Hue Doorbell Leaks, Matter 1.5 Rumors, & the First Matter Smoke Detector
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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 more this week, it is Apple Insider's own Wesley Hilliard. How you doing, man? Pretty good today. Fighting the usual pollen nonsense this time of year brings. Everything's slowly turning yellow and the seasons are changing, so we'll see how this episode goes.

Yes. And I guess for anyone who is watching the video version of this, that is why Wes sometimes just goes black. It is so he is trying not to sneeze on camera or blow his nose for the sake of all of you. So that if you ever see why Wes's video cuts out, that's why he's just trying to be polite. Just slowly flop sweating as I can feel the nasal drip. And I'm just like, oh, God, I need to like disappear. Andrew, stop talking. No.

No, it's always fun. I think I'm just allergic to light. Maybe we need to podcast in the dark. That'll make things a little easier. Perfect. I know you suggested it as a joke like a year ago, but we'll just do it through Apple Vision Pro. Personas, yeah. Personas don't get runny noses. Yeah, exactly. Done.

Well, I was – this is like a little bit related to the smart home stuff. Last week – we're listening to this Monday or later, but last week was opening day for baseball and I was so – you can't watch like anything anywhere and it's so frustrating and like I'm trying to watch the Cleveland Guardians and it's not available on half the things and it's supposed to be available through Spectrum, but a lot of people couldn't even get it to work there and –

I just don't understand why it is so hard. I mean, it's opening day, and I'm just trying to watch some baseball, and it's terrible. And then the places that are supposed to have it don't work. MLTV just goes down. Literally, it was down and not... It's okay. Friday Night Baseball is back. Apple TV+. All the announcers with their AirPods Max. Yeah. But the Guardians are just never on it. I think I've seen one game...

through Friday Night Baseball being the Guardians, and it's always other teams. And I'm like, okay, sorry. I don't even understand because Cleveland is a big enough city. They were the division champs last year, and yet we can still never get any airtime compared to Yankees and everything like that. So I guess we just don't bring in the numbers like the other teams.

Or just, you know, scheduling or they probably just have a very specific contract going on for them. But either way, no good for you.

No, it is not. Well, jumping into the actual news for the week, we'll start off with some deals. Now, these have been going on since the 25th, so I'm not sure exactly what is still going and what is not still going, but this is, I guess, as part of like Amazon deal days or whatever nonsense made up holiday that company is, you know, hawking right now. But I know that there are deals on two big companies that we talk about pretty frequently on the show, which is Acara and SwitchBot.

So, Aqara, they have deals up to 30% off going on and similar stuff going on with SwitchBuy. Like, I'm seeing, like, their air purifying table, which is, like, that thing is really cool. It's normally $270. For deal days, it's down to $180. Their K10 Plus Pro Combo Kit, $800, down to $400 for these deal days. The floor cleaning robot S10, which I'm...

It might even be HomeKit compatible, you know, or Matter compatible rather. It's $1,200 down to $460.

or that for that yeah it's crazy i i usually wait to buy home kit stuff until there's these kinds of deal things going on because the sales are almost always incredible um like my air purifiers i i've bought those pretty much always on sale there's like six cells a year now for amazon so just catch one of them if you if you're not in the middle of one there's probably one a week from now so usually usually good to try and catch those

Yeah, for sure. So those sales, I believe, end today, the 31st. If you're listening to this on launch day, I hope that is the case. I hope some of these are still available for you if there's things that you're looking for. But SwitchBot products, Aqara products, a bunch of them on sale. Really good discounts. Check them out. I put links to their general storefronts down in the actual show notes of the episode.

Well, moving on, we have iOS 18.4 has finally went into the release candidate phase, which was, of all the things to be weird about this cycle, Wes, what I think was the most weird was that they put out an RC version

First off, they called it Release Candidate. Instead of just RC, they actually spelled out Release Candidate, which was weird. And then there was no release notes for iOS and iPadOS. There was for Vision Pro. There was for Apple Watch. But there was not for macOS or iOS even to confirm, quote-unquote, like the list of new features. Really kind of weird. Yeah, I mean, I think this happens every now and then at Apple.

It's going to be a small release. I know we're going to talk about Matter a little bit, but there's just not much here, especially now that the contextual stuff got delayed for Apple Intelligence. I would say this has been a massive update. For a point update? Well, okay. It's a, let's see, what do we get here? I mean, Control Center. I know a few. We have the new ambient sounds and Control Center and all those toggles. We have a ton of new shortcuts, which are going to be great for anyone creating automations. Right.

We have the new food section in the news app, which is like not only a whole category, but a recipe catalog, recipe saver, and a step-by-step recipe interface that is clearly designed for a smart display where you can set timers and everything as you go. There is the new robotic vacuum cleaners that we'll talk about. So like all of that stuff in there, those are the things I can remember off the top of my head. And those are some pretty big ones. Automation and control. I guess I meant more like...

giant user facing features like us nerds are going to be happy, but generally speaking, other than maybe the recipe apps, the regular people are just going to kind of blow past this update and be like, why am I installing this? But, uh,

I'm excited especially I want to see the recipe stuff in action I can't share them right now I've tried sharing them and it's just like you don't have this feature installed or something when they try to open it so it'll be interesting to try it out I really hope they don't just stop with here with this like they do on some features and just never touch it again give me the

the ability to share the recipe ingredients list to my grocery list and reminders, stuff like that. Uh, I like that it's all there archival, this kind of stuff, but maybe, I don't know, break it out into its own app. It's weird that it's an Apple news a little bit. I know they're relying on news articles that they've basically transformed into recipe cards, which is cool. There's apps that do that, but, um,

I don't know. Telling people, yeah, just go to Apple News, then tap this other category, then find the food section. I've noticed scrolling through Apple News regular, I don't know how much you use Apple News, there is now just a section that is food and it pops up every now and then and reminds you that recipes are there. So at least they're advertising it.

I do agree that it felt like it was buried because you have to go to, like, the news app, then following, then choose food, and then you can go to the recipe catalog to search for new recipes. Or, like you said, wait for it to show up in your feed as you're scrolling, similar to how a sports does. So...

I do hope that they keep kind of just improving that. The biggest thing that I'm asking for, like you said, is exporting or saving the ingredients list to reminders. It seems like such an easy, easy, of course, thing that they should be doing. Maybe Apple intelligence can help you. Right. You just say, look at this recipe list and add them to my reminders. Add them to my grocery list. Done.

I mean, that will be a thing eventually. So, right. I mean, hopefully. But what's this about no vacuums on Vision Pro? What's happening there? Yeah. So this is one thing that I noticed is that the Matter vacuums are supported in 18.4. We've talked about it repeatedly on the show. But they're not available in Apple Vision Pro. Like if you put on your, you know, with the RC of it, it's not available on there. It actually, it's a weird middle ground because it actually shows it.

It doesn't say unsupported, but it doesn't allow you to control it or do anything. You can put it into pairing mode as a Matter accessory and add it to another smart home platform, which I find interesting. It supports Matter enough to literally enable the Matter pairing mode, but it doesn't have the icon. You can't select rooms. You can't send it out. You can't change modes. You can do nothing. You can just view the tile. It's like they forgot to finish the update for Vision Pro.

Right? I mean, I get it. Niche of the niche, right? We're talking about not only is this Apple Home and then back to this. Yeah, it's the iPad compatibility app in Apple Vision Pro. Even I don't even use the Home app in Apple Vision Pro. It's just...

out of the way and weird to use that app, honestly. But then you can't use it in third-party apps that also support it. Because I know Mesa Maj, I think they do a great HomeKit app, and they're like, oh, you can't control it in our app either. So third-party apps aren't supported. And like you said, it really is just the iPad app on Vision Pro. So it's weird because it is supported on iPad. So it's like, how did that not...

How did the port not get completed? Maybe this is like a beta two, beta three thing, like a RC two, three thing.

I don't know. Maybe we'll get an RC2 with actual... So the reason I had this in the show notes, folks, was because it's out in RC form, which means the release should be imminent. And the part that gave me pause was there was no release notes. So maybe we will get a second RC ahead of a public release. It's going to be another... In the next week or so. Yeah, it's going to be another week on this because I know April is next week, but that's Thursday. And Apple very rarely does... Am I right? Or is it Wednesday? I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Apple very rarely does releases that way. I mean, I guess they could do Thursday or Friday. No, the first is Tuesday, right? Yeah.

I see. I have not paid attention to a calendar. Today's the 28th. We're recording on Friday. So we got 29 or 30 over the weekend, 31 on Monday. And Tuesday could happen. Apple did say April, so I guess they could release Tuesday or Thursday next week. But it feels more like maybe the week after. Who knows? They've been pushing this thing along. We already got an RC2 for macOS and nothing else, which is odd. So we'll see. Yeah.

I mean, this could just be broken. Again, like the people that use Apple Vision Pro, how many people are actually opening the home app and controlling their home from it? Maybe everyone who does because they're all nerds, but it's hard to say here. But I personally won't be missing it. It is a little frustrating that this is kind of out of sync, but maybe they'll just get it in the next point update.

Well, the last thing to go along with that, I already told you on last week's episode that the Ecovacs update for Matter was coming for its X8 Pro Omni, and it never did. But I have confirmation a second time that it should be out on the 28th. So it should have come out on Friday. If you have an X8 Pro Omni, let me know, is the update out, and did you try it? Whether you're testing...

you know, 18.4 or not, but let me know. I want to know if this update is actually out there because mine's already updated. So I can't see the public facing updates yet, but it should be, it should be officially out this time. So if you got the model, go ahead and try it out and let me know what you think.

Next up in the news, we have Matter smoke detectors. We talked about Matter smoke detectors showing up in 18.4 as well. And this is unrelated to that, but there is a new, this is the first Matter smoke detector that's becoming available to pre-order. So it's from Sensero, S-E-N-S-E-R-E-O, Sensereo.com.

Basically looks like a typical smoke detector, a squircle with the vents on the long sides and the button on the bottom mounts to your ceiling. It's $5 off for pre-order, so normal price is $50. $49.99. They'll charge you $1 now, then you pay the full price when the actual product is shipped. They don't seem to have a firm ship date listed on here, but it is thread-enabled and matter-enabled. So this will work with Apple Home, work with any of your thread devices to extend that

Seems great. If you're looking for a new smart smoke detector, that one's a good one. If you want something more full featured, I have that owl home one that works directly with Apple home. And I like that one a lot. It has additional sensors and stuff in it. So there's a few options out there.

So the Alhome requires a hard wire, which is my problem. All of my smoke detectors are battery. And this Sensario product, it is a thread smoke detector. And it has dual power with a battery backup. But I doubt it'll let you just run it off of battery. And that battery probably still dies fairly quickly. You'd be changing it out once a week. So...

Oh, I don't think there's any good way to do this. I mean, even if it was like a lithium ion rechargeable and you just walked by with a battery pack twice a month or something, it's just, yeah, going to have to run a wire. That's always annoying. Maybe I'll just secretly run a wire and not tell my landlord and just set it up. There you go. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It'd be like, look, smart smoke detector. I did it for you. You can have it. Gift for me. And they'll just be like, why did you do this? But it was so nice of you to do the upgrade for them. Mm-hmm.

Okay, I'm pretty excited about this one, Wes. I might have to make a switch again. Hugh is... Oh, sorry. I was going to say, the Owl Home, isn't it like $100? Yeah, something like that. And this one looks like it's $45. Yeah, but you're getting way less stuff in this one. So this is your basic smoke detector. It's basic smoke. My question is, what is...

What sensors, do all of the sensors in Owl Home show up in Apple Home or is it just some of them? It is just some of them because they do have ones that are not part of Apple Home. Like they have a microphone. That one doesn't show up.

But they have a smoke and CO alarm, a motion sensor, and a temperature and humidity sensor. And let me see. If I can pull this up really quick on my computer while we record. It's something we discussed before. Extra bells and whistles are great. But for HomeKit users, it's not always that useful. Like I bought the very nice thermostat from Ecobee. I forget the model they call it, but it's the premium one made of metal.

And it has a lot of cool stuff like air quality detection does not show up in Apple Home. I don't know if they can add that through an update, but right now it's just not there. And I don't mind it. I am seeing temperature, for sure, temperature. Apparently I'm going to have to check all these individually. Oh no. Which is great.

I can't remember how to find in like the home app how to pull those up. So here's a humidity sensor, right? So we have temperature and humidity. Those are for sure. And then, of course, smoke and CO. So both of those are in there. So you have those four sensors. I know you don't get the microphone because that's not a thing. But let me check and see if I can find motion, which I assume is under security. Carbon monoxide is an important one because not enough people bother with those detectors. Yeah.

Okay, I don't see the actual motion sensor in there either. So motion and microphone do not show, but the other ones do. Okay. Yeah, I mean, see, that makes it a little more worth it. So for $40, $50 more bucks, you're getting a couple more sensors. The temperature one's nice if you don't have a HomePod in that room. But...

It's like for the Ecobee one, it's fine because I still get my alerts through the app if I get like a bad air quality signal, which just usually means the hood fan isn't running on the stove when we're cooking. But otherwise, do you ever get those? It's like every single time you cook without the hood fan, you just you're spreading food around the house and it's like, hey, your air quality is going down.

Yes, I do get it from my eco bee. We'll say a significant drop in air quality has been detected. It's like, I like sausage. That's not an air quality drop. That's an air quality improvement. Right? Yeah. You're cooking bacon. Your house smells a whole lot better at the moment. Just wanted to let you know. But my old apartment, like we would get, anytime I cooked almost anything, it would send off the smoke detectors, which was super annoying. Very sensitive. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so moving on, I might have to make a change here, Wes. Hue apparently is working on a doorbell. And this had actually been, I think we talked about it before, but now it is more concrete because it has shown up in the Hue app. So we must be getting closer to an actual release of this thing.

Now, they already have other cameras. There's already security cameras that they make. And based on the image in the Hue app, they just say add a secure doorbell with secure capitalized. So I don't know if it's just called the Hue secure doorbell, but it is a pretty standard looking doorbell. It's just...

Tall and skinny with a camera sensor on the top and a big circle on the bottom. Based on the image, it's two-tone, so the top looks darker than the bottom. Usually the way they do that is like the top half will be glass where they can hide things like a PIR sensor or motion sensor, other things like that, infrared lights behind the glass so you don't see them. But it's able to give you night vision and things like that. I don't know. But they just show it's like a two-tone with a camera on the top, button on the bottom. So you think this will be better than your current doorbell?

I don't know. I don't know. But I really like products. The hue ecosystem, yes.

They're always so rock solid with so much of their stuff. Their motion sensor and the lights that I had in the kitchen were phenomenal. It was so instant, so quick. I loved all of it. The only thing that's going to be the deal breaker for me here is if they support HomeKit in any way or Apple Home. If they don't support at least the streaming, then I can't.

So it has to have at least streaming support for HomeKit. I mean, HomeKit secure video feels pretty standard these days. I can't even tell the difference half the time if it's just streaming support or not. I feel like everything just does straight HomeKit secure video. And I would be very surprised. The Ecobee is what I'm using right now. It doesn't do HomeKit secure video. See, I'm still using that Logitech Circle view. But yeah, it's...

I mean, it'll be cool. Something to check out. Always more competition, more devices, good. I'm sure Hugh will have something fancy with this device as well. So, yeah, the more the merrier. Absolutely. That's what we always say around here. Well, let's take a break really quick. Let's thank our sponsors for the episode, starting off with...

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Well, Wes, we have more Matter updates here. A whole list of possible new inclusions for Matter 1.5. So we had some of these from Cyber. All these words are just like a foreign language to me. Yeah.

Well, some of these came from CyberMod Studio who shared these. Others, Derek from Twitter, he sent these to me as more that he's seen in like the GitHub repo that are all labeled for the 1.5 release. So let's just run through some of the big ones because there are some really exciting ones. Gardening enhancements, so new device types including irrigation systems and soil sensors.

soil sensors is the one that I'm looking for here, Wes, because what does that mean, folks? It means you can put a soil sensor into your garden and then you have a matter watering system like an Eve Aqua. When the soil sensor says I'm too dry, the water system can turn on.

Easy things that we should be able to do that we have not been able to do and I love it It also means it could pause maybe you already have a regular watering system, but that thing goes Oh, it's real wet today because it's raining right now Then your irrigation system can pause like if it's above a certain water threshold for a day you could do that So there's a lot of really cool Things you could do there and they have a list of apparently confirmed partners. He says so this is ratio which is

If anyone remembers them, they had a watering system. They sent one over for a review and it was supposed to work with HomeKit. And then mine even came with a HomeKit pairing code on the box and or on the product. And then it never worked because it's supposed to be coming in an update. And then there was all these bugs with it that they struggled with. And they claim they work tightly with Apple and they could never get it to work reliably. So they had to stop working.

offering HomeKit and I was very bummed because they have some really great hardware and features. I really, really like them and I was very bummed that it never panned out. But now they're coming back here with Matter support, so that's still going to be great.

The other brands are Grundfos, Gardinia, Grimsholm. Yeah, if you say these first four in a row, it's like you're summoning something. Ratio, Grundfos, Gardinia, Grimsholm. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I think Doctor Strange said that exact same thing and summoned a giant plant. And then Nordic Semiconductors.

Yes, I do love them. They're fantastic. I talk to them all the time at CES when they're there because they make a lot of the chipsets that run a lot of the smart home devices that are out there. They're very quick with thread and matter and all that kind of stuff. So that's great. And then Puzzle Labs, P-U-Z-L Labs. So those are apparently confirmed participants for those two new device types. Additionally, this is the ones that are being scraped from GitHub. There's Irrigation System, Pergolas.

Which are awesome. Those are like the things that'll pull, that'll go down and cover, like give you like an awning and then pull back. So that would be sweet. There are shutters, actual shutters. That's a window covering. That would be fantastic. Screens. How is screens going to work? Is it going to be a rolling screen? I don't know, but I'm excited. Yeah. Gates.

We need gates. 100% we need gates. Floodlight camera is a whole specific device type now. Curtains, intercoms, thermostat controller, garage door, shade, cabinet, window, audio doorbell. So maybe not even a video doorbell, but just audio doorbell. That's something we haven't really talked about before. A closure-based door chime, awning, snapshot camera, soil sensor, camera, video doorbell, barrier, and blind. Those are the ones being pulled out of the GitHub.

So this is the part where I give you the quote from the CSA. An Alliance spokesperson has reached out to me. They were able to confirm ongoing work on various features that are shown in the GitHub repository, but that none of that is guaranteed to make that release at this point. Those decisions follow a process will be decided closer to the release date. Basically, even though they may be targeting 1.5 for a lot of these features, they're not going to be able to

And that does not mean anything. They have a whole list of ones they're targeting. And then as it gets closer, members actually vote on what's going to be in there. And they make that decision on, okay, is it ready? Is it not ready? Did we finish this? And what is it going to be included in what's going to be punted until the next one?

We're still over a month away, I believe, until the next 1.5 release. So there's a lot here. I'm actually very excited because many of these are new outdoor device types. The outdoor stuff. But not guaranteed. I feel like we need more outdoor. I still feel like this is an indication more than ever that the home app is going to need a huge upgrade because...

We just need more sorting and display systems. I just want to create a map of my house and then show where all these accessories are. I feel like I should be able to see a map of my yard where all the irrigation systems are laying and all the plant sensors are laying and stuff like that. Let me just use my LiDAR scanner to scan my home into the home app and then use that information for my robot vacuums and all of these things. It's all coming together. But, you know, Andrew, I have an estimate on when Apple will implement Matter 1.5.

And it's perfect. It'll go great with their messaging. Apple 2030 is all about their green energy initiative. And I think this is going to be a part of 2030. So we'll see. Wow. I think it's more conservative than you said 2031 maybe last year. Give or take five, six years. We'll see. Ah.

Who knows? We're still waiting for, even though we're getting like Matter smoke detectors and robotic vacuum cleaners, we're still missing things like appliances inside of the Home app. Those are also part of the Matter. Which comes first to Apple Home? Which comes first, Matter 1.5 for Apple Home or the Legend of Zelda live action movie in 2027? We will see which happens first.

Hey, I'm impressed we got robotic vacuum cleaners in Apple Home before GTA 5 or GTA 6. GTA 6. Yeah, that is the current scale, right? Everything's before GTA 6. That's it. Okay. Maris has a new water leak sensor. Pretty basic, updated version of the one they had for a little while. Has an Apple Home compatible hub that goes along with it. $29.99.

I couldn't recommend water leak sensors enough. You should have probably a few of them in your homes, whether for the basement, under sinks. They're going to save you a lot of time and heartbreak when something eventually leaks. It happens to so many people and water damage is so, so expensive. Aqara has them. Maris has them. There's ones from Eve that have like the cord that goes on the ground and

My grandma, ridiculous amount of damage when it was leaking through her kitchen sink and she had no idea and came down through her basement. Massive bill to replace cabinets, ceiling work, everything. My brother literally went out of town for a weekend and his toilet bowl upstairs cracked. Not even in like the cold. It just cracked somehow and leaked everywhere.

all down through his upper floor to his lower floor. They had to evacuate the home when they got back because there was already...

and stuff growing after like, you know, a couple of days. And it was a terrible thing. So I am perpetually scarred. I know two people in my very close family that have had a significant water damage. So yeah, we have water leak sensors around our house. You probably should too. These Maris ones, I feel like they always need to include something for scale. It looks like it could be the size of a cabinet or an Apple TV. I'm not sure, but I really like a car. Is there these little like quarter size, uh,

things you can put everywhere, but I guess that means the battery dies sooner. But yeah, always good to just shove a water detector everywhere you think water could even appear. Just water, toilets, sinks, water heaters, just pipe, pipeways in your upstairs attic. Just put one next to that. You know, you never know. It's always good to have, they're not that expensive. Just flutter them around for sure.

Okay, Samsung has a new Qi 2 charger. This made me tilt my head in confusion because for everyone who is aware of phones, Samsung does not make a Qi 2 phone. What they do have is a Qi 2 ready phone with their latest models. So they literally came out with a charging tree

that looks just like the Belkin one, except for that it's curved. So it's got a, basically the Belkin one has a, looks like a T. It's got a post in the middle and then it goes out for your phone and for your watch on top. Well, Samsung did the same thing, except for that it Ys and it curves up

as its tree. And there's a phone on the left and then the watch five charger on the right. So not Apple watch, but it's like Samsung's devices. And I just think it is really funny because of course the phone has to have a case on it. And when I saw this like announced on social media, I clicked into it and like, you can't filter like, you know, the comments or anything. They're just comments and what people are saying. And all of the comments were like, okay, cool. Now make a phone that actually supports it.

Because they don't. I mean, Samsung releases a spring phone, don't they? They have two release cycles. So they're probably coming out with a Qi 2 device any day now. I mean, they have to eventually. Like, why say, like, oh, it's Qi 2 compatible to even point it out? Because people have been making cases that supported it for ages. So that really wasn't anything new. But they were, like, pointing it out. So, yeah, I agree that they will. I just think it's funny that we got the charger before we even got the phone.

Yeah, I mean, Android companies these days don't really care about leaks anymore. They just sometimes just publish their entire thing about the phone before their press release, before it even is announced. So, yeah, I think this is a clear indicator that we're going to see some G2 Samsung phones. But

I hope this also means that we get just more cool accessories now that like more and more people are adopting the standard. It means more stuff for us Apple people too. So that's always cool. 100%. Well, last bit of news. This is just something I saw that I thought was really cool, Wes. And I don't know if you've seen anything like this before. So Snazzy Labs has been posting on like Twitter that he got a new vehicle, which is awesome.

You know, either here nor there. But I really liked this. So in my car, I have a wireless charger. And they suck.

They're always terrible. Like every single one that I've ever tried, they're slow because they're Qi. They're like maybe if you're going to properly align them, they're what, five watts probably. But because it's just a silicone pad in your car, your phone is moving around. It's just sitting there. It's never going to be aligned perfectly. So you're never going to get even your maximum of five or seven and a half watts. You're not going to. Now, for a while, there was all this talk about whether we're going to get something like what was the name of the company?

uh, not Apple did the air power thing. That was the free placement, but there was a free power era, free power, free power. I think it's just what they go by now. And they were the free placement charging that they actually worked with Tesla on one. I have it sitting right off screen. That's a large, like, uh, Alcantara material that you can put your phone anywhere on and charge three devices on it, but it'll give you much faster charging speeds because it moves the coil. It could,

positions itself as needed to give you faster charging speeds. So after MagSafe came out, that was kind of rumored that maybe that would show up in the car space because then it could be a free placement mat anywhere you put your phone. It would get optimized speeds. You wouldn't have to position it. Could be really handy. I still haven't seen that happen, but this company called Soonish

makes this adapter for several different vehicles, including like the Rivian, the Kia like ED9, and a few others. But basically it is a kind of like a silicone type pad or whatever that goes into your silicone or 3D print, I don't know what it is, but it goes into your car to cover that up. And it includes like the power supply and everything. And you can put in your own MagSafe charging pucks.

So you can actually get one of these. There's like a cool topo pattern on it, and you can actually choose a different pattern like Mount Rainier, Arcadia, a few different other ones. And then it has two 25-watt MagSafe chargers underneath. So you can just set your phone down, magnetically aligns, 25 watts of charging speed. Mm-hmm.

I love it. I think that is so cool. I wish I could get one for my car. So I remember I had a 2018 Honda HRV and there was an aftermarket wireless charging pad you could buy that plugged into the cigarette lighter and just kind of sat behind the dash. So you could throw your phone on there as G1 charging. Worked great. Blended in with the car. This looks like a similar idea, aftermarket stuff. My solution right now, Andrew, I have in my car...

a cigarette lighter with a USB-C and a one of those like retractable C cables. So there's an in-bore and a retractable cable, so dual system.

What I have plugged into that C charger, that C port, is a MagSafe puck that I have wrapped around to the side. So I have an HRV right now, and the way the dash is shaped, there's this little bend that has like, I don't know, a shallow depth. I have no idea what you're supposed to do with it, but what I've done with it is basically stick the MagSafe puck using some kind of adhesive to the side of the dash vertically,

like, on the side of it, and then I just slap my phone there when I drive. It's down by my right knee, so...

Yeah, and it keeps my phone charged while I wirelessly car play. And yep, it's ugly. There's a white Mac safe puck just kind of sitting there. But hey, it does the job. But this is really cool. I like it when companies kind of go out of their way to make these kind of, I don't know if it's 3D printed, but these custom fit things that, you know, they look at car manufacturers and they're like, why is there this hollow here? This would be perfect for that thing. And then they just make the thing. So always fun.

Absolutely. I mean, we've seen like there's a lot of car chargers. I like this one here that I'm holding up on camera, which is the Pitaco one because it has the three little shortcuts you can run at the bottom. There's NFC chips and you tap it with your phone and you can run three different automations depending on which one is like selected at the time. I think this one is great. The ESR ones are really nice. We have those in my wife's vehicle. They do great because they have active cooling.

You're going to get great charging speeds on those because it keeps it cool while you're running things like maps and car play and all of that. But you're only going to get at most that 15 watts and that's at most. So with, with this, you can use actual MagSafe at 25 watts on the iPhone 16 series. And it just blends in and it makes it so perfect because you just set your phone down on that center console and instantly charge. So I thought this was a great idea and I wish it would come to more vehicles. Yeah.

Cool. Well, that is it for this episode. We had a lot of news. 18.4 coming out, new doorbells coming, HomeKit or Matter 1.5 getting closer to release. A lot of stuff to be excited about. Wes, thank you for joining, as always. Everyone, you guys can find links for everything we talked about in the show notes.

If you guys want to ask any questions, you can reach me at andrewatappleinsider.com or throw up a question on Twitter, andrew__osu, or on the video version of this over on YouTube. You can watch that video version and us emote with our faces at youtube.com slash homekitinsider. Wes, anything else you'd like to leave us with?

Nope. Just continue to check us out on the Apple Insider Podcast as well, always covering Apple news over there. And reach out to me on Blue Sky if you ever want to say hi, ask questions, or talk about the show. Perfect. Sounds good. Everybody leave us a 5, 10, 100-star review on your podcast player of choice. Otherwise, we'll catch you guys in the next episode. Bye.