mike1

israndy said:

What sort of devices will NOT be getting an upgrade that will mean we lose access to them after moving to the new Home Architecture??

davidlewis54 said:

There’s going to have to be a major improvement in how all the iDevices interact with each other if this is going to work.  I have an iPhone, two iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV, original HomePod and a Mini, plus AirPod Max and AirPod Pro 2, plus a new car with AirPlay.  Yes, lucky me.  However, they do not interact well with both HomePods playing different music, though they are in different rooms with rooms in between and even if I speak softly inches away from one HomePod.  My iPhone won’t Airplay to my HomePods without dropping the connection after a couple of minutes, neither HomePod will play as a radio, and using more than one app in the car causes the connection to collapse.  I can have Apple Maps and most of the time Apple Music playing but add a phone call and it all drops out.

My view is Apple needs to sort out how it wants its devices to operate and interact with one another (it should be faultless, particularly in an home with all the devices on the same WiFi network) and sort out the basics.  There is too much updating all the time.  Quite often nothing works with anything else.  I appreciate as I use public betas they are not infallible but it is all too frequent that the basics just don’t work.

charlesn said:

I would LOVE to stop using Alexa voice control for smart home devices, but it's ubiquitous while support for Siri remains very poor. If Apple does release a HomeOS, I hope it does a MUCH better job of getting smart home device manufacturers on board to support it. Lacking that improved support, I'm not sure what the point of this exercise would be. 

hmurchison said:

No 3rd Party software please.   For a HomeOS you need a very comfortable UI that belies the underlaying  sophistication.    You don't want your end users to end up bouncing into other interfaces.   Most Home Assistant user interfaces look excessively tweaky.   Even Apple's Home app to me is rather bland experience.  

Right now the UI are so heavily focused on device control they quickly become unwieldy after a certain accumulation of devices.    Apple needs to start to move people towards looking at their home from a Scene based workflow.  You Automate the stuff that you just don't want to think about (like my closets, laundry, pantry, garage all have motion sensors for the lights).  Next the complementary items in a home need to be paired together in scenes.   They say the hardest thing is to name things.  If you've 50 devices simply naming them and recalling them all via the app user interface or voice because exponentially more difficult.    If you can boil things down to a dozen scenes you have an easier target to find or even call out via Siri. 

Apple's put a lot of work into App Intents and I expect another large functional leap coming at WWDC.  Home OS is likely only partially delayed by Siri but the real grunt is going to come from the maturation of App Intents as the driving force. 

9secondkox2 said:

All this legislating from the bench will hopefully be dealt with before too long. In the meantime, it’s exposing these shady organizations (who make money from other being on their stores) as extortionists, only putting in work if they don’t pay to be in someone else’s store. 

It’s why I no longer have an Amazon subscription nor a Spotify one. It’s a matter of principle. Doesn’t alter my lifestyle at all. I’ve always found it healthier and have met lots of good people by always avoiding the card reader at the pump and the self-checkout at various retailers. Going to the human being at the register is the way to go. 

Apple Books are usually presented much nicer than kindle anyway. And Apple Music has inched closer to the old iTunes simplicity that Spotify copied to begin with.