HomeTech.fm - Episode 261 - WWDC 2019 Wrap-Up

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: WWDC 2019 is in the books and Apple wildly exceeded our (admittedly low) expectations. Tune in as we dissect all of the biggest stories from the event. We discuss HomeKit���s new Secure Video offering, HomeKit-enabled routers, significant updates to the Home App, new HomePod functionality, and much more. You don’t want to miss this one! That plus the latest home tech headlines including: AT&T set to launch a new IP- based version of the full DirecTV product. SnapAV’s plan to begin distributing Yamaha products, complete with “deep” OvrC integration. Ecobee officially unveils its newest smart thermostat. Ikea’s new physical remote for Symfonisk and Sonos speakers. And more… PS - if you’re a fan of the show and a home tech pro, check out the new “Reimagining Service” webinar series from OneVision Resources

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, June 7th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How you doing, Seth? I hope you didn't place any bets like on sports or anything this week yeah yeah i am i did i did not have any good picks on on on our home kit or an apple keynote draft that we did right like i certainly didn't i i'm not i'm not trying to pile on but uh yeah well my pain is everyone else's gain, right? That's right. That's right. This was a good instance to be wrong, I suppose.

Yeah. Apple, go ahead and prove me wrong all you want. I'll continue to say they're not doing anything over there while they just blow stuff completely out of the water. Yeah. Yeah, this was quite the WWDC. In case, just for the benefit of folks who may not have listened last week, we did some predictions, and Seth was, as we mentioned, way off the mark. I think I did okay, I think. I'm trying to remember exactly what I said.

So we had three predictions, right? We had, is HomeKit even mentioned, right? Now, given the history of WWDCs recently recently this is not an unreasonable question now in hindsight of this most recent one it seems ridiculous to even ask that because there was a lot uh not a i guess not like a ton with home kit specifically unless you count the home app but we sort of segmented that out right that was question number two is the home app updated in any meaningful way seth you predicted no i think I predicted no there as well. With the one caveat that if they got rid of the,

what was it, the red flower wallpaper? From what I understand is they got rid of the backgrounds. I mean, they have more backgrounds too this year. So it was updated. So there we go. It was definitely updated. It was definitely updated. And is the HomePod even mentioned?

So reading these questions now, you can see the lens through which we were looking at WWDC ahead of time. And like you said, we were actually pleased to be proven wrong. There's a lot of activity on all of these. Definitely. We'll get to that. But what do you say first? We jump into some Home Tech headlines. Let's do it.

All right. Teeing up our headlines here, Seth, I wanted to give a quick nod to a new webinar series that we're doing at One Vision Resources, the company where I work at. And wanted to quickly plug this, we'll have it in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 261. Or you can head on over to onevisionresources.com slash service webinar and check it out. It's the reimagining service webinar series. And this is going to be a monthly series of webinars that we're doing where we're going to talk about tips and tricks and best practices that anyone can use to go out there and really rethink service to make it more streamlined, more efficient, and more effective. You know, we we talk to integrators

all the time and dealing with service is a massive, massive challenge. And you know, it can really feel frankly, like trying to outrun an avalanche sometimes. And we've got quite a bit of great information we're going to be sharing on these. So definitely go check that out. And lastly, I'll mention that the first one is going to be coming right up here next week, Wednesday, June 12th at 1 p.m. Eastern. So again, head over to onevisionresources.com slash service dash webinar, or check out our show notes at hometech.fm slash 261 for more information. We'd love to have you there. Yeah. And that was pretty good for just off the cuff, off the top of your head. I'm pretty impressed. Good job, Jason. Yeah. And how'd I do? That was really good. It was better than

I'm going to fumble through this next story. So I try. AT&T is planning to officially launch its new streaming version of the full direct TVTV product in the third quarter of 2019. And John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communication, lavished some high praise upon it. AT&T has been referring to the new streaming DirecTV product as a thin client in the service, we'll use an IP connection instead of a satellite dish and we'll operate on a proprietary Android TV set-top box that AT&T is currently testing. Sounds kind of interesting. Yeah, no, it's pretty cool. This actually makes me think we've had a lot of conversations about streaming,

and we got a great, thoughtful email several months back from Robert, friend of the show, and he mentioned that for all the talk of new streaming services, one of the things that gets lost in that conversation is that it would be a big benefit for both cable companies and consumers if we could just get away from sort of the legacy hardware, the satellite dishes and the coaxial cable and just get everything coming into the house over IP. And so this is a step in that direction. It's really a traditional DirecTV service in terms of what it offers, but it's going to come in over IP.

So that'll open that service up to new segments of the market. And it'll be really, really interesting to see how many more companies follow suit. Yeah, it says there that they're trying to reach customers that can't currently get satellite service. I'm trying to think of where that would be,

but maybe like certain, you know, if you're in a certain types of like, maybe high-rise apartment buildings that you don't have the exposure and you can't get, you know, whatever homeowners association is there that you can't get the satellite dish outside and that kind of thing.

So yeah, that could be good for them. Right, right. All right, well, moving on here. Snap AV is now distributing a full line of Yamaha AV products and integrating them with their Oversea Managed Services platform. 26 Yamaha products, including receivers, amps, wireless speakers, a soundbar, and a CD player. A CD player? What is that? will join the SnapAB line card. They got to get rid of those CD players somehow. And they will have some of the, quote, deepest Oversea integration available thanks to Yamaha's MusicCast networking platform and rich API.

This will be the first time Yamaha has made its custom-oriented products available online through a national distributor. Really interesting, especially the Oversea part. You know I'm a huge fan of seeing that, so this is really cool. Yeah. And being, actually being through an online national distributor is kind of, kind of crazy too, considering Yamaha's history. They've, they've typically sold through rep firms and that kind of thing. So very interesting to see that

move. Sign of the times. Yeah, definitely sign of the times. And, and, and I mean, this is another notch in the, in the belt for oversee, right? Cause like, I think they this is another notch in the belt for Oversea, right? Because, like, I think they are really going to be the ones that kind of take over, and everything else is going to kind of fall away, especially now that Oversea, well, Control4 and SnapAD are combining their efforts there. Right. I really do think that we're going to be looking at that one particular company for all of our monitoring needs.

That is certainly the odds-on favorite yeah no doubt exactly confirming rumors and geez leaks that just were everywhere just unbelievable leaks ecobee swiss cheese on this one ecobee finally released details on the latest voice controlled smart thermostat simply calling it the ecobee smart thermostat, simply calling it the Ecobee Smart Thermostat, not Ecobee 5. Like its predecessor, the new model has a built-in Alexa voice support. The unit features an improved microphone, improved natural language processing, more powerful speakers, support for Spotify, Kinect, in addition to Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and TuneIn. And it's on sale today, starting at $249. It comes with one of the little smart sensors. Yeah. And you alluded to it there. They're breaking away from their naming

scheme, you know, Ecobee 3, 3 Lite, Ecobee 4. So going simply with the smart thermostat now, I guess it's accurate, not terribly creative, but that works. And a powerful little device. Yeah, a powerful little device. And little device and 249 comes with that one sensor pretty compelling i'm i'm very curious to know about the sound quality i mean i don't want to dive into that but like i just i see my ecobee on the wall and i think about spotify connect or whatever playing through that and i just you know i guess it's kind of a cherry on top but certainly not going to be a high-quality audio experience, I have to imagine. Greg is in the chat room saying, Equibee is a great Canadian product.

No tariffs. There you go. And, of course, he follows up with yet. Yet. Yeah. You never know. Yeah. Don't get used to it, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Right, right. All right. all right according to the dutch website i culture philips is adding a couple of new gizmos to its repertoire of smart home products including a smart plug that will work with a bunch of different platforms including amazon alexa google assistant and even apple's home kit ecosystem so philip's kind of late getting into the game here with a smart plug but you know seems to make sense yeah yeah smart plugs smart plugs are everywhere and uh phillips i will phillips is a huge brand like you know in and they have the entire hue line so uh it's it's they definitely have a following that they can tap into and and get people to to buy into those products so uh wish them the best

luck it's definitely interesting to see them supporting all three of the big giants right out of the box right like well like we've talked about before on the show recently you know it's kind of like that's that's almost becoming table stakes right like companies just have to come out of the gate with that so it is interesting to see and you'd expect phillips like phillips of all companies uh can't come up with just an you know an alexa enabled smart plug they'd have to yeah three they're they're not just a small tiny company right so speaking of small small companies uh ikea sonos capable symphonisk wireless speakers have yet to make their official retail appearance uh which should be august 1st but we now know Ikea has plans to integrate these speakers

into existing smart home control systems. The Swedish furniture giant says it will sell the Symphonisk Music Remote, a small puck-like device that will let users play, pause the audio, skip tracks, and control volume on its Symphonisk speakers. The remote will require the use of the $30 Trodfree Gateway, and you'll configure its various functions by the Trodfree app. But IKEA hasn't said how much the new remote will cost. Interesting. It is very

interesting. See IKEA just slow and steady like they're just coming out with more and more products here in the smart home space and I forget when the first one was that we saw from them, but it wasn't that long ago. And they're just, you know, they seem committed. And I'm sure this will come in at a very compelling price point as most of their stuff does.

So we'll have to keep an eye on that one. Yeah, it looks good. That, God, that lamp light, I just can't get used to. Like, it's so ugly. Really, it is truly ugly. That's the one that we... Photoshopped. It looks like a HomePod on a plate.

On a saucer. Yeah. On a saucer plate with, yeah, some sort of weird device attached to the top. So, yeah, you know, the design on that one feels a little bit off, but IKEA usually does a really good job with that stuff. Obviously, that's what they're known for i feel like so um yeah it's an interesting really i just think it's a fascinating strategy that ikea is pursuing to get in into the business like they're just such a monster uh company so uh just enjoy seeing that yeah enjoy seeing how that's developing yep but uh shifting gears here seth what do you say we roll up our sleeves

and jump into the main event of home technology this week? Apple held their Worldwide Developer Conference WWDC 2019. And it was it was a doozy. There was quite a few things announced. We are, of course, going to focus on primarily on those things that are relevant to the smart home, of course, but giving a quick rundown for anyone who may not have seen the event and is curious. Top line view here, iOS 13, iPad OS, so an operating system dedicated for the iPad. Excuse me, pretty interesting. Mac OS Catalina, so a new version of the Mac OS. Catalina Wine Mixer. That's the only thing that comes into my mind like i don't know anything about catalina except they have a nice wine mixer there well thankfully california is a big state so they've got a lot of

like cool places to pick from but eventually they're going to run out right it's going to be like uh you know mac os san bernardino they could they could do like redwood and joshua tree and all that stuff yeah they got they got a lot of room yeah they got a lot of room uh tv os by the way no offense to anyone living in san bernardino i apologize for that uh tv os 13 some interesting stuff there we're going to talk about watch a new watch os watch os 6 new mac pro and xdr display and then uh you know a few other and grouped into this story the other announcements is where we're going to actually spend a majority of our time which is where they have home kit and home pod listed on this mac rumor story so a lot going on as you would expect never mind their six thousand dollar computer with its five thousand dollar

pro display with its one thousand dollar stand that you have to give the monitor does not come with a stand so yeah 12 12 grand for a computer out the door and that's just the base model they're they're expecting this thing to run up into like 30 to 50 for to be maxed out yeah it's a beast i haven't read up on this one. So that's got to be very targeted at like a very high-end production. Yeah, exactly. Video, music production, that sort of thing. Of course, I mean, that's Mac has, that's always been a big part of their user base in those environments. Mac is really the standard.

So, wow, I didn't realize that is. Yeah, it's a beast. They were running a logic, the only thing i really cared about they were running a logic uh product project with uh a thousand instrument tracks so a thousand tracks running and then they had another thousand like simula sim tracks on top of that so two thousand tracks of audio in a single project and it was just like yeah it's doing its thing it was barely even moving the needle yeah wow i don't need that really cool well podcast we record two channels on so like i i mean yeah stick with the little one yeah my uh i think my five five year old at this point mac mini is still chugging along yeah still doing great so i'm good it's a

great computer it's a workhorse you know we've talked about that before yep but uh cool well where do you want to jump in here seth i mean i think maybe ios 13 and and the home app is is probably the place to start there was some some pretty significant updates there and i think it's really i mean let's let's jump let's talk about HomeKit. HomeKit got some very interesting updates. One of the two big headline ones that they got were that it's getting this new secure video feature, which you can, they actually, this is what the bulk of the announcements were about HomeKit on stage, where they kind of went over this process. And they said, you know, hey, look, you have these video cameras that you put in your house,

and they stream out to some random server and store video up there. And you don't know who those people are. You don't know what country that video is located in and you don't know if it's secured. So Apple is actually going to be offering what's called a HomeKit secure video, I think is what it said. Yeah, that is. They're offering 10- day recording uh 10 days worth of recordings uh it's not counted towards your iclouds this is all built into iclouds it's not counted towards your storage limit uh single single camera can have a 200 gigabyte plan up to

five cameras with a two terabyte plan and there's end-to-end encryption so they're really there was a lot this entire like presentation that they were they were doing was really focused on privacy, believe it or not, with Apple. And they were really hitting on that pretty hard. Yeah. And the second part of that privacy push was this HomeKit-enabled routers, which is fascinating. This is going to build possibly the the home kit, like hub, I guess into routers really, there's really not too much details on this other than kind of what they were

saying that, uh, you'd have the ability to basically monitor the home kit devices and the devices that you put into your house and figure out if, if they were doing something suspicious, like if they're updating, uploading data somewhere else that they shouldn't be. The router, you'd be there on the router,

and you'd have some settings to shut that down. And I have a couple screenshots of what that looks like. I'll have to put in our show notes, because people have been kind of digging through the beta stuff and finding this stuff out. But fascinating that I think Linksys, they announced, we're going to be one of the first partners with that that but i suspect more and more will start coming out where they'll have home kit built right onto the router uh and and in the home and that's that's a great great place

where to live yeah no i i thought it was fascinating to hear that and and they did mention linksys they also mentioned ero which i thought was interesting interesting. Of course, Eero recently being acquired by Amazon. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And then they also mentioned Spectrum, who's of course an ISP, who's going to be supposedly including this on some of their routers that they provide, which is also very interesting to consider that an ISP will actually be providing these HomeKit enabled routers. That of course doesn't mean that the person getting the router has to use HomeKit, but still kind of an interesting wrinkle to the story. I had the same thought as you, like, does this actually mean that HomeKit will like sort of live on this device in the sense of like right now? So going back to secure video, for example,

they talked a lot about the privacy and they said, well, you know, the problem with video that a lot of people are concerned about and rightfully so is that your video gets sent up to a cloud and that's where it gets analyzed. And you really, for all intents and purposes, don't know anything about these servers or who's looking at these videos. And that's, you know. I kept thinking of Wyze cameras this entire time. I was just like, those Wyze, $20 Wyze cameras, where's that video going? You just don't know, exactly. And granted, maybe nothing is amiss there right now, but it's still just cameras, especially in the home, are so... I've gotten to the point where I'm just not super comfortable with that.

So we have indoor cameras, but I typically have them sort of disabled or unless we're traveling. Like I use them when we're traveling, but generally I just am not, I'm a little bit weirded out by like video just constantly being recorded of me and my family in our home. how this video, the analysis of the video. So he talked about, all right, well, there has to be analysis done to see if it's like a leaf moving or if it's a person or if someone's at your door, if it's a dog or whatever. And that analysis in most cases is happening on those servers. That's part of the reason that the video has to go up to those servers. And he talked about how this analysis is actually going to take place in the home locally, which I thought was really interesting. And so he talked about how that could happen on an iPad, a HomePod or an Apple TV or the three devices he mentioned. And, you know, the HomePod and the Apple TV make total sense to me. There are devices that are, you know, generally always on plugged in, but the iPads always felt a little weird to me as like a home kit hub of sorts like

what happens if it's asleep i i don't know like i i don't totally understand how that works but the router to get back to what started all of this is like having a home kit enabled router does that give apple another place to sort of park the the quote-unquote hub yeah does it replace the need for an apple tv or is the implementation going to be a little bit different? I think details are still spotty at this point. I think spotty, but now that you said that about that video, I forgot about that video analyzation, like that being done on the iPad, HomePod, Apple TV, that those are iOS devices. Um, they have some serious horsepower behind them, uh, especially the iPad. Um, uh, now that, now that that's kind of in play, I don't, I mean, you'd have to have iOS running

on the router itself to do that and run their machine learning and that kind of thing that they have developed specifically for iOS. So now that you say that, I would probably say odds are the HomeKit enabled router is just more or less a device

that you can control with your HomeKit app and kind of keep tabs on things, make sure that the devices that are connected in there... You know, it would be really nice if Apple made a router and a Wi-Fi access point. That would be cool. It would be neat, yeah. It would be sweet.

They should take a look into that and see if there's anything they can do with that. It's popular technology, Wi-Fi. Everybody has to have it. But, yeah, so now I think it's kind of going to be just like a HomeKit-enabled router is just going to be there for kind of like an Apple stamped-upon firewall, essentially, right? Yeah. And that is easily controlled and makes sense to people through the HomeKit app. Apple stamped upon firewall, essentially, right? Yeah. And that is easily controlled and makes sense to people through the HomeKit app.

I think that makes more sense now that I think about it. And then all the fancy stuff like video analytics and automation routines and that kind of thing, that all gets done on the stuff that has serious hardware behind it. Has the horsepower. Yeah. Yeah. Last thing on this that we didn't mention that uh is worth mentioning the secure home kit secure video few manufacturers mentioned as the first ones out of the gate and that'll be net atmo logitech and then a company called eufy eufy i have to admit was not

familiar with them um but uh those are the three out of the gate they said with with more to come another another couple things that uh that popped up here one was uh they mentioned carplay and this is one of the first times carplay was going to get an update which is great i have a carplay head unit in my car it doesn't have any maps or anything on it it just like you get carplay and you plug your phone into it and your phone becomes the map and that's that's awesome uh but what they've done is they've updated the interface they made it a little bit better but they put some buttons on there uh that that you wouldn't have access to before. And one of the things they mentioned is that HomeKit would have an integration with CarPlay.

So you could, I don't know, trigger automations from a button that is on your CarPlay dashboard, so to speak. And one of the examples they gave was that you can open and close your garage door. So if you have a HomeKit garage door or a HomeKit device that's hooked up to a garage door, you can actually push that button and trigger that event from happening as you're driving down the street, which that is going to be great. That's awesome to have it right there on the dash. Just tap it and done. Yeah. No, I think there's like really, really logical use cases and integrations between car technology and home technology. If you have a smart home, it makes all the sense in the world to have that integrated with your car play system. And so that makes a whole lot of sense. Very logical move on their part there. there um speaking of automation seth i don't know if we want to jump into the uh ios 13 because this

was big i mean this this was like we were joking earlier in the show how we thought the home app wouldn't see any significant updates at this developer conference and we were wrong it got a whole bunch of updates so let's uh let's jump in and talk about those. Quite a bit going on there. Yep. So my prediction of HomeKit not being the home app not being touched at all, completely wrong. And there were a number of just general... Just a little reverse psychology that you were using on Apple. You know, I figured... Because they definitely listen to the podcast.

Exactly. They listen to the podcast and they were like, no, no, we cannot have this. We got to shut Seth up. You won't believe all the stuff they canceled and pushed off the stage just to put this stuff on and shut me up. Flexing your muscles. So iOS 13 HomeKit app will have

kind of a new lighting interface for color changing lights. It's kind of nice. Motion sensors, thermostat. There's a new thermostat look for the control for the thermostat. They did a bunch of like GUI updates, like user interface updates, which I think are all for the best. It's kind of tough to say that home kit has the best interface it's always been like a summary interface to me where i can go in and like quickly do stuff real quick and i don't have to spend much time in the app um but it looks like they are they're leaving that in place but

they're also doing some more you can do some more advanced things in it as well uh i think they added leak sensors in and like air quality sensors as well um yep and uh motion sensors a little card for motion sensors i think we have those now but they're just not it's kind of a weird setup for that but yeah you also get airplay 2 devices uh in there so like the home pod which so uh yeah home pod i i have i have problems with saying like did the home pod get mentioned it did get mentioned but in passing. And the applause lines when they were like, hey, the HomePod, the HomePod, HomePod, and then people are like, oh, oh, this is one of those times

we're supposed to clap. Yeah, let's clap. Got a little golf clap. Yeah, it was just an unenthusiastic version of what was, you know, everything else was like standing on the edge of your, standing on the chairs clapping, and then the HomePod gets mentioned the home pod gets missing you're like oh oh yeah we we still make that thing oh uh yeah so there's that so airplay 2 devices can be included in home kit scenes and automations for the first time in ios 13 which is which is huge because that means i

people are excited about this but like if you could you could do this like if you arrive home start playing some songs on the apple home pod thing and um i don't know jason that that's one of those like things that that integrators use as like a sailing tool but i i gotta say i've never ever ever ever ever used that like in in actual living in my own house or like when I go to install a control for a system or something, when, when I put them in and I was like, Hey, what do you, what do you want to walk into your house listening to every day? What songs do you want to listen to? I don't think that has ever come up, not once. So I'm curious as to if you ever ran into that where people wanted to walk into their house and and be listening to music i i honestly i can't say that i did it's so funny because like it is one

of those things that has that like like we romanticize it you walk in the door and the lights dim and the music comes on and i think like the only people that i can think that that would do that like i i just i don't know. I look at this through my lens and my life is so chaotic right now with two young kids. And I mean, putting aside the fact that I work from home, so I'm not like that.

You're rarely leaving. Sort of use case of walking in after a long day of work and the lights dim and the music comes on. But like, yeah, I just, to me, it's, it's not there, but like, I could see it for, uh, you know, if, if I was, you know, for more like single or maybe if you like, you just don't have like the kids and the chaos, like, because when I see myself walking in the door, I see like two bags of groceries, uh, screaming kids,

you know, running around with their shoes on uh and dirt getting all over the carpet and like the last thing on my mind is like what kind of relaxing music is playing right and that's real life yeah yeah and that's just like the example that again it's being romanticized in the press and with tech pundits and that kind of thing like oh this is something that you can do and it's great that you can do it but nobody's going to do that honestly and like like when i when i come home i'm like i'm rushing in because i forgot my sunglasses or my wallet and now the stupid music's playing i'm like siri shut up yeah no it's not it's not really going to be how this thing works so um yeah it but it's still cool you know like that that home pod and airplay two

devices like can now be part of scenes. Scenes and automation. Yeah. So you can still trigger that from Siri. You could say Siri do this and have a custom automation workflow set up where it just kind of does its thing. So yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, the support for AirPlay 2 is big. Like we've seen so much, such a big push from Apple in terms of getting AirPlay 2 out there. And you think of all the

TVs that we talked about several months back that have AirPlay 2. So those will be able to be incorporated. And so, yeah, you just see Apple slowly and steadily expanding the reach of HomeKit. And we've talked about it. You, to your credit, have really been beating this drum of like, the framework is is there the foundation is there with home kid they've got a very solid vision of of how this all needs to sort of fit together and it might be a little bit less flashy for the average person watching the smart home like if you're not really paying attention maybe it's not as flashy or as sexy as as what amazon is doing with you know their spaghetti strategy and new products coming out all the time.

And Google is getting a lot of headlines. And Apple's been a little more off of the front page when it comes to this stuff. But the way that they're approaching it is fundamentally different than how Google and Amazon are approaching it. And I think it's a very, very interesting and very solid vision. And if they can just keep, like if we could have a few more WWDCs like this, where they keep working and plugging away at this stuff,

it just becomes a very, very compelling offering. Yeah, and like you said, the framework is there, the foundation is there, and they just need to draw the little lines. This is kind of what I've been saying about HomeKit since the very beginning, is that this is an amazing thing, not because Apple is doing it, not because it's how this was set up, and it exists on your phone, it exists on everybody's phone that's in the house. It all syncs together, and all you have to do to get more powerful integration with AirPlay 2, with location services, is have Apple draw that line. And we've kind of sat back and said, is Apple ever going to draw that line?

And they've clearly been doing, you know, drawing lines from point A to point B for the past couple of years and it's just it's making for a very very robust and healthy ecosystem uh that you know kind of got a lot of cruft at the beginning because it wasn't the spaghetti strategy where the lines were spaghetti noodles and they led off to nowhere you know like everybody wanted to see massive massive growth out of this stuff and apple stuck to their guns to their credit, I mean, as long as they did, and forced their vendors, for better or not, to build products that conform to the HomeKit ecosystem in a very particular way that I think is paying off for them now. Because we're seeing Amazon and Google kind of walk back their strategy of going out and talking to Amazon and Google kind of walk back their strategy of going out and talking to Amazon and Google servers and how problematic that is where an Apple HomeKit system is all local.

Your hub is your iPad, your HomePod, or your Apple TV, which is probably in most cases. But that's sitting in the house and that can run and do most anything and everything that you want to do with local control. There was a major, major Google outage over the weekend that affected like a ton of what Nest devices, Nest thermostats and cameras. Like those were down for quite some time over the weekend. I kind of made a joke that the entire tech press was on their way to San Diego or san diego or what is it san diego um so like no one really noticed but uh there was a pretty major outage over the weekend and that's what you run into with cloud services and you know apple apple stuck their guns and one one of the major major things that were that that isn't getting much things talked about are the the

shortcuts that you can set up like they have that shortcuts app that used to be called Workflow, and that team basically just got acquired and brought into Apple, and they sat there for a year. And then a year later, they come out with a Workflow app, and it's pretty much a copy-paste of the other app. The other app goes away. And now that thing is so robust in ios 13 it will be so robust um there's a ton of stuff that you can do with it just crazy amount of things that you can do with it and and they're

they're allowing the reason i haven't looked at it is because they're really the triggers that were available for you to do were pretty limited um and and how that I wanted to like trigger things in my house. But, uh, now it can reach right into HomeKit and, and like there's, there's, there's images that people are posting online, like create an automation that works for everyone in the home. Uh, and you can create that automation. You can base it based on like, uh, here, here, when, when I turn my phone into airplane mode, like when you flip your phone on airplane mode it can okay you must be getting on the airplane make sure all the lights are off in the house and the ac is up to whatever you know like there's there's tons of little little small

things that you can do nfc tag input like when i tap an nfc tag uh when my phone goes to low power mode do not disturb bluetooth i saw one where if when i plug into carplay trigger home automation that kind of thing so like you know if i'm in my car i plug plug my phone into the carplay it means i'm leaving the house or i'm somewhere else make sure that the lights are off and that kind of thing so there's some major things that you'd be able to do this and and they're not they've also enabled it to where used to it was like the shortcuts app would pop up and say do you want to run this do you want to run the shortcut or something like that and now they're giving it the ability to it was like the shortcuts app would pop up and say, do you want to run this shortcut or something like that? And now they're giving it the ability to kind of like, I ran into this once and I put it away,

and I can't really speak to what exactly I'm talking about here because it's been so long. But basically what they're letting it do is run kind of in the background. So if one of these events or triggers comes along, the phone isn't going to ask you if it needs permission to run these shortcuts. So like it is a full automated thing at that point. And they are turning or flipping that switch now and making the shortcut stuff in the shortcuts app a lot more robust than it was in the past. So that is going to be a huge part of the HomeKit Uber automation thing

that is outside of the HomeKit Home app, which is what most people will be using. But the power users and the crazy iOS people, they're going to be getting into this Apple Shortcuts stuff and doing custom shortcuts and all these kind of things that are really going to bring a powerful ecosystem to HomeKit, which is super exciting. Yeah, no, great point. It looks like they did quite a few updates there, like you said, to that Shortcuts app and definitely some overlap there with HomeKit. There's a screenshot here,

create home automation right there in the Shortcuts app. So really cool. All right. Well, let's shift gears here. A couple more things we're going to hit. We'll hit these a little bit quicker that came out of WWDC, some HomePod updates, quick one here. Apple announced that HomePod is gaining handoff support, allowing users to place an iPhone near the HomePod to hand over music podcast, or even a phone call. So guess that's a uh kind of a useful feature not a not a game changer i don't think but uh certainly a nice thing to have and then that that was really kind of it i for the home pod i think as far as big news like you said there wasn't a ton with home pod but maybe we'll have to rethink that's a big thing like it makes it like i think about how i i use my audio device.

If I'm listening in the car, I get out of the car, I come inside, and I want to continue listening to whatever I was listening to in the car. Like, it makes sense to, that whole operation makes sense to me. Super useful. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. All right. And then let's touch really quick on tvOS, because I know that this is one that had some really interesting updates.

It looks like they're making a lot of progress here with tvOS. So a couple of big ones here, support for multi-users. So multi-user support, each member of the family can have their own profile. So favorite shows, movies, front and center, up next, recommendations, all of that stuff that you would expect with multi-user support. And that is a great thing. We talk about it a lot on the show here. Very, very few of us live in homes alone. Certainly some of us do, but most of us live in homes where we have other people who are using the technology. So support for multiple users is a nice addition. Looks like some enhancements to

the control center, some UX enhancements there. This one, Seth, I thought was really interesting. We don't talk a lot about gaming on the show, but the Apple TVs are now going to be able to support PS4 and Xbox controllers. So this is to get ready for Apple Arcade. Apple reading here from Mac Rumors, Apple added PlayStation DualShock 4 and Xbox One S controller support to the apple tv and to ios devices so you can use your existing gaming controllers to play your apple arcade games that's pretty cool so very interesting there i think uh really cool deal for the gamers out there and then on-screen lyrics and apple music so if you got apple music playing on the

tv you can have the lyrics up there which which is kind of nice. And some additional screensavers. For your karaoke nights, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. I think the Amazon, the little screen thing that Amazon has does something similar to that. Yeah, it's always funny. Like, I'm over at my, my sister-in-law has one of those. And, like, we're over there for, like like Easter dinner or Thanksgiving or something and uh I think last

time was Mother's Day and like some weird like Little Wayne song comes on randomly because Amazon music isn't all that great and it just has a horrible playlist and like you're looking at the lyrics going uh like yeah I don't know if it's like cool for me to go over there and you know start talking to Alexa in in their house but like I don't know it's just cool for me to go over there and start talking to Alexa in their house, but I don't know. It's kind of funny. That's one of those social things. Is there like a social rules around that? Like, am I allowed to talk to your Alexa?

Can I do it? I never thought about that. That's funny. I kind of feel awkward about it. That's really funny. Yeah, and then, like I said, some new screensavers. My kids will like it. It looks like there's an under-the-sea screensaver.

So I'm going to check that out. My kids are big into sharks and animals in general, but that'll be a cool one for them when the screensaver kicks on. So some nice enhancements there, and it's good to see them continuing to develop on that front as well. Yeah, absolutely. It's a really good event overall. I mean, $30,000 computers,

but you know, we get decent HomeKit upgrades out of it too. Start saving now. It's not a chance. Yeah. All the links and topics we discussed tonight can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 261. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes even further analysis, as well as other industry news that may not have made the show. Again, that link is homekit.fm slash 261. You said homekit.fm slash 261. Again, that link is hometech.fm slash 261. All right. Don't forget you can join us in the chat room live on Wednesdays. We typically start around 7 or 7.30 p.m. in, as Seth likes to call it, the one true time zone.

That is Eastern. Again, 7 to 7.30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays. Find out more at hometech.fm slash live. All right, Jason, no mailbag this week. But I do have a pick of the week, and I've been kind of sitting on this for a while. I wanted to use it a little bit, but it's the Amplify Teleport. I don't know if you remember.

We talked about this thing when it first came out, and it's a little... We did. I vaguely remember this, and I'm trying to remember exactly what it does, but I do remember talking about this. It's basically a little VPN device that you can get and pair with your Amplify router. So talking about this. So it's basically a little VPN device that you can get

and pair with your Amplify router. So you get this, you plug it in at your house, you pair it real quick. And then you go to a place like Starbucks or you go out traveling or whatever and you plug this thing in and what it does is you connect to it like you would Starbucks. You have that little screen that pops up and it walks you through basically connecting it to the Starbucks Wi-Fi.

And then once you do that, it creates a VPN from it to the house. So it's a slow process to get up and going, but man, this thing, it actually works really, really well after it gets up and going. I kind of want actually works really really well after after it gets up and going i kind of want to have like one or two of these things uh maybe like one this is my star starbucks amplify teleport and this is my dunkin donuts and you know just like have one for each coffee shop right um because it is kind of a pain to like wait for it to switch over to the next wi-fi

and and connect in again but once you have it set up, it's pretty straightforward. You bring it in, you plug it in, you connect your computer to it, and you're basically living on your home network. And it works really well. It's a good VPN. I've taken this out, obviously, around town

to do work around town. A lot of times with VPNs, I had problems with connecting to a Control 4 system at my house. And has like the little when you connect to a control system it pops there's some kind of auto discovery uh that has been blocked traditionally in the past with vpns that i've used in the past with this one it doesn't block it like the control four thing just you know shows up the controller shows up to connect to so that's pretty cool um and then the other thing is uh when i'm

out traveling i can bring this to like the hotel room and plug it into the wall connect to the hotel wi-fi and usually i bring in bring along like uh the apple tv i have in the garage and we can we can use the plex app on it and basically since you're at your home with the wi-fi at your home this thing can basically stream all your Plex movies directly over the wifi, you know, into the, into your Apple TV, uh,

like, like you're sitting on your local network at home. So it's actually really cool. Uh, and you, it, what's really nice is like having to do that dance, uh,

where you go and like set up every, everybody, like my wife was like, Hey, I get me on wifi. You know, when we go to the hotel or whatever, she's like, get me on wifi. Um, you don't have to do that. You just like plug it in. It has the same wifi as it did before. Her full and connects to it. And everybody's online and happy after you do that, you know, first initial connection. So, um, yeah, interesting. It's a really cool product. Does it cost? Uh, I want to

say it was like a hundred a hundred dollars so it it's it's 99.99 so hundred dollars uh and i'd say it's you know if you don't want to set up your own vpn it's kind of like an easy way to do this and a super easy way to do this and it's done right and uh it works really well i've been aside from the speed of setting it up the first time like if you go to the coffee shop you'll probably be done with your coffee by the time you're done setting it up it's like yeah i just want to work now and i'm drinking all this coffee so get a large and a grande or a vinti get a vinti and then uh and then plug this thing in and get ready but uh yeah it's it's a pretty cool product been happy with it very cool yeah you know it's a great pick. Definitely have to check that out.

I think it's a nice way. It's always on the back of my mind when I'm out at coffee shops and things like that. And I'll hop onto those public hotspots. But I'm always a little bit leery and certainly not doing anything sensitive when I'm on those, like checking my bank account or anything like that. But yeah, this is a nice way to do it. I typically, if I need to do anything that I'm worried about, I'll pull out the hotspot on my phone rather than using like a public hotspot.

But no, this is a great way to do that without using, a great way to accomplish that privacy, I should say, without using your cellular data. So pretty neat. It prevents all those men in the middle attacks and you're secure as long as you're using it and uh and you don't have to use the public wi-fi so yeah it's it's for 100 bucks pretty good product and i see here that they can bundle it now they bundle it with the uh kit with the amplify hd router which is a decent router

and uh amplify teleport uh for 229 so9. So not a bad deal. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a topic or guest, give us a shout. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm or visit our website at hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out our online form.

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and over what the heck am i doing every every i haven't really having to think about this all right where you and other supporters show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about all aspects of home technology absolutely and if you want to support the show but can't do so financially, we'd love a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help other people find the show. So if you enjoy what we do here at Home Tech, take a minute to spread the love

by leaving us a review. We would appreciate it. Well, Jason, that wraps up this week. Are you going to run out and install the iOS beta on your phone? Come on week. Are you going to run out and install the iOS beta on your phone? Come on, who are you talking to? Do you even have to ask? There's no way that's going to happen.

He's angry. That was a very angry response. There's no way. Who do you think you're talking to? There's no way. I'm not a beta guy. I'm not on the, what's the, there's the early adopters, and then there's the, I'm just in the meat of that curve, whatever that is.

The mainstream adoption, I guess. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not the laggard. I'm not a laggard. Well, I mean, sometimes I can be a laggard, let's be honest. But that's not out of like a fear of technology. That's just usually conflicting priorities. But yeah, no, I'll probably be passing on the beta, Seth. I'm going to rely on you,

as I usually do, to go out there and test these things and tell me all of the reasons why I should continue waiting. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I am not a beta participant. Well, if it gets further along, I'll probably update, but I am not an early beta participant. So like give me a couple of months when I start hearing news reports that it's fairly stable. I will probably put it on my device as part of the public beta, but not. Not yet. Not part of it. Not this one. No, not the developer beta.

It's definitely. I understand. Don't do it. Don't do it. You're preaching to the choir, brother. Yeah. But all in all, really good, from Apple from the WWDC keynote, especially around what we cover, the HomeKit side.

But there's other good stuff, so we'll put some links in the show notes if you're interested and didn't get a chance to sit down and watch the keynote. It's a two-hour keynote. I think there was one story we had that was like a summary in like nine minutes or something like that. It was like you could just run down uh everything that happened in nine minutes and uh yeah that that that's probably the way to watch it because two hours is is no fun and nine minutes you know get get the bullet point that's all you do right give me the short version all right cool seth well uh great show

look forward to reconnecting again with you next week sounds good jason have a great weekend all right take care