Apple Smart Display Update, Netflix in Apple TV App, & Roborock Saros S10 VS S10R
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host as always, Andrew O'Hara. Joining me once again this week is Wes Hilliard. How you doing, man? Pretty good. Happy Valentine's Day as we record. Right, exactly. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there. Very cold today. I wish we got a little bit more of that spring weather this morning.

Okay, we have snow on the ground, but at the same time, it's also very sunny. So it's like a pretty nice day out. Not too bad. I have to go do some stuff on my car. So I need the sun for like a few minutes to go and like remove a roof rack and stuff like that. Make it variable. Yeah, exactly. Something that I feel like my fingers won't fall off when trying to, you know, adjust tiny screws. So that's going to be a fun thing.

Before we get into the whole meat of the show, just wanted to do a quick reminder that Factor and HelloFresh are both running promotions right now to get you some fun discounts. So use Code Factor Podcast or HelloFresh Podcast to get some good discounts on your next order.

So before we get into the rest of the show, I want to give a quick plug. I have a new video up on the channel. If you are interested in MagSafe chargers, some of you are, some of you aren't, but I did another roundup here. The first one had somewhere between like a quarter million and a half million views on it. So now I'm doing V2, my favorite three-in-one MagSafe chargers, perfect for standby mode and automations and all that stuff. So if you're interested in any of those, what my favorites are right now, some of the ones I've talked about on the show, some of the ones that I haven't.

You can find it up on the YouTube channel, so youtube.com slash appleinsider, or the text version of it will be up on Apple Insider, and both will be linked down in the show notes. Now, we're going to start off with some Mark Gurman here, some Bloomberg news.

I can't, Wes, we have gotten so many like this and this and this on like the timeline for this smart display. It's be, I'm not even making sense anymore. Like we have just said, we have said all of the options and one of them is going to be right between it's going to be released tomorrow. It's going to be released in a month. It's going to be released in six months. It's going to be released in two years. There is so much noise going on around this, but this,

This right now is the latest if anyone is trying to keep track of when this thing is going to be released slash announced, which are two different things, by the way, announced versus released. But German says that it is still months away from shipping.

That could be latter half of this year, but it also technically could be April, which would line up with the release of 18.4, which will include the new version of Siri. So that's also a possibility here, but...

Or maybe it'll be announced with 18.4's release, like in April, and then ship after. Who knows? But months away from shipping is the latest line on availability here. Well, if you keep track of who's saying what, they're all being consistent. They're just consistent in different ways. Gurman has been clear that...

the smart display device could be announced first. And then we have different products that go with that. So I'm still expecting based on what we've heard, uh, spring, summer, uh, timeline for announcement, maybe a fall release. And then the accessories are what's going to be over the next couple of years. And that's where we get into some of the robotics rumors, but, uh,

The actual device could be coming pretty soon, and Gurman lines up with that now.

This tablet, 7-inch tablet thing, I mean, I don't think Apple needs to do too much hoopla around it. It's just going to be a smart display with widgets. I know we're excited about it, but I'm not sure that Apple needs a whole event around it. So maybe it's a slide-in at WWDC, something. But this is Apple's stepping into making more actual accessories for the home, whereas Apple

You could argue Apple TV and HomePod are Apple Home accessories, but this would be like the first real step into that because of its placement in the home as a decorative accessory, as a widget and control device for the home. So we'll see.

See, I'm going to differ. I think this is a bigger deal than people realize. I think this is the beginning of Apple's big push into the smart home in a real way. And I think we're going to see more adoption of the Matter standard from Apple. I think we're going to get this. And then, like you said, other accessories coming down the line. But I think this is going to have...

a big implication on not just, it's not just to control your smart home. Apple is going to be, like you said, putting in widgets into this thing. We're going to have different kind of versions of standby mode stuff going on. It's going to be a visual version of this next gen Siri that you can use as the central hub for your house. I mean, Amazon hosts events for devices just like this and for Apple to finally do it, I think it would make sense. I do think this will be a big deal. Developer support is,

And the fact that it's going to be multi-use, like use it as a speaker versus wall mounting, all that kind of stuff. I think it's going to be more than just a quick slip in somewhere. Yeah, we could see a tight, you know, 30 minute event like video from Apple on this just to demonstrate it. Because this is going to be one of those things they're going to have to pitch very well, very correctly in order to actually get people to buy it.

Because I don't think they can walk out on stage and say, hey, here's this $200 tablet you can carry around your house. And people will be like, I already have an iPad. Why do I need this? So we could definitely see Apple actually trying to make the case in their little fake house stage that they have set up. So I don't know. I'm with you. Apple will show how important they think this product is by how much they decide to promote it anyway.

Yeah, I there's just so much here that is coming together. And some of it is is on the geeky side, you know, for you and I on like being able to detect different people and know their different faces. You don't have to be looking at it. It'll know who you are by your voices in the back of your head. And like all of those types of things, like there's there's so many little things coming to play that I think are super cool that aren't necessarily like marketable, like to normal people out there.

It's pretty cool. And on top of that, I think we've had a lot of confusion because people keep calling – this is really frustrating to me. People keep calling this like a HomePod with a display. It's not. Which is a different product. Well – We're supposed to actually get a second or a third full-size HomePod with a more robust display on it. So that is making things more confusing because some headlines say, oh, Apple's HomePod with a display is coming later this year. It's –

It's a problem with the rumor timeline. So I've been doing research on this and it looks like we've had the HomePod with a display rumor since at least, well, I mean, since the HomePod, because Alexa and Google and Facebook's all had these display type speakers forever. So everyone just assumed Apple's making this. But as far as concrete supply chain rumors, since about 2022, we've seen, hey, HomePod with touchscreen display coming and,

And that has only since recently changed into portable tablet. And I'm with you. I think there are two different devices, but the HomePod with a display is just a standard HomePod, and the top has a more pixel-dense display that can show you things like album art. And then this would be a device. Now, you could buy a speaker base station from Apple that you put the tablet into, and that turns it into kind of an iPod Hi-Fi device.

Or maybe there's nothing like that and you just set it next to your HomePod and Apple's like, it'll just show the Now playing because it knows it's in proximity to a speaker. But we'll see how Apple handles it. But yeah, we are definitely in for more than one device. I think the HomePod and HomePod Mini could both see updates this year, Apple TV and this device. So...

Maybe there just needs to be an Apple Home-focused event sometime in the year just to announce all the things that are coming. Because all this also goes with a new chipset from Apple, I think has been internally dubbed Proxima or something like that. That would be where we've been discussing a little bit of the return of the Apple Mesh Network. And Apple has a lot to talk about here. So I'm excited for what's coming and hopefully we'll hear something soon.

Well, in terms of things that we won't hear about soon, you talked about robotics. Well, Ming-Chi Kuo is out with his latest supply chain analysis on where Apple is with its robotics. And it is, it's

It's far, but not far. It's one of those things where Apple has invested a lot of time into it, but has not determined it will be a product yet. So I think that's a very good indicator of where things sit. And I like how he even compares it to another device that we have heard stuff about, but not necessarily on this podcast.

Apple's folding phone. So Quo says that Apple's robotics product that it is investigating, there's multiple of them, are still in the POC stage, which is like your proof of concept stage. So they're doing this. We're trying to find out what the product exactly is before actually...

to, you know, producing a product that they're going to sell. And the folding phone is also stuck in this stage. So it's not necessarily has, has moved forward yet, but based on where they are, that's what the timeline says. So right now, quo says the earliest that these could go into production is 2028. If they moved on out of this POC stage sometime soon. Well, I still think foldables are a fad that Apple's never going to actually pursue. They'll they've, they've got their toys in the labs, but it just doesn't seem realistic with spatial computing and,

solving the same problem as foldables, more display, smaller space, just put a thing on your face and you have an infinite display, right? So I think foldables are just going to die out. But I do believe, and the market's shown that as well, but the robotic side of this, this is interesting. And I think it has a lot of good applications. And I want to know what you thought of the lamp demo that Apple put out.

Yeah, that actually dropped right as Jennifer and I were talking on the podcast. So we like gave it a quick mention, but didn't go into too much detail. So essentially Apple does all these like machine learning. They have like a whole machine learning and robotics like blog that they basically publish and they publish like their findings and their research and stuff like that. So this, this lamp robot thing has, uh, was released in this video that, uh,

It was really, really cool. And their whole thing, I guess, based on reading that as well as input from what Kuo said, was Apple doesn't want to make a humanoid robot. That's not what they're going for. They're not looking for the same thing as the Tesla personal robots that are walking around and doing things. But they want to anthropomorphize their robotics to make them more...

Like real or like have a connection. Express emotion. Expressive. Yeah. Yes. So like that robot, the way that it was able to kind of nod and tilt, like it's little gestures really make it come to life. And I think that's going to be a big differentiator for Apple from others. You want something like this in your home.

It depends. Right now, we don't even know what they do. Like right now, you know, it's looking at things and you can tell it to look and it reacts and you can tell basic things. But do you need a speaker, a smart speaker, a smart assistant that does that back to you? And I can't say that we do yet. William, he was not excited by the idea of having any robots in his home, but that's his own qualm. I think he's got some Doctor Who robots.

going on there. But I, the other side of this though, is I think this clearly represents what we've been rumored for a while about a robotic arm that reacts to the user and follows them around the room.

Um, maybe this is what someone saw or German saw and then, uh, has been leaking out about a robotic arm. And so there's actually no such product in the pipeline, or this is a proof of concept of that product. But whatever the case, my picture to you right now, since yes, we don't know what robotics there would be in the home.

This would be the first one. So we get the home hub thing this year. I can't wait to have a name for that thing. The display, the seven inch portable display in our home this year. And then sometime between now and 2028, we get a, you know, $800 AI enabled robotic arm attachment. That's for this device.

and you just set up this arm somewhere in your home. And then when you walk into the kitchen, you put your tablet into its mount, it wakes up and now it becomes this anthropomorphized robotic character that follows you around the kitchen and points out when you're about to put the wrong ingredient in the thing and dances around to music, right? Would you want to have something like that in the room with you that's being animated and excited or, um,

Just expressing emotion through movement and sound. See, there's such a wide range here. Because to me, the first thing that looked like was this that I'm holding up, which is Belkin's stand. This is the one that worked with Apple Dock Kit.

And I can see this doing many of the motions. It's able to tilt and rotate and follow it around. Can you imagine something like this, whether it's Apple made or whatever, and Apple has the software. And cause I do think I would prefer that version of Apple assistant that is able to look at me. So if I'm sitting here in the studio and I ask a question and it's able to like, instead of like,

flashing a light or beeping. I mean, it's able just to look at me and I know that it's paying attention. I know that it's actively listening to me. And then as I, as it's like thinking it's, you know, bobbing or, or whatever, like just makes it feel a little, well, I don't know. It's more polished than just a flashing light. Right. Well, the Apple camera following you mag safe mount thing. That's actually an example in this video of,

emotional versus static response. And the static response from a robot would be, I need you to go from here to here and it just turns, right? Whereas this thing having an emotional response or a just a more varied response would have it

move slower, have wider turns. And yeah, overall having something like this is slower than a precise robotic machine. But I like the idea of it being able to exude some kind of emotion. I thought it was funny when it couldn't reach something and look sad and stuff like that. Like I understand that that complexity and slowness of it maybe isn't what a lot of people want. You could probably turn this off.

And I don't want to turn my home – I made the same analogy in the Apple Insider podcast. I don't want to turn my home into Pee Wee Herman's Playhouse, right? I don't want everything dancing and smiling and singing at me every time I walk around the room, right? But at the same time, I could imagine just –

A little bit of joy, a little bit of whimsy it would bring to have a couple of devices in my home that kind of reacts to me being in the room and reacts to the music. And it's almost like having a little robotic pet in a way. And that sounds interesting to me. And Apple's robotics, I think, if getting back to the Apple Home side of this,

Apple car was Apple's focus, right? And we knew from internal leaks that Apple's primary targets for the future was, you know, iPhone and basic computing, spatial computing, home car, right? Well, the car is gone and has been replaced by robotics. I don't think robotics belongs in mobile. I don't think it belongs in spatial computing, right?

It belongs in the home. And as Apple produces more technologies in the home, I think we're going to see more robotics in it as well. And I think this is going to be an interesting blend that no one else is really doing right now.

I think it's going to be a blend of the robotics, the AI, and the home. Yeah. I think all those are going to come into play together. When I first saw this a little bit, it reminds me – I don't know if you saw this thing. I had one. But the Anki little toy truck. Mm-hmm.

It was a small little thing and it would sit on your desk and it had expressive eyes and you would talk to it and you would just ask it questions like any other assistant. But it was – you could scold it. You could praise it. You could play with it. But it also just acted as a standard like voice assistant. You could ask questions too and the eyes would turn into a little display to reveal answers like if you ask a math question or something like that.

And it was discontinued because it required quite a bit of upkeep on the server side to process that stuff. But it was so cool. And this feels like that a little bit. There's something to the idea of a robot following you around like a Rosie from the Jetsons. But at the same time, I don't know how I feel about that because as spatial – and that's the thing. Spatial computing is going to eat everything.

And on an infinite timeline, you know, iPhone, Mac, iPad, all these product categories are going to just be taken over by spatial computing in some way. Maybe we'll always have some sort of tablet, but instead of interfacing with it through the glass, we'll interface with it through our glasses that we wear on our face, right? So...

This kind of stuff's going to slowly evolve. And my question would be for Apple and for everyone, what's the use of having a robot following you around in a physical space when you can probably just have your assistant follow you around in a digital space? And then you could have your assistant be Navi from Zelda and it floating above your head yelling, hey, every five minutes, right? But I'm curious how this evolves because unless the robot can do things, and yes, we have robots today. They're vacuum cleaners. Right.

maybe it would just follow you around and suck up dirt while it's doing it. I don't know, but it needs to be able to do more than just bump up against your leg and say, can you, I can answer any question you want. You know, it's like, that's not that useful to me when I can have a virtual assistant on my wrist, in my ear, in my eyes at all times. Why do I need a physical robot following me? So there needs to be some utility pitch here, but maybe that's why this is still three years out. Apple's still trying to work it out themselves. Yeah.

For sure. Well, I feel like we got a little bit deep with that conversation. So let's go back to the surface because I'm pretty sure I willed this into existence, Wes. I did this with my mind. I couldn't even believe this when I got up this morning. But apparently Netflix is integrating with a TV app on Apple TV. It almost seems like an accident. It's really funny. Yeah.

I've been keeping track of this for a while. I noticed a few weeks ago, stranger things populated into the Apple TV app and a couple of other titles. And the thing is you could click on them. They, there was no plus button. All it said is open in and then Netflix, uh,

Uh, so clearly they were working on some sort of backend, but it never seemed like enough information. I just felt like, oh, well, they're just giving you another launching point. But today was the first time it actually looked like, oh, you can actually do this. Now, Netflix has a lot of database and I think this is going to be a slow rollout and maybe an official announcement from Apple and Netflix soon. Maybe even as we record Friday, uh,

Um, this could be an interesting announcement. Maybe that's the vision pro announcement that was teased earlier this week. We're getting a Netflix app for vision pro, but Hey, who knows? Um, but this also leans into something else I would really like is just let me buy Netflix. Let me buy stuff that is on Netflix in the Apple TV app. I will pay you an ungodly amount of money just to own Bojack Horseman just so I don't have to pay $25 a month to watch it. You know?

It is true. It is true. But yeah, I've seen like the Netflix shows occasionally show on the TV app, you know, for a while. And it could be sometimes you just look at like you look up Ted Danson and it shows like, oh, he's on this show. But you can't go into that show or play it because there was never any integrations with Netflix. And then when Jennifer was on the show, we talked about the new Sonos box. And I'm like, how is Sonos?

getting Netflix to integrate into their unified interface. And Apple wasn't able to, whether or not Netflix just likes Sonos better or Sonos was willing to pay Netflix money to make it happen. Or there's a fundamental shift in Netflix's ideology where,

It's called money. This is the most likely solution. They saw my tweet last week where I said this should happen. And I think that is what happened. They're like, oh, yeah. Let's just turn that on. And it happened because of me. This has to be financial. And definitely Andrew, but also financial because it's –

It's not that Netflix isn't already in everyone's pocket, right? Most of the world subscribes to Netflix. There's a lot of people subscribing to Netflix. I won't say most of the world. They're not Facebook level, but they have a lot of subscribers.

And they want more, but they keep raising prices. So they need a value add. It's like CarPlay, right? When you go to the dealership and you want a car and you're like, hey, is CarPlay in here? iPhone owners ask for that. And the TV app is becoming more and more prevalent. Apple making everything a channel helped lift other apps up. And I believe there's probably a metric out there somewhere that says, yeah, more people subscribe to Paramount Plus because it's in the Apple TV app. Guarantee it.

So Netflix finally decided if we're going to continue raising prices and we're going to continue doing this stuff, we need to go to where the people are. And I'm willing to bet also there are studies showing, because I'm one of them, that because you couldn't open Netflix in the TV app because it wasn't an up next, you just forget it's there. And people just unsubscribe because they were never opening the app anymore. And I think finally there's a crossroads where Netflix realized this and decided they needed to get into it.

100%. I also think that it has to do with Apple TV's increased popularity. We're seeing so many people now, like it was Ted Lasso, and now it's more than that. We're seeing more movies drop. We're seeing the talk around Severance and Mythic Quest that are currently dropping new episodes, and more people that I know that...

you know, maybe hadn't watched Apple TV plus before I was starting to get into it. And we just saw Apple TV come to Netflix or Android. Yeah. You know, that was a big thing. So Apple TV plus is now on Android phones and TVs and every tablets, foldables, everything in between. So I think that has become more popular. So now more people are in the Apple TV app. And that's also where you have your unified watch list. And like,

Like you said, Netflix wants to keep people watching. And Apple kind of... And I forget too. And Apple, I think, backed into a happy accident or maybe on purpose. They named everything Apple TV. So customers probably think, oh, I want to watch this on my TV.

I need an Apple TV. Now, Apple will never correct them because they'll just be like, oh, yeah, of course you need an Apple TV to watch Apple TV. How silly. Yeah. I mean, why would you think otherwise? Don't open your Google Play Store and your Android TV, though. Just go and spend your $130 and buy our Apple TV box, please. But I do think there's a little bit of that, that consumers are noticing that they want to watch things on Apple TV. There's a lot of good content there.

And, like, the gorge comes out as we record. And I've seen some... This is a divisive thing. I'm going to watch it today just for fun. But the reviews on it, I think, are between people honestly enjoying it for what it is. It's a silly popcorn film. And then there's the ones that are trying to take it way too seriously and maybe hating down on it because it is an Apple TV thing. But...

I'll make my own judgments once I actually watch it, but this is the kind of stuff going on in Apple. You never saw a social media kind of zeitgeist around Apple TV media before, except for Ted Lasso. And now we're starting to see it for more things more often. I want to see more experiments from Apple too. Like I, there was a period in 2023, I believe, and they've done this before where,

where they just dropped movies, already published movies into the Apple TV Plus subscription. And I don't think anyone knew they were doing it and it was undiscoverable. So it just kind of came and went. But that's the kind of stuff Apple needs to be doing and give more value to that money that people are spending. But also more people are just paying for Apple One. So I don't know. It's a winning formula for Apple. They've played the long game and I think it's actually working out for them.

Yeah, there's definitely been a lot more promotion around Apple TV in general now. I mean, I saw Amazon promoting the Gorge on Amazon Prime on Apple TV. Yeah.

Like, you got to follow that breadcrumb trail, but it gets you eventually to Apple TV just through Amazon Prime. Apple? So there's been a lot more promotion and synergy between companies. Like, that's Prime promoting Apple TV. Apple actually made a commercial for Android integration, which is weird, honestly. Like, I'm sure there's an Android commercial for Apple Music somewhere in history, but…

It's just not something they do. Right. The only time an Apple doesn't even advertise their switch to Android app. They just put it on the store and hope people find it. Right. So I'm I'm curious. Do you want to see more Apple services on other platforms? Like, would you for me personally, like, I think I would experiment with third party readers if Apple Books was on the Android app store.

I mean, I don't use Android much other than in our compares and for short periods of time. So I don't – It's not – It wouldn't affect you. I've been in it for a week or so at a time, but it's not going to really impact me. And I'm not – I don't think that a lot of – like when it comes to like Apple Books, I don't think – I think everyone who is on Android that has a reader app, they're not going to be like, wow, Apple Books is the one and make a jump to it. No. Like they're going to stick with Kindle or – It's not a switcher. Whatever –

Yeah.

I do wonder, I don't have an Android phone to test it on. Actually, I do. It's just buried in a closet. I want to see if the Apple TV app lets me see my Apple TV library or if it's just Apple TV+. That's a good question. That's a good question. I'll take a check. Because Roku and PlayStation, I believe, I'm pretty sure, you can go to your whole library. But anything you've ever purchased. But...

I don't know if that's true for Android. My guess is yes. It would make sense. Because I signed into the Apple TV app on an Android TV recently, and the first thing it did was populate. Like, I could even pull up my, like, Paramount Plus app

channels was on there. And I, I'm 90% sure I saw the library option as well. So I, yeah, I would assume it would work the exact same way. Yeah. There's a, that's an interesting connecting point. I know Amazon does the same thing. You can buy things on Amazon video and watch them anywhere you have Amazon video signed in, but Apple's iTunes has been such a force for so long. It's interesting to know that like you can literally watch it anywhere now. And, uh, that, that didn't used to be true. Right. And, and,

Apple's Matter support for home and Apple TV everywhere, Apple Music everywhere. I'm liking this. I may not be using a lot of these other platforms, but I like the idea that I at least have the option to spread out if I want to. And I want to see more of it. And we got into this on Apple Insider as well. So go listen to that show. I won't get into detail here. But I can hear the arguments now.

There's still a buying reason. Like there's still a buy-in to Apple ecosystem. If Apple's services are available elsewhere, I still want an iPhone for encryption and iMessage and FaceTime and all the privacy stuff and everything that it offers, the ecosystem advantages. There's still so many reasons to use Apple products that I don't think Apple needs to be afraid to allow some of these other things on other platforms. For sure. Well,

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Okay, Wes, what do you think about SwitchBot? Have you used SwitchBot stuff in a while? I haven't used SwitchBot, but I'm really interested in the company because they seem to be coming out with more and more just really interesting ideas. And I'm looking at this thing here, and I am so here for it.

They're not the first to do this by any means. Ecovacs has a version of this, but this is smaller and more compact, which I really like. So the SwitchBot K10 Plus Pro Combo is now available and shipping. So this essentially is a robotic vacuum cleaner that will clean your home, but it's also a stick vac that

that goes into the same unified docking station. So imagine it with a robotic vacuum, like the handheld in the back and then the robot in the front. And whenever you put the robot or the handheld into the dock, it'll automatically empty out that dustbin to the large canister on the inside. So it's one place to clean out.

super handy. Um, they have the K10 plus is the vacuum. It's an adorable one. It is like kind of small, like the size of my face maybe, um, versus the massive ones that do the homes. So I like that they have like kind of the smaller bot. I feel like this is perfect for apartment and other places where you don't need anything huge. Honestly, Wes, I feel like I need this like for the studio because the small enough robot that can clean under the desks and

And then I could still use like the stick vac for cleaning up on shelves, any spider webs that are in here, like the lofty parts. Like I love that whole unified solution. So this is really cool. It does support matter, though, as we've talked about switchbots matter support for vacuums right now is on and off switch.

That's it. They have not really commented whether or not they're going to add full Matter support, but since it's not here, we can't even test it anyway. So they're like ahead of the game by adding Matter, and I'm hoping, I expect, that they will move to an actual proper vacuum integration when it becomes available on all the platforms. But at least it's there, though you do need one of their hubs to enable that Matter integration.

How often are you going into your vacuum app and tell, and telling it mop this corner of the floor at this pressure and like doing all these settings versus you just open it and press the go button and it goes. Unfortunately for me all the time. Yeah. Because I don't necessarily want it to do like the hallway or Harrison's room, something like that. Like,

Harrison probably has a million toys in his room. It won't even be able to get in the door. So I'm like, I don't even want to tell it to go over there. I'm like, just do the kitchen and the living room. Those are the ones that need it right now. Or the spot cleaning is really helpful. So Harrison also discovered the fish tank and he likes to feed the fish. So he took out the jar of the fish food, which are super tiny, less than a millimeter size round spheres, and then ran and then

through it. Of course. So they have been all over our living room floor.

for a while. So I, I wanted to run it a couple of times in that area to pick them up. So yeah, I opened the app, I select that area and then I just use vacuum and then have it do that area. And I can even tell to do like two passes. I'm talking about the Robo rock in the situation, but many of them have the same spot cleaning multiple passes situation. So yeah, high suction, multiple passes, just this area. So I do use that a lot, which unfortunately is not going to be supported in, in the proper matter integration at launch. Um,

So that is a little bit of a bummer. A couple of kind of life hacky things with these robots. First, you can set up multiple levels of your home in a lot of these things. I have the narwhal. And so right now I have it set up. So we have this donut-shaped living space, right? So it's a big circle from the hallway to the living room to the dining room to the kitchen back to the hallway.

And so that's all it knows, my houses. And because I didn't, I shut all the doors to prevent it from going in the bedrooms, the office, the bathroom.

And so I just open the app a lot of the times and just hit go. And it just cleans the main spaces. It vacuums the rugs. It mops the floors. And it usually doesn't use all the water to do that. I can let it do its thing and it's good to go. And if I ever need it to clean a specific area, like I'm going to put it in my office or my bedroom or elsewhere, just create another floor in the app.

and tell it that that is a different floor. So that way you can still go to the main level of my donut-shaped house and tell it to clean that with a single button press and not have to designate areas every single time. And then if you want to go clean that specific room, just switch floors and say go. And it kind of gives you that...

That ability to be a little bit less programmatic and specific every single time. And because most of the time I'm not, the robot isn't cleaning the rooms. We have a set. This is where the separate vacuum comes in. We have a separate vacuum for cleaning, like the closet where the litter boxes and vacuuming different area rugs and different bedrooms. So,

I think like this switch bot thing would be so cool just because there's so many little places, like you said, ceilings and different stuff where a little portable vacuum cleaner would also be awesome to have and having all in one unit cleaning itself, all that stuff would be nice. So this is this or another one like it was something I would definitely want to look into for my next robot vacuum.

I mean, the problem with just doing the different maps or levels is that you have to essentially switch the level. You can't still go out and just say, through Apple Home or Apple's Assistant, just say go. Because you have to first go into that app, switch it to the proper map, and then just say go. So we still end up having a similar issue of telling it which one to do. Shortcuts helps with that because they – I believe Narwhal and a lot of these –

Yeah. Roborock has that. And I just, I can, again, just go by voice and cause I have a shortcut set up for every room. Right. So that helps. That helps. So whichever way you go, like you, you don't have to get too complex, but I would definitely say they, cause in the apps now they still treat it as the donations to, um, Apple's voice assistant. But in reality, it's just, you're making a shortcut. Uh, you utilizing that is helpful and tie the shortcut to your home. Um,

Have it brighten the lights, right, because these robots need good lighting. I have a cleaning mode for when I'm running the vacuum and it turns all the lights to a bright, good temperature, that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of ways to kind of bring these things together, but different ways depending on your household because everyone's house is shaped very differently. So got to do what works for you.

Absolutely. We have three pieces of a car news. First is there is a new update for the U300 door lock. This is huge. And if anyone remembers when I talked about this on the first install, there was a weird thing that it was doing where it would, when you would unlock it, it immediately relocked. So this is the interior door lock. This is the one that we have installed on our bedroom because Harrison has started opening up doors and we needed to stop him from letting the cat out to go outside.

And the downside of that happening is, especially if you're trying to be quiet, like you go to leave, you try to close the door.

And you can't move the handle again without unlocking it and then moving that. So there ends up being like that loud kind of click as it closes. Now there is a proper way to prevent this from happening. The old solution was you had to like put in a code, pull the handle down and like press a button on the inside to disable the auto locking. Now they just added regular old buttons.

auto lock timing to the lock. So now you can do everything from 30 seconds to never. So you could have this thing never automatically lock and you control when it locks. So we could actually set up proper scenes like for during the day, like good morning, and it'll automatically lock it. But then at night it keeps it unlocked because we don't have to worry about it because he's in bed, things like that.

Or you can just have it set to lock when you leave, that type of deal. But it doesn't have to. Or even 30 seconds is helpful because sometimes you go into the room and then you grab something and then you leave and you want to be able to close it again without it kind of clicking so loudly. Now you can just do something as small as that before it locks again. So this is really helpful. This was a great update. Should have been there from the beginning. But yeah, so auto unlock, auto lock timers for the U300. Yeah.

It feels like this is one of those things that they could heavy automation. Yes. But like, I feel like automation could also help where I would want it to, if it's an indoor lock proximity sensors. Right. So if I'm in the room, don't auto lock. If I'm in the hallway, like wait 30 seconds, check the hallway for activity, then auto lock. Right. Like if there's still people in the hallway, if there's still people moving around, then

ignore that timer reset it wait 30 seconds wait a minute check again is there is there anyone around then lock it right so there's i feel like there's ways they could do that obviously i don't think that's an option now but there's more ways that you could probably set these up for good control mechanisms um more intelligence anyway

Yeah, I think you could tie this into their presence sensors or something and try to do something similar to that. I mean, if you had one of those presence sensors mounted in your hallway for your hallway leg automations or something, you could literally use the same automation to like, if there's no one there, don't do this, blah, blah, blah. So you could figure something out that way. A lot of these home goods seem to be...

They're idealized versions of themselves, and I wonder how many of the manufacturers actually use these in their home because I think if they ran into the issues that normal users did, that they wouldn't be in these products. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, that's why I feel like they added this because before it seemed too complicated. It did. This is such a good solution. Yeah. They're obviously listening or at least testing more options anyway. Yeah.

Well, I think people are going to be so stoked for this next product, the Aqara H2 US. So this is a smart switch. This is so brilliant, man. Okay, so they have three different versions. There's a one, two, and three channel switches. So if you have those like multi-gang boxes where you control like three separate lights, you can do that with this. So it's still a single plate, single box, single gang box, but it can control one, two, or three different channels. And then the one and the three version...

have an additional button on them. So like if you just have a standard light switch that you press it and press it to turn your lights on and off, it adds a second toggle below that is a programmable switch. So you can use that to run any automation you want, a shortcut, turning off another light in the room, you know, via Apple Home or whatever. It's basically a button programmable switch.

And then the three channel also has that. So there'll be four buttons. So three to control the lights in the room and a fourth one that's programmable. The two channel does not have this. It just has two buttons, two paddles on there.

your typical one, like just normal. So no programmable there, but the one in three has an additional button. They also have optional neutral wires. So it means people can use these on old and new houses. If you have a new neutral wire on a newer house, boom, you're good. If you have an older house, congratulations, you can still use this. I get it all the time. People asking for no neutral wire switches. This is it. It supports Zigbee and thread. It supports matter, um,

remembers the state that it was in. So my parents have a bunch of smart products as well, but I might be a little more savvy in setting some of these up because like their power went out. And then when their products came back online, they all turned on.

And products like Hue actually have an option for this same thing with Nanoleaf where you can tell it what to do. Do you want it to turn on? Do you want it to turn off? Or do you want it to go to the last state it was in? And that's what this has here. So if there's ever a power outage, it'll go back when the power resumes. It's not going to just turn on and turn on the lights in your house. It's going to go to the last state it was in, whether that was on or off.

I just remember like a few weeks ago, my parents' power went out and mom's like, oh, I knew the power went out because I woke up because all the lights in the house had come back on. Right. Because whatever switches my dad had installed don't have a way to remember the state they were in before they lost power. So that's a really nice thing to have here.

They also have power monitoring inside of the Aqara app. Then real quick, Wes, and I'll get your thoughts on these. We have the Aqara LED bulb T2 standard bulb, but it does support adaptive lighting, which is huge. So it supports matter over thread as well as adaptive lighting, tunable white colors, remembers the power state just as before, and up to 1100 lumens of brightness. So still a standard bulb, but we're not seeing that many matter ones that support adaptive lighting. So I think that's really cool here.

Yeah, I like the idea of the switches. This is one of those things that I think every company needs to be doing. Just throw everything at it. Give us all the things. Buttons, switches, neutral wires, just all of it. Because you never know what someone's going to need in a space. And it's so frustrating having all these different things.

device types out there and none of them actually fitting your needs. Customization is key. And just, again, I think a car is, uh, they're good at this. They, they do a lot of these kinds of products that just kind of throw everything at it. Honestly, throw a temperature sensor in there. I don't know. Like let's, let's, let's just go crazy here, but I really liked it. He did a real present sensor, a motion sensor, but a present sensor. That'd be cool. Like, well, that'd probably make it cost a hundred dollars, but this is,

This is neat. I like this. Definitely something to look into, especially if you're looking at replacing your switches. Do you do smart switches and smart bulbs in the same section, or do you try to use dumb bulbs with smart switches?

Um, there's only one section where we have both, which is, uh, I think the living room and that's because we have the brilliant panel in there and the brilliant panel, you're able to tell it like when during setup, you're like, okay, what bulbs do you have? Is it like led? Is it incandescent or do you have smart bulbs? And then if you have smart bulbs, when you hit the switch, um,

It's just sending a command and toggling the smart bulbs. Right. So it actually has a way to know if they're like hue bulbs versus regular bulbs. So you can actually control them both. The problem typically is if you use a smart bulb, then you kill a switch. Now that bulb has no power. You have to turn on the switch again before you can control the bulb. Right.

That's usually a problem. I do stuff like in our bedroom, we have a lot of hue bulbs as well, but we have one of those Lutron or Auroras or whatever they're called, but the little part that goes onto your switch that you twist and press to control the lights. As long as you don't walk in and throw your hand up the wall to hit the power switch and send the little button flying into the room, it works really well. And it's an easy way to control the lights and the brightness, everything.

From a physical switch as well as the actual bulbs. I think because a lot of people still rely on physical switches, it would be smart to have more of those... What are they called? Like flip or plunger switches. That's just basically the white flipboard switch. Have it so you could program when you press up, it's on, and press down, it's off kind of things. I think Hue might make something like that. But there's definitely...

A lot of interesting things in this space. And then, of course, more bulbs from Akara. Always happy to see more bulbs. There's so many HomeKit bulbs out there, but can't have enough. I like all the little silly designs and stuff. I'm still using Nanoleaf pretty much everywhere, but happy to see more stuff coming along.

For sure. Well, last thing I wanted to touch on, because we're already running along this episode, Wes, we just keep talking. I want to talk about these Roborock vacuums, because these are available to order now, the Saros 10 and the Saros 10R. And we have both of them here in the house, and it's been too short of a time to give you a full review of these. And I also want to test Matter Integration and those things, so you won't have a full review from me just yet. But I do want to talk about...

the differences between the Saros 10 and the Saros 10R because it frustrates me and I struggled picking which one would be best. So I wanted to revisit these again now that I've had a little bit of time with them in the home to kind of talk about what the differences between them are because they are priced the same. And like if you're like me, you're like, I just want to get the best robotic vacuum for my home. Like what is that option? And it's very muddied.

So, essentially, the high-level version, I'm going with the XR. That's what we're going to use in our home. The XR has the next-gen navigation system, so like the AI-powered navigation system. One of the things that really caught my eye about that is they promise better, like, cord detection and dangling cords. Because there's, like, a vertical view now that it can see higher and can see cords, like, dangling off the couch or under a desk and things like that. So they promise better avoidance of cords.

Because that has happened where they've still gotten entangled one way or the other. They also have the...

rotating mops or the dual spinning mops on the bottom versus the other one. They have a, I would say an older style dust bin, like the, the Omni dock situation, whatever they're called docking station rock dock. I think it's actually what they call it. Um, but it, it has a new look. It has like a new little face plate. It looks better, but the top is still exposed. Like you can still see like the logos for dirty water and clean water and the handles to pull them up.

And it has technically lower suction, like 20,000 pascals, which is still very high. The 10, so this is the one that I opted not to use for our house, does have the older school time of flight navigation, which is tried and true, but it's basically what's been around. It does now lower itself, so it pops up out of the middle, but then drops back down. So it can go under surfaces like tables and couches, things like that, that it can fit under. So that is really nice that it retracts.

The other one doesn't have anything on top at all. So that's their standard navigation. They say they're roughly equivalent in terms of their navigation capabilities. But to me, the AI based one is only going to get better. It's going to recognize more objects and improve. So if you're looking for something that's going to last, that's why I preferred the AI navigation to the older school one.

Um, the other, the, the 10 has higher suction, 22,000 Pascal. So slightly more suction. So if you have a lot of carpet, maybe that's better. It uses the vibra rise mop. So the one that goes on the bottom, it's a pad and it just shimmies around a whole bunch and just vibrates on your floor. Um,

This one leaves less streaks if you have polished floors. So if you have glossy floors in your very nice house, wood floors, anything like that, and you don't want to see any mop streaks at all, this is the one to get that does better on that. Personally, I have no evidence of this yet. I think the scrubby ones, the rotating ones may work better, but I can't.

prove that yet until I do more testing. Yeah. The rotating mop pads for me are good, but also I, I, they tend to grab onto things. We have old air vents, like the metal plated air vents. And we have, I've, it has pulled entire threads out of these, um, rotating mop pads. So maybe a vibrating stationary mop pad would be better for a surface like that. But

Well, what's the price difference between these two? No, that's the thing. They're the same. No, see, that's broken. Yeah, that's a problem. That's why it's hard. That's why it's difficult. They're literally the same price tag. So when people are like, which one do I get? And that's the question that I had. And I spent a lot of time. And I've actually appreciated having them both in the home to test out. And I can say so far that the one I'm holding one right now, this is the 10, the regular 10.

I would probably go 10R just because technology, you want the upgradable one, the one that has an upgrade path, not the one that's going to remain static, remain the same. Unless that's just maybe you don't want anything to change. Maybe that's a priority for you, right? So it's definitely going to be a very specific pick based on the household, based on the person. But I would go 10R myself.

That's the way that I lean, but I'm like, why can't the 10R have the same other docking station? Because the 10 has, I think, a nicer looking docking station where the top of it is fully covered and it has to like pop up to remove the bins. I just think it looks a little more seamless. Why is that a differentiator between the two? Maybe they just... And it shouldn't be a buying reason. It's a market test. They want to see which one sticks. Like...

But no one's going to buy – people are going to buy based on the capabilities of the robot, not whether or not the top of the docking station is exposed or covered. Right, right. So I would just prefer it covered because looking at them both, it looks better having it covered. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. They both look good. They have a lot of robot vacuums. I mean, Roborock is one of the ones that just has a lot of robot vacuums to choose from. So it just –

I wonder if this is another one of those things, too, where if you're in a store, maybe they'll carry one and not the other, right? Maybe the choice will be made for you. But when you're online shopping like this, yeah, it can get a little overwhelming looking at all the features and deciding which one to go with.

Well, tentatively so far, I'm liking the 10R more. I still need to do more testing and see how much of a difference some of these things make, like with the cables, see how that does. I know that the 10, when I was testing it, it did suck up a dart, like a Nerf dart. But I'm not sure it's completely its fault because it's going really underneath the couches. And they have like a way to extend out the little rotating arm that like spins. So my guess is that stuck it out.

grabbed like a dust ball as well as a dart and then fed it into its mouth like a little crab and then it just sucked it up because it wasn't like in front of it and it ran it over it avoided it it was under a couch so i'm like i don't know if that would have even changed with the other one probably or if it would have had the exact same problem because there's still gonna be random things like that that come up that are like that how do you even avoid that besides just cleaning up your kids darts

Yeah, probably, especially with kids. Pre-cleaning, sadly, with robots is still kind of a thing. Honestly, these things have gotten so good.

So, so good. We had one of our dog likes to chew on his feet every once in a while. And sometimes, especially when it's like really dry out, he'll get like cracked paws. So it was like so icy and dry the other day. And he came in and he had a tiny little spot and it was bleeding. And so he walked from like our living room, like came into the door, came through our living room, came through the kitchen, through the hallway. And for half of that, he tracked blood, like tiny little blood dots that were coming off his paw.

And so I ran the vacuum to mop the living room and the kitchen, completely scrubbed it out. Nice. It just worked really, really well. And we do have the cleaning solution in there, which helps just sanitize something like blood or just dirt and grime and everything. Nice.

but they did a really good job with these things. They've gotten so good. And now they have the little arms that stick out and go under things. The new little mopping one to mop closer to the walls. Other robots are also doing a bunch of really cool things, whether it's like dreamy and like their blades to cut hair, you've got the X eight from Ecovacs. It has like the mop that literally sticks out the side. So it's a roller mop that sticks out the edge and goes right up against the sides. Like that's really cool.

There's a lot of really neat stuff happening in this space, but starting last year, I felt, really was the year of when these started to be very capable cleaning devices for maintenance and maintaining your home. Yes, still some pre-cleaning, but general cleaning

running vacuums and stuff. Oh my gosh. They're so nice. They're so great. I'm just, I'm so impressed with them these days. I'm waiting for the Looney Tunes style robot vacuum that has little arms that come out with a dust pan that just cleans up little, like there's like a pile of glass on the ground and it sweeps it up. You know, that's, that's what I want. That's the, that's the future we need. Absolutely.

Okay, well, I think that is enough for this episode. We have talked about a lot of things between new products and forecasting Apple's future stuff. So let us know what you guys think of all of this. Let us know in the comments if you're watching over on the YouTube video. If you want to watch the video version of this and like the vacuum I held up in Belkin's little stand, we'll see you in the next one.

Minor things like that in my very expressive face, you can do so at youtube.com slash homekitinsider. You can find out everything we talked about in the show notes today. Follow any of those links, pick up any of the products, or read any of these stories, watch any of the videos that we talked about. Wes, where do you want to point anyone for you? I mean, you can find me. I'm active on Blue Sky, and you can get my email address from any article I'm written, wesatappleinsider.com.

So, yeah, just reach out, say hi, and go listen to me on the Apple Insider Podcast. We're talking about tech every week, Apple News, stuff like that. Awesome. Sounds great. Otherwise, you guys can do what you guys do best. Leave us a 5, 10, 100-star rating on your podcast player of choice. Go ahead and just make sure you subscribe and follow along. We'll see you guys in the next episode.