don't 
    realize is a smart lock. 

    2025 the year I can DeGoogle and it feels great. 
    Reviews on Level Lock are mixed. A lot of negatives on both Reddit and Amazon, but several are very positive as well from both Android and iOS users. Reliability seems to be the bigger issue, with others complaining of the controls and interface. IMHO, there are not yet any smart-locks better than the keyed I've always used. Different, but not better overall. I'm sure eventually there will be. The only two I've personally tried are from Yale and neither of them passed the wife test. She can't understand what's wrong with keys which always work, and I can't really explain why I want a smart-lock instead, at least clearly enough to convince her.
     0Likes 0Dislikes 0Informatives
  • Reply 6 of 8
    gatorguy said:
    ....
    As you're aware but for whatever reason say otherwise, Google doesn't sell personal data. Full stop.

           ....

    I assume you're writing humor. Every time Google has sworn they're not violating users' privacy, they are. Every time they swear in press releases, in Congressional testimony, and then in court that they haven't misused users' PPI or sales history or email or files or (the list is endless), they end up paying up, because it's always peanuts compared to what they can make on selling ads. For an outfit that started out with the big line, "Don't be evil," they have made evil the quotidian, the commonplace of the web.

    Me, I have foresworn Google and all its minions (YouTube and every outfit that requires a Google login). Somehow, I manage to live life without them. Actually, I'm missing nothing, other than an outfit that treats the user as its product.




    edited December 2024
    watto_cobra
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  • Reply 7 of 8
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,679member
    sunman42 said:
    gatorguy said:
    ....
    As you're aware but for whatever reason say otherwise, Google doesn't sell personal data. Full stop.

           ....

    I assume you're writing humor. Every time Google has sworn they're not violating users' privacy, they are. Every time they swear in press releases, l in Congressional testimony, and then in court that they haven't misused users' PPI or sales history or email or files or (the list is endless), they end up paying up, because it's always peanuts compared to what they can make on selling ads. For an outfit that started out with the big line, "Don't be evil," they have made evil the quotidian, the commonplace of the web.

    Me, I have foresworn Google and all its minions (YouTube and every outfit that requires a Google login). Somehow, I manage to live life without them. Actually, I'm missing nothing, other than an outfit that treats the user as its product.




    I wasn't kidding at all.

    Google has zero history of selling user data. Google has no history of even illegally SHARING your personal data with 3rd parties, whether it be an employer or advertiser. (We'll ignore the Apple and Google cases of third parties used for voice transcriptions as an outlier. AFAIK it was never deemed illegal for either company)

    Like Apple, Google has gone to court to protect users personal data from being taken without a legal court order. In effect, Google protects user data just as aggressively as Apple does, and in a few cases even more so. You can find your own evidence for it if the truth matters. It's not difficult research.

    What @Chasm was claiming has nothing to do with cases where what personal Google collects and keeps to themselves is used for purposes the customer did not foresee. Yup there's been a few cases of internal misuse of data claimed. Many of those claims were without merit. Others were addressed in court, losing a couple and winning some.

    What you probably remember are cases dating back a decade or more. The landscape has changed. But as I said, what personal data is entrusted to Google remains with Google. It is not sold to the highest bidder.  

    So what @Chasm refers to, and what I corrected and you took issue with, is separate from your claims of not having sufficient, or perhaps more accurately clear, permission to use collected data internally.
    edited December 2024
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  • Reply 8 of 8
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,862member
    As much as I like Apple, I’m not going to jump on yet another vendor specific implementation of a home automation, security, surveillance, etc., solution. We have standards like Matter and Thread and all vendors need to belly up to the bar and support the standards in a truly interoperable manner. I’ve recently discovered (though it’s not new) that Ecobee and MyQ are also trying to provide their own solutions to the same set of problems. I also like Ubiquiti and its UniFi products for all of my networking needs but they too have their own solutions to all of the same problems, although their solutions scale amazingly well from personal to enterprise. 

    If it’s anything like the “grand convergence” promises of analogous problems in other domains, like industrial automation, it will take decades for anything resembling a single unified solution to arrive, and all of the system vendors and consortiums will still be supporting their own proprietary solutions as well. Part of the problem is that the technology basis for any solution keeps changing as well. This is fabulous for advancing the state of the art, but it comes at a price of continued fragmentation.

    The best integration standards are those that are based on protocols, interface contracts, data models, and other integration specification strategies that are independent of the underlying technology. But at some point you need to go out on a physical layer that everyone agrees to, but these too can change. The best integration strategy that has been established thus far is Ethernet and IP. It’s protocol based but also comes in different physical layers like WiFi and wired standards like 10 Mbs, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, etc. The Matter and Thread people knew this when they embarked on their quest, which is why their solutions are mostly IP based. That’s great. Now we need to make sure that the device vendors, system integrators, and solution providers all adhere to those standards. This includes Apple. Whatever Apple delivers had better be fully standards compliant and open to extension using third party components. I trust they will do the right thing.
    edited December 2024
    watto_cobra
     1Like 0Dislikes 0Informatives
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