It was 15 years ago yesterday that I went to my first WWDC Keynote. I saw Steve Jobs introduce iCloud and Scott Forstall introduce iOS 5 and iMessage. This was a thrilling start to a week of great sessions and meeting amazing developers.

Little did we know that would be Jobs’ last Apple Event appearance before he passed away later in 2011. In the 15 years since then, Apple has grown tremendously, and WWDC, as a conference, has evolved with it. In this special edition of the newsletter, I wanted to give you the three things I’ll be watching out for this week.

Matter 1.5

Many Apple observers might not consider WWDC a smart home conference, but many key Apple smart home features debuted there. HomeKit Secure Video, HomeKey, robot vacuum support, HomeKey Ultra Wideband, and more. The last two were driven by supporting updated versions of the Matter smart home spec.

Matter 1.5 was a major release from the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) earlier this year, adding support for surveillance cameras, video doorbells, energy management, water management, and more. Apple was surely part of steering these new standards, as they are part of the CSA. WWDC is an important milestone to see whether Apple is ready to promise that these new features will come to Apple Home soon.

AI for the “rest of us”

As evidenced in their early Macintosh marketing about “the computer for the rest of us” all the way through their infamous 2024 WWDC demos of personal context AI that never shipped, Apple is a company that likes to make the latest technology accessible and relevant for our everyday lives. Based on the rumors, Apple will be trying to sprinkle bits of AI everywhere in its operating systems. This could make creating automations and routines much easier. I would love to see this idea come to Apple Home. You should be able to tell your iPhone about a home automation and have it set it up for you.

Apple Intelligence TV?

Over the past two years, Apple has updated almost all its computers, tablets, and phones to support Apple Intelligence. This requires more RAM and a beefier processor. With the existing setup of Apple Home, there isn’t really a need to have this horsepower. The intelligence could happen on more powerful devices or the cloud, and simple instructions and automations are handed off to the smart home.

But given that Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video processing happens on your Apple Home Hubs, I can’t see a HomePod mini making the jump to processing multiple streams of 4K video compared to the current 1080p video quality. Perhaps Apple would need to introduce new hardware to support 4K video processing, which might coincide with more Matter 1.5 support. This might be too wishful thinking for WWDC, but it’s something I’m keeping an eye on.

It’s easy to see Apple dragging their feet on 4K support in HomeKit Secure video, until you consider they currently have few, if any, Apple-sanctioned ways to process 4K video to recognize people, packages, and vehicles on local devices.

I hope you have a great rest of your Sunday, and let’s all buckle up for another annual WWDC week,

Eric