It went somewhat unnoticed, but Apple proved during its inaugural WWDC 2021 event that its commitment to standards like Matter and that idea of making smart devices easier to use in the home is serious. The company announced that Siri will come to third-party devices and that is 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 of the company itself. It started on the iPhone and then we saw it on the iPad, the Mac, the HomePods, Apple TV, and now Siri is coming to third-party devices as well .
This, which may seem somewhat insignificant, is important considering how jealous Cupertino has been to offer its technologies to others up to now. It is true that here it will only do so in those devices that meet a series of specifications and minimum requirements, but it is something very striking due to the company’s own history.
The first of these non-Apple Siri-compatible devices will be the Ecobee thermostat . Moreover, during the event itself he demonstrated the use of the Apple system. And along with that quick demonstration, the compatibility or support that it will give to the Matter standard was also discussed.
The latter will undoubtedly be the most important thing for the future of HomeKit, as it will allow you to expand your 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 large as those of the Amazon or Google assistant, nor were the prices equally 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 it would not be necessary to send anything through the internet to obtain the correct answer to our request, it is likely that many wondered how safe it would be use Siri on other non-Apple devices or secure enclave.
Well, in theory it should be just as safe, because Apple will worry about not granting any certification or label of support or compatibility if it does not see it clearly, if it does not meet all the requirements that will be asked of each one of device manufacturers who want to integrate continued,
More news from HomeKit
Right now there are few more interesting news related to Home Kit, with the exception perhaps of the Apple Watch support for the intercom function of the HomePods and some other small additional details. Because it could be said that this years Apple’s operating systems are more that, small updates rather than super novelties, although those certain small things can have a greater impact than other theoretically more powerful ones. Surely little by little we will discover more news.