MacFormat UK – September 2019

72 | MACFORMAT | SEPTEMBER 2019

WDC 2019 has come and gone and

while the main keynote address all

but avoided the existence of

HomeKit (justifiably, given the

sheer amount of high-level advancements

there were to talk about), Apple’s automation

platform did get one big mention, and it’s a

significant one: WWDC saw the debut of

HomeKit Secure Video.

Secure Video answers a lot of major concerns

about security cameras. Most importantly, it goes

some way to countering accusations that

cloud-based cameras could potentially leave you

less secure than before. Think about object

analysis; when certain camera systems use their

algorithms to detect people and faces, they do

this by sending images from your camera online

where they’re acted on before triggering your

camera to record. That’s a privacy risk – who

knows what is being done with those images, or

what engines they’re being used to build?

HomeKit Secure Video instead hands off image

processing to your local devices – your iPad,

W

HomePod or Apple TV – keeping it out of the

cloud entirely; if something suspicious is

detected, your footage is then encrypted and

sent on to iCloud storage where it’s only

available to you.

This is a hopeful development for HomeKit

security. We have complained for some

time and at some volume about the lack of

widespread camera support, with a scant few

devices even compatible with Apple’s platform

at all, particularly given the number that’ll

happily beam their footage to Amazon’s

video-compatible Alexa devices or Google’s

Chromecast. This new protocol means more

security for you, certainly, but does it mean

more manufacturers will throw their cameras

into the Apple ring? It might. Existing HomeKit

supporters Netatmo (maker of the Welcome

and Presence cameras), Logitech (Circle 2), and

Robin (ProLine Doorbell) join Eufy (eufyCam) in

pledging to both create future products and roll

Secure Video support into existing hardware via

firmware updates.

Insecure future

Increased support is likely to depend on the

level of adoption by the public, and how easy

Apple’s making the task. We don’t know, for

example, if Apple’s developer API for HomeKit

will be altered to help camera creators make

HomeKit support as frequent as Chromecast or

Alexa video. And while the HomeKit Secure

Video platform will certainly relieve pressure on

manufacturers’ own cloud service offerings

(given that the processing is done at home and

Apple’s iCloud servers are responsible for

backing up footage) we can’t forget that this

also represents a significant lost revenue

App updates, new secure technology,

and much more announced

APPLE HOME WWDC 2019

WWDC

Image credits (far left

and main): Netatmo

Some older cameras, such as this one from Netatmo, should

be firmware-upgradeable to support Secure Video.

Apple gets smart at