Apple TV Rumor Roundup, Matter Speakers, & 2025 Smart Home Resolutions
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Welcome, everybody, to another episode, another new year of HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host, as always, Andrew O'Hara, joining me once more this week. It is Apple Insider's own Wesley Hilliard. How are you doing this day, this year, this everything, man? How are you doing? Do it.

Doing pretty good. I've started a new routine a few weeks ago. Kind of, I guess, what you'd call a New Year's resolution, but not because I hate those things. You can hear more about that on the Apple Insider podcast. But yeah, I'm pretty good here. Ready to go. Nice. It is. Everything is kicking off. We have, per usual, we have a jam-packed episode ready to go today. And yeah, I'm not...

I'm not ready for CES, though. So this will be your last episode before CES. So next week's episode is going to be jam-packed with all of the announcements for most of the year. A lot of the big ones we'll see at CES. And I am 100% not ready. So much to do. A lot of robots this year. Maybe we'll finally get that one that folds your laundry.

Oh, man, the laundry bot. Every year I watch the demo and think that's so cool in the size of my bedroom. Pretty much. So cool. It counts as smart home, right? We should just start covering laundry. Yeah, it's the technology AI promises to give us. Yeah.

That's the important right there. AI will identify the type of underwear you have to properly know how to fold it because they're all going to be different. If they can solve how to fold many women's clothes, I would be impressed because some of those, the shapes that they come in often confuse me. Every single thing seems like it's some form of a fitted bed sheet and there's no correct way to actually fold it.

That's why we need the robots to solve this problem for us. Of course. And billions of dollars of technology and cooling water. Yeah, that's exactly the future. Absolutely.

Well, getting into the news, we have a little bit of news from Matter. Now, this was touched on before when the CSA was on the podcast that speakers are coming, right? But Chris Lepree actually sat down with Jennifer Toohey over at The Verge, one of our friends of the show, and they talked a little bit, or at least he was able to confirm to her that smart speakers are coming and shared a little bit more details, which I find pretty interesting.

So, from my takeaway on this is, basically, speakers will work with Matter, but they are not designed for speakers like HomePod or the Amazon speakers. They are instead designed for the likes of Sony, Bose, JBL, anyone who has, like,

a Wi-Fi connected speaker and no voice assistant on board. And this will allow for device to device communication to those speakers can then turn essentially in to smart speakers and they can give you an alert that your washer is done.

washing your clothes. It could give you an alert that somebody has pressed your doorbell, all of those types of things. And I think there's a lot of use for that. But of course, it doesn't mean that the Amazon and Apple speakers will communicate well together and use them as a singular home, you know, mesh network or anything like that, like AirPlay would. But

It's still very specific. It also says that you can connect to any of these speakers through any Matter-enabled app, and that part I very much like. It's very similar to AirPlay, how you can cast to any AirPlay speaker, regardless of manufacturer. This would allow you to use any Matter app, which could include Apple's native system audio, and cast that to any of these Matter-enabled speakers.

So some interesting stuff here, and it's good that we're getting a pretty major new device type coming to Matter. Right, and there's always the chance Apple could include Matter support in a future HomePod or Apple TV. I think you've discussed before all the rumors around new products coming in 2025 that would bring possibly just all these integrations, AI, all these things to Apple Home, but that would also mean maybe Matter. Yeah, I agree. I think that'll end up coming into the mix some way or another.

Next up in the news, we at least have a, this isn't, I guess, a good piece of news if you're coming from Apple's camp, but Apple has agreed to a $95 million settlement from the Siri spying lawsuit. So this stemmed from a 2019 report and that said, this is the quote, that Apple contractors would regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples'

doing things, and basically people would accidentally invoke Apple's assistant, and people literally, like, I think one of the things they mentioned was, like, almost anything as inadvertent as a zipper zipping would make kind of the right sound to trigger the assistant, and then it would listen in, realize it was nothing you needed to be concerned about, and then be dismissed. And this could even happen in the background when you wouldn't even note it.

Apple did many changes since then, including allowing people to opt in explicitly in or out to sharing Siri recordings, and otherwise it won't save any of those things.

All of that. But this lawsuit happened and Apple agreed to this $95 million settlement, which could garner everybody who is included in it up to $20 per device, five devices per household. Of course, it depends on how many people actually apply to this lawsuit.

or to the settlement, because it's a class action settlement, and it still doesn't need to be approved by a judge, so this will still take a little bit of time before people get their money, but you will have to swear under oath that you had accidentally invoked Apple's assistant and said something that you did not intend to be overheard. So as long as you can do that safely and...

you know, go through that $20 up to $20 per device, five devices per household. Have you, how often have you accidentally invoked Apple's assistant? I mean, I've said it before. I'm a Siri unicorn. Uh, I don't really run into too many problems with it. The seemingly at least recent updates that allow the voice detection to actually be good at what it does. Um,

seems to actually work. It's not triggered by TV shows. It's rarely ever triggered by a podcast that I'm listening to out loud. It's just, I don't know. I understand people have these issues, but overall though, this actual lawsuit, it's important to understand the reporting here because I can already hear the people going to the internet and going on the forums and saying, see, this is proof that Apple's been listening this whole time because it's not actually about, I know what you're referencing is

When this was discovered, the contractors came out and said, yeah, we've heard these intimate conversations and stuff, but that's not actually what the lawsuit's about. The people who sued Apple are claiming the very absurd claim that they were getting advertisements based on what Siri had overheard. And that was like they were seeing ads for Air Jordans because they heard Air Jordan in the room or something. And it's just...

Absolute nonsense. It's not how any of this works. Apple does not sell your data. And even what it does collect was only ever used for contractors. And funny enough, Apple has warned customers that there are reviewers looking at audio since the day they bought and debuted the assistant. So the lawsuit was tossed multiple times. This has been a long, long, tumultuous thing.

still resulted in basically nothing. This is pocket change for Apple and it will be pocket change by the time people get their settlements. The damage though to the brand trust is done and I guarantee you the layman's on the internet, the people who visit these discords that I see or reddits will say, well now I can't use this assistant because it's going to advertise air Jordans to me and I

It's so frustrating when you're in our business, right? Because then we have to correct them and say, no, it's actually much simpler. These companies aren't listening to you. They have much better ways to get your data. So...

Apply if you want. You'll get a dollar. I also find ridiculous because of all companies, Apple has always been so strange about privacy and security. And of all the ways they make money, none of it is coming through selling user data like that. But then you have companies like Amazon and Google who are very much doing this. And they admit to basically doing exactly what you're saying.

And you have to even go in and toggle that off on, you know, Amazon speakers if you don't want your information to be used for these advertising purposes. It's why those speakers are so cheap, people. I mean, that's what it comes down to is like if you're getting the product for cheap, you're clearly...

People – The product yourself. Yeah, people tend to complain because it's the thing to do, especially Apple. They're now the big guys in the house. They have all the money in the world. So it's easier to target them. I mean I know Google and Amazon aren't exactly small businesses either. But for some reason, as always, I guess maybe because they're seen as pretentious –

Apple bears the brunt of a lot of criticism in these places, and people will say, oh, I will never own an iPhone, or I can't put a speaker, a listening thing in my house, but then they'll own Ring doorbells and have Amazon Echoes in every room, which have been proven to be privacy nightmares. So it's just, this is what we're in business for. We tell people the truth, and then we're told we're wrong on the internet. It's just usually how it goes.

When I was writing out some of our topics for the episode and I was going through the details of the lawsuit again, what I always find so interesting is like, okay, so you have this person who claims they were wrong, right? And in some way the judge agreed with them. Ah, yes, it is terrible and unjust that somebody heard your private conversation that you did not intend to be shared. And what it came down to is here's a $20 bill.

that should make everything better. I think, like, okay. Yeah, for the American justice system and a lot of the people who do these lawsuits, it's less about the class action and more about the justification, the

On paper, here's the proof that we showed that you were this thing. And to be clear, none of this is over. I mean, the settlement was offered by Apple, I think, because it was just costing them money and time they didn't care about. This was not them admitting guilt. They actually blatantly said, we still did nothing wrong, but here's some money, so go home.

Um, the judge who has to approve the settlement who likely will was the one who rejected the case in the first place. It's just absurd. But the, the problem is, and why we're here today talking about it is the original rejection was accompanied by the chance to appeal. And basically all you have to do is shop around until you find someone willing to hear your case and take it to the end result. But that same judge still has to approve it. I think you will. I think Apple's clearly just trying to get away from this and be done.

I mean, I think what this really comes down to is the only people who really benefit out of something like this is the lawyers that are taking their millions of dollar chunk out of that settlement. Everyone else will get $20 who was, you know, theoretically wronged and the lawyers will walk away with massive pockets of cash. Everyone, all of your parents said be lawyers in the 90s and now we have too many lawyers and I guess all we can do is sue each other. That's the future. Yeah.

Well, it's clearly working out for them. At least the lawyers. We could have gotten that. We chose not to do that. We're working for the people over here, telling them to stop suing each other. We're here talking in our basement about the new Thor Bolt X1. It's our next piece of news.

So this is a new smart lock. If you couldn't get from the Thor bolt and name. Um, so this is the home kit over thread. So it does not matter. It is home kit over thread, um, has a built in fingerprint reader, keypad, physical key, and it works with Apple home key. Um,

It's launching in a black colorway first, I believe, but silver, gray, and titanium will also be coming down the line. So if anyone remembers the Thorbolt name, this is from a company called Sleekpoint. So Sleekpoint is your parent company. And then with inside of that, there's these multiple brands that are doing different verticals of the smart home. So you have Thorbolt is going to be Sleekpoint's locking division company.

And then you have Air Versa that does the air purifiers. And then you have to download the Sleek Point app. I think the naming scheme is weird. I know they're trying to be kind of like Amazon or Anchor who has like

They're charging products, and then they have, like, Solix, who does, like, power, and they have Nebula that does audio and video. But the problem is, like, you're downloading the Anchor app, you're downloading the Soundcore app or the Nebula app. Like, you're downloading all those individual ones. No one knows who Sleek Point is, and I think that's always the weird thing here is, like, you don't download the Thorbolt app or the Air Versa app. And I think the naming scheme is just...

confusing. They're seeking brand recognition for a brand no one knows. Yeah. Yeah. And I really like their products. I think they're great. If they just called it the Sleek Point Thorbolt X1, cool. At least you would know that it's Sleek Point to download the Sleek Point app. The original Thorbolt was that gigantic monster. You had to turn the entire doorknob right. This one looks so much nicer. Yeah.

I thought I still had one sitting on my desk here because I could hold it up on the video, but it's probably like under my desk or something. But yeah, that was the Mark 1 latch lock. So that was basically a doorknob replacement for interior doors or even something like a garage door, perhaps, that you had like a key to lock. So similar thing like that. This is an actual deadbolt one.

and it looks more appropriate, but I do like, you know, the integrated look. It actually looks pretty simple and clean, like nothing too crazy here. Well, if you look into the reflection of my glasses, you can see the images of the Thorbolt that I am looking at. It's really, it's really nice. It's definitely, it has its little external pad. I think a lot of companies are going for this. I bought my family another, I mentioned it before, but this is a second purchase, and

uh a cara thing i forget what they're called but um one basically the one with the sensors outside and uh just a big pad and that's nice i kind of like this design it's simple and i see on the top deadbolt on the inside everyone knows what this is you look at it you know what it is it's unlike the august lock or other things that everyone just asks questions about like how do i leave this is a little bit more straightforward which is nice i think this is the one but i can't even be sure anymore

Well, let's see what else we have in the news. We still have a lot to talk about, including kind of like an early CES announcement here that kind of came out. But before we get into it, let's take a break. Thank our sponsor for the episode. It is 2025. It is a new year. It is time to start a new business.

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Now, I know CES is starting off basically today. The day that this episode is coming out, CES is going. First day unveiled or whatever, I think. Or no, it's even the day before. Literally, CES comes out the day before this episode on Sunday, I think, is actually the first day that I have to start doing things. But this came out, and I've never heard of this brand before. I don't know if you have, Wes, but apparently they're in many vehicles called Homelink.

And at least some surgery Googling has pointed to basic things like your garage door opener and how their technology allows it to, how it allows you to like open and close your garage door. Well, apparently now they are growing up a little bit. They're integrating into more products that you can control from your car and they're even integrating into car play.

Now, I don't see anything in here specifically saying like, you know, HomeKit, but they're showing things like Nest thermostats on their page, which are Matter, which work in Apple Home. But basically, it sounds like they have created a CarPlay system.

for your smart home devices, at least ones compatible with this HomeLink platform. So this is really interesting. I'm really curious. I want to track them down at CES just to see what their dashboard looks like. And I want to understand why.

Can there be other CarPlay smart home apps? Because that's not a specific category. So I'm wondering about all the details here, Wes. I'm super curious at what this means. It's interesting. I have always wondered why Apple hasn't been more interested in

This side of the car, I mean, car play is interesting. It's important. Get your eyes off the road, have your controls easily accessed and simple. But, um, as far as home kit goes, as far as controlling your home goes or doing what a lot of people do and have, um, lights come on or garage doors open, this company has been doing it for a long time using RF frequency sensors, um,

We've had this technology for a million years. It's basically what controls your TV remote. Or that's IR, I'm sorry. Radio frequency, anyway. But yes, radio, we've had it for a long time. But this is interesting, kind of marrying the two, giving you access to maybe buttons in the car or buttons on the screen that give you access to controlling your home.

in the vehicle. Apple doesn't give you a home app on CarPlay, and there's no third-party CarPlay options that I know of. I don't think Apple would even allow it. This is one of those things you have to get permission to be a CarPlay app, and this is one I don't think Apple would give permission for. But what's cool is, as people know, we've talked about before, home automation is very simple. You can do it location-based. You can have a button in your car that...

connects over Bluetooth to your phone and then triggers a scene. You can even, we've talked about the MagSafe chargers that have NFC built into them with a little switch and you could tap that switch and activate a scene in your home. But this is going a step further by making it integrated in the vehicle and

And as always, vehicles are hard. I kind of made that joke earlier because Apple's next generation CarPlay never arrived in 2024. And there's a reason why it takes a long time to get a car from building to the road. And these partnerships are always fraught. So I wonder if this will see the light of day in 2025, if not two years from now. But yeah.

If it's a third-party accessory that plugs into a port somewhere in the car, cool. I'm here for it. More buttons, more things, more automations, always a good thing. Yeah. They've been doing, like you said, RF stuff. So your garage door openers, they have gate openers, all sorts of things like that. And now there's all these other products that kind of work with them.

So yeah, and maybe they're jumping the gun here. Maybe they don't have that certification from Apple, which would be unfortunately very short-sighted to announce a product and not actually have the green light. That's not what I mean. Right now there's nothing. I don't think they're talking about

They're talking about CarPlay integration. I'm not sure what's going on here. This announcement's interesting. We're going to have to see it in play. There's a lot of questions to their announcement anyway. They talk about a CarPlay app, and that's what I'm curious to see at what that looks like and what they're using because the home isn't an app category yet. So the other way around this, Wes, could be because in your vehicle –

you have the option, like car manufacturers have the option to create, and this isn't in next-gen CarPlay, this isn't in current CarPlay, they can create apps for things like controlling the climate, right? So you could theoretically have that in-car app

for in CarPlay that would do things like control your garage door. So maybe they're just expanding that of like, oh, also for your HomeLink account, you also have a thermostat and porch lights and a gate, like in all those show ups. Maybe that's how it is. Maybe it's going to be through car manufacturers and their interface. So you connect your phone for this first time and you see those manufacturer apps. We should, yeah, we should mention that

There is already the ability, I believe. I don't have a garage door, so I haven't seen it. But when you pull up in CarPlay, a button appears in the CarPlay saying, you know, unlock or open. You can set this up. I don't think it works for doors. Like,

unlock your front door. There's something about, I think it's just garage doors, but it does appear in CarPlay today, and it's very specific to HomeKit, but this would widen that reach a little bit. But I'm asking you, when are we going to get cars in Matter? Let's get car Matter support. I mean, it's got to be coming, right? Right. I mean, we've already got the EV chargers and all of that stuff built in, but we don't have...

cars yet. I can see that being a device type. Honestly, press a button to start the car, set your thermostat within the vehicle, maybe turn on your headlights or internal lights all from the home app. It would be a room in your home. It's just called car, that kind of thing. I think these kinds of things could work. I don't know. I've mentioned it before. I'm the kind of person who would love the home app to just be

every smart device in the home, I want to see the charge level of my smart toothbrush in the home app. You know, I want to open the bathroom room and see like the charge level of my toothbrush there. Right. Why isn't all of this just tied together? The home, yeah, the home app should be a portal into your home and everything in it. So that's all I'm saying. Um, I will say like the one thing that I've always, always wanted on my car that, um,

I haven't gotten. I had it a little bit ago when I had a Ford. Ford actually has been one of the traditional car manufacturers that has really pushed this forward, and even Apple has featured them. But I want the ability to, like...

start and stop, start and stop my car, uh, lock and unlock the doors just with, you know, Apple as assistant. I just want to be like, I'm getting ready. I'm like, Hey, start the car. And it does that for me. It'll even know who I am. So it knows like which vehicle is mine at faith. And I both have like, you know, the same car out there or something. Oh,

all that should just work. And Ford has done this. Ford has those shortcuts. They even have like the new ones for control center. So you can swipe down and do it or use your action button. Just hold your action button to start your car.

I love all that. Jeep hasn't done that yet. They did just fairly recently introduce like a whole new Kinect system in their car that's far better than what it was. And they still have like a lot of the remote features, but I want to see more of them doing that. Maybe Apple needs specifically to add that to CarPlay as a feature, like shortening

shortcuts for a car or something to try to get manufacturers on board versus just letting them do it. But it would be great. I was hoping to lease an Apple car next year, but that's not going to happen. So maybe Honda will integrate everything I want into their EV in 2026, 2027, when I will be in the market for leasing a vehicle. Yeah.

Because, hey, I have a whole life plan, right? So, I mean, things can change. A whole life plan. Yeah, I mean, after I get married this year, I think we're going to be buying a house early next year. And then I plan to lease again. Because...

When I was in the military, I leased, and it was awesome. It's relatively inexpensive compared to owning a car. Yes, you never own the lease unless you decide to buy it, but I think it's fun. I like having technology, and I like having the nice cars, and as long as you can afford it, it's the way to go. I could afford it on a military thing, and it made sense at the time, except people kept running into me. That was the not fun part. They liked...

There was like cars out there targeting Hondas. So hopefully that's not the case anymore. People have moved on to tackling Fords or something and they'll leave me alone as I drive my Apple CarPlay, CarKey, smart home car around in 2027. We'll see. Yeah. The car tech is so frustrating how long it takes to change anything. So long. That's a topic for a different podcast. I will... Oh, I was going to say one last thing. I will also say...

Why are aftermarket kits not a thing anymore? Just add these things through an aftermarket kit. That's it. That's all I want. Give me that and I will add it to every car on the planet. I would have car key in my car today if I could just install it. I mean, I don't understand why Apple doesn't do that. They're not selling cars. They don't care that the car manufacturer doesn't make any money. Partner...

with one of these car key guys that does the aftermarket car keys and make it Apple car key, right? I don't understand why no one's doing that right now. But anyway, maybe not. My only thought is because you literally need new door handles. Because car starters are one thing. There's a lot of different ones of those out there, but those are just being tied into the engine, and they're fairly universal. Whereas something like car key, it has to tie – you have to have an NFC reader in all of the –

door handles themselves. And I think that is where the problem would lie. Cause then you're gonna have to have what you're going to have a million handles. Cause you're gonna need left and right handles, front and back doors. And you're going to need it for every color of every make. Think about it. Yeah.

This is the same problem you run into with aftermarket stereos. What are you going to do? Have a dash for every car? Yes. Apple wouldn't make it. No, because you basically have a single din and you have a double din. And then you do have a cheap plastic exterior, which they're always black. That'll frame it out. But you only have two sizes. Whereas this, you'd literally need these special NFC doorknobs or door handles that

in basically four different styles for every car. And that doesn't even include the colors because you have front and back, left and right. Yeah, we don't have to design this here. I think there are solutions. Like 3D printing has come a long way and you could very easily go to an enthusiast forum and buy your cover and Apple just sell you the technology that goes under the cover. That's all I'm saying.

It wouldn't be a perfect... Covers to door handles. Yeah, it wouldn't be a perfect system, but it's one of those things that it is... It's realistic in the fact that it could be done for probably an absurd amount of money. But come on, we should be doing these things. I would take out the word realistic from that. I would say it could be done, but in terms of...

Logistics. Yeah, we would have to create a whole new industry. But look, we're out here creating jobs in 2025 on HomeKit Insider. There you go. Bringing it back. American-made door handles. Adding to the market. Boosting the economy. That's what we do here. We have 100 different SKUs per every vehicle to account for four doors and the 20 colors. Absolutely.

Okay. Well, we also had this cool report that I thought was very interesting, and it tied in with some recent news we shared on the podcast. So, Parks and Associates did a survey about smart video doorbells, and they actually found that they have a 71% attachment rate to an accompanying subscription plan. Basically, right, to make sure you're saving those video feeds somewhere for your doorbell versus just live streaming and live viewing.

And I think that is incredible. And they say that is the highest attachment rate in the industry for like additional plants compared to even other cameras, uh, or any other smartphone products. Like, uh,

a thermostat or lights. And like, I know we're, we're getting some subscription plans for, for lighting things, maybe to add features or dance music or whatever. We've got eco B and others that charge for security features and other things like that. You have security systems like a boat that have monitoring going on all of that. But 71% attachment rate is very high. And my first thought was,

No wonder that is the possible first smart home accessory outside of a speaker in the Apple TV that Apple wants to get into. And whether or not this comes before a camera or not, still, that's incredibly high. Are you going to buy an Apple Face ID doorbell? Well, I mean, of course. Yeah, right. That's not even a question. I'm going to put one in every room in my house. What are you talking about? I...

I think this would be cool. We're already doing the facial recognition. This is one of those features no one knows about of going to HomeKit, going to video and doorbell and going to people recognition. And then if you have, this is so fun.

If your contacts are up to date and you've gone to photos and labeled everyone in photos with your contact names attached to those cards, they're now attached to those contacts. And those contacts with your photos with the facial recognition will be recognized by your cameras in Apple Home as long as you confirm them within the app. And it's all one big circle. You have to do all of the things. But once you've done it, you now get the alert of success.

mother at doorbell, right? Instead of seeing person, probably this person. And it's so fun. Apple has it all integrated. It's not the best. They're definitely better facial and, uh, like object recognition systems out there. We've got so many erroneous alerts of package at door at 1 a.m. or whatever. Uh,

But I think Apple's integrations are really good, and I'm glad that they tie their video subscription to iCloud. I think Apple's doing it very smartly here, but I don't think a lot of people realize so many things are integrated with that iCloud subscription. And I've met people who own iPhones and then go buy a Blink system of cameras and pay for their subscription.

Yeah, it's wild to me sometimes when that kind of stuff happens. But yeah, I think I did a whole video or an article on the little design touches that people don't realize of how well things work together. And that's one of my examples because like –

You don't even have to even realize it that you're doing. You're just in your photos and you're identifying your people. And then those people happen to be tied to contacts. And then your doorbell is like, hey, everything is private and secure. Everything is processed locally. And it's like, hey, if I see that face and it also matches this face you have here, why not tell you who that person is and...

It's able to do that. It's a crazy cool thing without relying on external stuff. And this is one of those tips I give people, and this is not related to Apple home. So excuse me, but do that. Have your contacts name your contacts, uh,

Give them a nickname with all the emojis you want, but have their name in their name field. I know this is controversial, where most people's phones I've seen is Allie, smiley face, winky face, emoji, heart, poop emoji, and that's their name in their contact card or whatever. Fine. Put that in the nickname field. Have their actual names in the first name, last name. I know that's weird or whatever. People really hate doing that. Then go to photos.

label the faces of the people that you've taken photos of. First of all, take photos of your friends and family. Do it. Like, stop. I've seen so many photo libraries that are just memes. Save your memes, sure, maybe to the Files app. The Photos app should be for your faces. Anyway, for your people. Label those faces, and guess what? Apple's Photos app will create memories based on these people by having their birthdays in the context card

You will get a new memory on their birthday every year of those people in your photos app because it's their birthday, right? All those little integrations going together. Just telling you. And fun tip as a photography nerd here and I think Andrew can agree. Stop taking photos of things. Take photos of people in things, right? Don't take photos of fireworks. Take photos of people watching fireworks. You'll appreciate it more later. That's my tip for the day.

You reminded me of something. Can I rant for like two seconds? Everyone just hold on two seconds, then we'll get back to the rest of the news. This has been driving me nuts.

crazy. So I'm on a fair bit of social media, mostly consuming, but as like we're posting, like we have our, you know, our video stuff is, is Insta reels. It's a YouTube and YouTube shorts. It is, uh, on, we've got stuff on like blue sky and, and Twitter. And we also have stuff on Tik TOK, whether or not Tik TOK exists in a month, but we're,

One of these things that I've seen going viral a ton, and I know I'm getting more of them because I watched it one time, but there is two products are going around that are driving me insane. And I did a PSA once already on the first one, and I want to do one on the second one. The first one are these janky cables, right?

They're like, oh, look at these 4-in-1 cables. They're so strong. I can lift these weights with them. And I've got a USB-A adapter on one end, and I've got a lightning adapter on the other end. So many problems with this, and I don't even know where to start. These are clearly not certified cables. They are not certified through USB-IF. They are not certified through Apple. Apple does not allow for USB-C to lightning adapters, so that's already a problem.

a counterfeit chip that they have in there that is not from gas station cables that

You have no idea how strong that is. And these cables are selling for like $6. And I did a PSA saying, hey, don't buy these. You'll die. They're going to be dangerous. And you would be shocked at the number of comments. Oh, yeah, did Apple pay you to say that? Oh, yeah. Apple doesn't make money off of USB-C cables. Oh, yeah, I've been using my $6 cables for years, and I've never had anything happen. Yeah, but it also takes 12 hours to charge your phone. Yeah.

I get so fired up about it. That one's... That's number one. Go ahead, go ahead. That is always very frustrating. Yeah. The second one that I have seen are these stupid... They're literally just USB-C flash drives. And they're now being marketed towards iPhone users. Oh.

as iPhone backup systems and they don't even have an app or anything you literally just plug them in and they appear in the files app which is fine and normal and I'm cool with that but what they're like oh look how easy this is and they open like a photo album with like 20 photos they copy them and hit save to files and they say like look I just saved these in my phone why am I paying for a store a cloud storage plan because I can just back up all my photos into this and

So many problems. Yeah. That is not even close to the same thing as cloud storage. You're losing so much data, too. You're losing all of your metadata. Oh, my God. All of that metadata and everything. And then what? Are you going to delete them from your photos app? So you're going to copy over 20 photos at a time. And then when you need those photos, what are you going to do? Like, hold on. Let me pull out my flash drive and plug it into my phone. And then you're not even in like a photos interface. And this is just for photos, Pat.

But you're not even in a photos interface. You're in a finder window, basically, where you have to scroll through and find your photos that are no longer sorted by date or when you took them or where you took them or who is in them or the content of the photos. And then your whole backup system is hoping that this $20 flash drive that you have to carry around in your pocket doesn't get damaged. Or lost. Yeah, no. You've discovered a part of the internet that is just filled with people who are like,

You know what's really cool? Cassettes. I'm going to own a cassette, and then if you take this screwdriver and stick it into the hole, you can rewind the tape manually. Isn't that innovative? That's the kind of stuff that people are doing, and it's wild. People rediscovering old technology and treating it as new again, and that will always be funny to me, and let them have their fun, but I agree with you. That is...

There is so much we've covered on Apple Insider, I think three in the month of December alone. And there's more out there, but we try to get the big ones of just all the misinformation and terrible advice people give on these social media services. I don't understand that.

Why people are so desperate to avoid the like status quo known working systems and they want to get these like quote unquote life hacks and the gas station cables kill me because people got here and buy these awful, terrible cables. Let me put it this way.

It's like using a four-in-one soap, shampoo, dishwashing soap, liquid, grease remover, car wash substance on your body. It never does what you want it to do. It's trying to do too many things at once, and honestly, it might actually hurt you if you use it. So I think these cables are the same thing. I think this whole idea of, oh, buy a flash drive and back up your stuff, stop paying for cloud storage is...

The money you spend on that flash drive and probably 12 more after that because you keep losing it, you could actually just pay for storage. It's $12 a year for 50 gigs. Just do it.

Yeah. It's one of those things that just infuriates me. And people were like, you have no proof those cables are dangerous. I'm like, sure. You can, you can also get your kidney removed in a van. It's a doctor. It's the same thing, right? It's just, you know, not really certified or monitors. And there's a, there's a good chance they're cutting some corners and,

As they slice you away in a van, there's no, it's, I can't prove that you're going to die. Um, but if I was a betting man, yeah, this is what researchers are calling a post truth society where mistrust in established, uh,

things like doctors or scientists or experts losing that trust likely because they were exploited by these things before. And that's fair. A lot of these institutions have exploited ignorant people and, and turn them into mindless zombies. So they're trying to get away from the mindless zombiness, but they've, they veered too far over corrected and we'll eventually veer back. It's just, we're in the middle of this course correction and,

And it can be very frustrating for people like us who know better and are trying to advise people. And they're just like, I don't believe you. I will point to one resource. Um, I forget how to get there, but it's on the internet. So I'm sure it's, it's findable, but, uh, maybe we'll find it for the show notes, but there is this excellent collection. There's this guy, there's this company or guy, or I don't even know what it is, but they do these really in depth. Like I,

I wouldn't even call it x-ray, but like scans of devices. And one of the things that they did was they scanned a $5 charging cable and a $40 charging cable and compared the internals of

of those. And it is clear what you're getting and the danger that you are facing. Like some of these are just missing grounding tabs or, uh, some pins aren't even connected or like they've basically glued a metal strip across all the pins and join them into one pin underneath the plastic connectors. So they're actually not separate pins, which is what's so important for these things. So I, I suggest people go look at those kinds of things. If you want to know why cheap cables are cheap and expensive cables are expensive, uh,

That is a perfect example of it, of just they're so much more complex because they're so much safer. And there are little computers in there deciding whether or not your phone is going to catch on fire if it's plugged in or not. And that is so important. I remember when I think those same people went on tested with what's his name for Mythbusters. It wasn't Jamie.

It was... Oh, what is his name? Wes, what's his name? I watched a clip of Mythbusters once, I think. Oh, no, now I know. Savage...

Adam, Adam Savage. Adam. So I've heard that name before. Yeah. Okay. Well, either way they did, uh, they went on there to break down Apple's Thunderbolt cable and why it was so ridiculously expensive. And they showed the amount of precision and engineering that was going into that cable compared to a cheaper one, just like you were saying. And it's like, yep, this cable is clearly worth what Apple is asking for it. Are people going to realize that? Like likely not, but yeah,

There's a difference. I found it. Okay. So I want to say who this is because I feel bad if I don't. This is LumaField has a Neptune industrial x-ray CT scanner. And I've added the link to the show notes for Andrew to include that for us. So fun.

Nice. Yeah. Well, our audience is already smart enough. They're already out there telling people not to do these things. So continue to do that. Tell people not to buy flash drives to back up their iPhone and stop buying these cheap gas station four in one cables that are going to risk their devices and their lives. You wouldn't eat gas station sushi. Don't charge your phone with a gas station cable.

Everyone seen Futurama, you know what happens when you eat that gas station, you know, tuna salad sandwich or whatever it was. Yes. Well, up on the channel, it's actually going live on Friday before you guys see this. There's a new video up that I'm hoping people will find interesting, which is my new Apple TV rumor roundup.

We actually had to do two of these, unfortunately, which I hate doing because the last time I talked about the Apple TV on the YouTube was because one was supposedly imminent, right? Mark Gurman came out saying that Apple was ready to launch this new Apple TV and that was supposed to be early 2024. And then it got delayed and delayed and delayed. And now we are getting closer.

So I break down all the rumors in this like 11 minute video. The big stuff, just to give you guys the highlights of what to expect is we're going to have those new Proxima wireless chips for improved Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That's going to be a big thing. Likely going to be at least an A17 Pro processor on the inside there because it, it,

is inevitable that Apple Intelligence will be coming to the Apple TV. So we have to have an A17 Pro or a variation of any of the A18 chips to make that happen because I know people are already saying that the chips in the Apple TV are overkill for streaming Hulu, but it'll be enough that you need it for things like Apple Intelligence because Siri needs to be better. Recommendations need to be better. There's a lot of things that Apple Intelligence could do on Apple TV that I think would be very, very helpful.

let alone improving Apple's AI processing of video. Wes and I literally even alluded to it on this episode of it's not great. It's not great at detecting packages versus people and things like that. And all that's basically being done on your Apple TV or HomePod. So to have an updated HomePod or an Apple TV with a beefy processor that would actually be able to be capable of handling higher resolution videos

video coming out of cameras and things like that, I think it is necessary. So expect some improved chipsets in there. Also heard rumors it's going to be a little bit thinner than it was before, slimming things down a little bit. I'm guessing still two models, a basic version and a high-end version with the Ethernet thread and more storage. My guess is we're also going to see a price reduction again in 2022. It was reduced from $180 to I think $150.

$130, $150, something like that. $129. Yeah, I think Apple could get to that $100 price point without any major changes to the device. So I think that's entirely possible for Apple to do, especially if it plans to conquer the smart home as much as we've been talking about here for 2025.

I will happily buy all the new Apple TV boxes and spread them through my home. I'm going to have so many Apple TVs to liquidate if Apple does introduce a new refresh. My family just gets the old ones, which is great. And I'm excited because the family I'm marrying into have Rokus in their home, and I'm going to burn those and give them Apple TVs. Oh, that would be fun. Yeah.

Yeah, I hear if you burn the Rokus, you can hear all of your search histories fly into the air that they've used to pepper your interface with ads. Yeah, that's the only way to get your data back is you have to set them in the oven at broil. So, Andrew, New Year's as we close, any resolutions, any plans for you?

Well, I don't know. So I don't do too many news resolutions, but I guess for like, you know, smart home resolutions or stuff that I want to do, I really need to find – I need to find time. I need to do it.

I need to sit down and clean out my smart home. I need to remove some of these devices that I have tested that I don't use anymore. You know, smart lock right here sitting on the desk. That's in my home app that I have not removed being like, oh, am I going to put this somewhere else? I should just, you know, deactivate it for the moment. I need to do that. I also have a lot of scenes that I don't use anymore and automations that I can clear out to get things tidy. I want to go and do that. Also,

We I'm, I'm doing it this year. I'm going to get this basement, uh, more livable, at least half of it over there. We need to have a good workspace for faith to work and all of that. So if, uh, if we get that done, I'm very excited for the smart home stuff, uh,

to put in the basement to continue these automations. I'm going to put a Nanoleaf Skylight system on top of our basement because it's a super flush mount lighting system and they're like the big old cubes. So they have very good coverage. I think that's going to look really nice. I've got smart shades down there.

And I'm going to – I think I'm going to switch mostly to the – I've been testing it a little bit, the Nanoleaf remote, which is just insanely cool. I'm going to just set up a bunch of Nanoleaf bulbs down here. It will work with non-Nanoleaf bulbs, but it's just so fast with the Nanoleaf ones. So I'll have the Skylight, and I'm going to reconfigure some of the other ones. But there's a lot of cool stuff going on.

Coming out this year, I think we're going to have a bunch of new devices coming or at least being announced. So those are my big ones. I'm going to focus on getting the basement done and clearing out a lot of old devices and automations from the home app.

So what about you? Well, I don't really do resolutions either. And if you guys want to hear more about like how that all works, we mean, William and I actually discussed this on Apple insider plus our premium segment. If you're a paid subscriber for Apple insider podcast, but yeah,

Um, we go into what we call yearly themes. Uh, we stole that from a cortex podcast if anyone listens. So I discussed my theme and plans there, but part of that has been kind of trying to be more healthy. So we recently replaced like all of our cleaning supplies with non-toxic ones and we're, we're rethinking some of the home. And as far as the smart home goes, we want to continue that with a more, um,

essential oils and the like humidifiers. So we're going to get some smart humidifiers for a couple of rooms. We're also talking about air purifiers. So I actually have one on order right now to put in the living room. And that's just kind of step one. I want to just increase the use of the smart home and automations. We've had a couple of resets recently because we had some bugs and

But after I switched routers, I haven't really been having any issues with devices staying connected anymore. So now I can finally go into kind of the next phase of developing good routines, good scenes, getting a couple of buttons in different places. This home isn't permanent and we don't want to do too much to it, but I just want to make it a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more automatic and efficient.

A little bit part of the new year, I've been doing a lot more fitness plus, a lot more working out and stuff like that. So I want to build some automations around that kind of thing as well and using lighting and whatnot to ready an area if I'm about to go do a workout, that kind of stuff. So just things to keep in mind just going forward. Nothing too concrete planned yet, but that's kind of...

how themes work. You're making decisions around a central theme and my theme is going to be health this year. So just want to make our house healthier, cleaner, you know, get maybe attack some of this cat smell because we have four cats. There's a little smell. We do a pretty good job, but you know what I mean? It's always a battle when you have pets.

Oh, for sure is. Everyone knows the farm that I basically live on over here. I like all that. I think if I'm going to give myself a specific goal, my specific goal is that when Apple launches its new smart home display, I have everything in order that I don't see 39 accessories not responding. I want to be able to set that up with no accessories not responding. Right. I'm going to do it. I mean, right now, my home app,

I'm so happy. Nothing's not responding. It's so nice. And I'm not on the same level as you as far as equipment in the home because I haven't bought a house and installed something in every outlet or whatever. But I am definitely up there. I'm definitely in the 1% of HomeKit users because most people own a SmartLock and a Lite, and that's about it. And I definitely have pages of products. But it is a miracle that since I've switched from my old routers to these new ones that...

I've had almost zero issues. Everything's connecting. Everything's communicating well, matter over thread, all these things. And don't want to jinx it, but hopefully, yes, once that new device comes out, maybe we'll have even more integrations and control, and that'll be fun.

Nice. Okay, one very fast question here from one of our listeners. So Kyle wrote in saying that he had recently purchased a Yale Assure lock from the Apple store and they've been having problems adding this to the home app. Basically every video that he's watched on this lock or she, Kyle could be a girl's name. So whatever, every video and everything they've watched on adding this to the home app, they have not been able to figure out how to do it.

Now, I'm sure I have tested out the Assure lock before. We do have a level of Assure lever lock in our son's room, but I'm not sure about the regular Assure lock for the front door, which I know is one of those popular models. And if it was bought through the Apple store, I have to assume that it is the home kit version or the Apple home version. But it should be like every other

HomeKit product. There should be a QR code looking device or at least a set of numbers. It'll be like a 334 set of numbers, something like that, or 324.

Uh, but you should see that printed somewhere. It'll be either in the manual and then there'll be, should be a second code on the device itself. So check behind the door on the battery compartment. It literally should be as easy. I would take out a battery and put it back in. So it kind of reboots, uh, then scan that code or put that number into the home app after hitting the plus button and it should handle the rest for you. There shouldn't be any finicky business or anything else going on.

That should be all it should take. And if not, I would reach out to Yale. A lot of times, especially if you're talking about a couple years ago, these devices came with codes on pieces of paper, maybe a sticker, and those could easily be discarded. They were actually not attached to the device, which is more common these days. They're either like...

I don't know, painted onto the device or much easier to find or the app itself generates the QR code for you to scan. Maybe you could look into that as well because some of these devices are able to show it in the app. But you could go to the app. I don't use Yale, so I don't know. But if you can go to the app and say, you know, reveal HomeKit code, add to Apple Home, those kinds of

should reveal a path to adding it. And if you do finally find the code or whatever, it's probably somewhere on this lock. Remove the faceplate, even take the whole thing off of the door, look behind it where it is flush with the wall. It could be anywhere on this device, but once you find that code, it'll have a little Apple Home next to it and you scan it and it says...

can't connect already in another home or something like that you'll have to factory reset it this is one of the keys to all home kit devices you'll be factory resetting things all the time so just keep that in mind and i'm sure you'll get it and support can probably help you because i'm sure there's a serial number on that device somewhere and they can get you the code you need

So hope that helps Kyle. Let me know. You're going to get it working. So thank you everybody for listening. I hope you all have an amazing 2025. It's going to be great. Tune in next week for the special CES episode and all the amazing new products that we're going to run through during the show. And of course, stay tuned to the YouTube channel where we're going to cover all of these things. The Apple Insider one specifically, because we'll have videos from the show floor rounding up all of the best smart home products that are set to debut. Go ahead and give this video a thumbs up.

video or get this podcast 5, 10, 100 star rating on your podcast player of choice. Check out the video version at youtube.com slash home kit insider. Otherwise, you can find Wes on the Apple Insider podcast and we'll catch you guys next week. Happy New Year, everyone, and good luck at CES, Andrew. Thank you very much.