BloombergMark Gurman revealed today that Apple has developed new speakers equipped with “screens and cameras,” suggesting we could see a future HomePod-like device with a built-in display and camera capability for FaceTiming and other features.
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Ahead of these rumors, MacRumors employee Steve Moser was searching the tvOS 14.5 beta code and found that Apple has added FaceTime and iMessage frameworks along with a new AVFCapture framework related to image capture.
You may be wondering what tvOS code has to do with the HomePod, but in April 2020, Apple started using tvOS as the basis for the software running on the HomePod instead of iOS. watchOS, tvOS, and the software running on the HomePod are all variants of iOS, but each is differentiated by the device the software should run on with unique interfaces, APIs, and more.
That means features in tvOS are also included in the HomePodP software as they have the same base code. Therefore, the TFaceTime, iMessage, and image capture frameworks added to tvOS in tvOS 14.5 could actually be designed for a future HomePod with a screen and a camera, as described by Gurman.
The HomePod Home and HomePod mini can already use FaceTime audio, but the FaceTime framework discovered in the 14.5 beta differs from any code associated with the existing FaceTime audio feature. The frameworks are available for selected testers in the tvOS 14.5 beta and the 14.5 HomePod software beta.
Gurman says there is no “upcoming launch” planned for the camera speaker, so such a product may not appear. It’s also entirely possible that the iMessage, FaceTime, and AVFCapture frameworks introduced in tvOS 14.5 serve a very different purpose that is totally unrelated to a HomePod and can be hidden in the code or used for a non- specified function coming to the Apple TV or the Apple TV. HomePod in the future.
In semi-related news, the 14.5 beta also suggests that Apple could potentially develop some sort of trivia game for Siri, where Siri could ask trivial questions for users to answer. This is referred to in the code as “Siri Edutainment”, but it is not clear whether it will be a built-in Siri feature or support for a third party product.