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BETTER LIVING THROUGH SMARTER TECHNOLOGY

HOME LIFE

APPLE GETS SMART AT...

App updates, new secure technology, and much more announced

BY ALEX COX

he Worldwide Developers Conference

2019 came and went quite some time

ago, and while the keynote address all

but avoided the existence of HomeKit

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advancements there were to talk about), Apple’s

automation platform did get one big mention, and

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HomeKit Secure Video.

Secure Video answers a lot of major concerns

about security cameras. Most importantly, it

goes some way to countering accusations that

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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's being

done with those images, or what engines they’re

being used to build? HomeKit Secure Video instead

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— your iPad, 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've 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

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Google’s Chromecast. This new protocol means

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Image rights: Netatmo.

Some older cameras, such as this one from Netatmo, should be firmware–

upgradeable to support Secure Video.

WWDC

70 SEP 2019 maclife.com