It went somewhat under the radar, but Apple demonstrated during its WWDC 2021 kickoff event that its commitment to standards like Matter and the idea of making smart devices easier to use in the home means business. The company announced that Siri is coming to third-party devices And that's interesting, because it emulates what Amazon did with Alexa by allowing it to be integrated into other non-company devices.
Siri on non-Apple devices
So far we have only known Apple's voice assistant in products from the company itself. It started on the iPhone and then we saw it on the iPad, the Mac, the HomePods, Apple TV and now also Siri is coming to third-party devices.
This, which may seem insignificant, is something important if one takes into account how zealous Cupertino has been so far to offer its technologies to others. It is true that here it will only do so on those devices that meet a series of minimum specifications and requirements, but it is something very striking due to the company's own history.
The first of these non-Apple Siri-enabled devices will be the ecobee thermostat. What's more, during the event itself he demonstrated the use of the same Apple system. And along with that quick demonstration, the compatibility was also commented o support that will give the Matter standard.
The latter will undoubtedly be the most important thing for the future of HomeKit, as it will allow it to expand its ecosystem of compatible devices. An aspect where the company had always been at a disadvantage with other solutions such as Alexa or Google Assistant. Because although there were devices compatible with HomeKit, the number was not as wide as those of the Amazon or Google assistant, nor were the prices as attractive.
Will using Siri on other devices be safe?
While they announced that with iOS 15 the requests to Siri would be carried out on the device itself, so we would not have to send anything over the internet to get the correct response to our request, it is likely that many wondered how safe it would be. use Siri on other non-Apple devices that do not have a secure enclave.
Well, in theory it should be just as secure, because Apple is going to worry about not granting any certification or support or compatibility label if it doesn't see it clearly, if it doesn't meet all the requirements that each one is going to be asked for. of device manufacturers who want to integrate followed,
More HomeKit news
Right now there are few more interesting news related to Home Kit, except perhaps for Apple Watch support for the HomePod intercom function and some other small additional details. Because it could be said that this year Apple's operating systems are more of that, small updates rather than super novelties, although these certain little things can have a greater impact than others that are theoretically more powerful. Surely little by little we are discovering more news.