WWDC
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
T
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