Apple’s Making a Smart Home Camera That Won’t Actually Record Video
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While a rumored Apple event on October 13 is expected to focus on Apple’s new vision for the smart home, it’s likely to be merely the start of something much more ambitious.
We’re already long overdue for a new Apple TV 4K, and we’ve been waiting for a new HomePod mini for even longer. Apple’s diminutive smart speaker launched nearly six years ago, and hasn’t seen a single update since (unless you count some new colors).
However, while both of those are expected to make an appearance this month, it’s Apple’s “J490” smart home hub that’s expected to take point. Rumors of that device have been making the rounds for at least two years, and if reports are accurate, the only reason it’s taken so long is that Apple had to get Siri ready first. Now that Siri AI is out in iOS 27, it’s time for it to grace the home.
With the new Apple TV 4K expected to get an A19 chip, it’s likely to embrace Siri AI as well, and even the HomePod mini, which may not have high-end Apple silicon, should still be able to participate in some way — perhaps by anchoring itself to the Apple TV 4K or the smart home hub.
Those three devices are all we’re expecting to see on October 13 (although it’s always good to leave Apple a bit of room to surprise us), but that doesn’t mean that’s all that Apple is working on.
Early last month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple is planning a new home security and monitoring service that will be centered around a “privacy-centric home security camera.”
That aligns with other rumors we’ve heard over the past few years about Apple finally expanding into the home in a much bigger way. It’s reportedly been working on other accessories such as a smart home security camera and a smart doorbell that could even support Face ID authentication.
Although the doorbell is still up in the air, Gurman provided a bit more insight into the camera side of things, and it sounds like it won’t be quite what we were expecting.
Apple’s HomeKit platform already supports third-party video cameras with secure cloud storage, and iOS 27 has added AI analysis into the mix — albeit with a hefty price tag. Apple’s first-party cameras aren’t intended to displace the current HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) camera ecosystem, but rather supplement it with something entirely different.
In this week’s inaugural episode of his new Power On podcast, Gurman says that Apple plans to introduce tiny AI-powered “cameras” — codenamed J450 — that you can put around your house, not for video recording, but for analysis.
These are little cameras that you can put around your house. They have very low frame rate. It looks like a cylinder. It looks like a metal giant Chapstick. And what does that mean? No video recording.
Mark Gurman
While the cameras will presumably need to capture video in some form, they won’t be able to pull in “real video footage,” Gurman notes. Instead, they’ll use AI to analyze the environment to be able to let you know what’s going on in broad strokes, answering questions like “Are the kids in the living room?” or “Where’s the dog?”
It’s a logical move considering Apple’s strong privacy stance. While Apple has been rumored to be developing smart glasses, it’s reportedly pushed those back as it tries to find the ideal privacy angle, and some have speculated that it might eschew the camera entirely, or at least take a similar approach of having an AI-only camera that can’t actually take pictures or record videos.
In fact, Gurman compares Apple’s new smart home camera to the camera-equipped AirPods that Apple is also working on, which have already been referred to as “pervertpods” on social media. Sources have told him those are virtually guaranteed to get similarly low-resolution sensors designed to feed data into Apple’s AI models.
Apple also undoubtedly sees this as a competitive advantage, since as Gurman notes, it will be “the first mainstream video camera that’s a home video security camera that doesn’t give you any footage.” While I have no problem with cameras pointing out the front of my house, I refuse to put an internet-connected video camera of any form inside my home. However, Apple’s approach could be compelling enough for people like me to actually put one or more of these things around our homes — something that many would never consider even with the most secure HomeKit cameras.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
