Apple is reportedly moving ahead with developing a smart-home device based on its Siri voice assistant tool and taking a page from Amazon, which has been successful with Echo, the speaker that houses Alexa, its personal assistant.
According to a report by Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter, development started more than two years ago but has now exited the research and development lab and entered into prototype testing. The idea behind the smart-home device is that it will control appliances, locks, lights and even curtains via voice activation. The device could still be canceled since Apple hasn’t finalized the plans for it, Bloomberg reported.
The report noted that, if it does come to fruition, it will be the company’s most “significant piece of new hardware” since it rolled out the Apple Watch back in 2014. Apple is reportedly trying to stand out from the Echo and Google Home by incorporating a more advanced microphone and speaker technology. The report pointed to Faceshift and Emotient, the two facial recognition startups it acquired during the past two years, as technologies that could help its device act based on who enters the room, as well as the emotional state of the person. (Sorry, Siri, if you get a lot of attitude from customers.)
The report noted the speaker may be able to do more than just control appliances and other applications in the home. Bloomberg said, in theory, it could also be used to process Siri commands that are already available on the iPhone, including asking the device to read emails, send texts and tweets and stream Apple Music content. It could even alert a user when it’s time to leave the house or wake up. Not surprisingly, a spokesperson from Apple declined to comment on the report. Amazon’s Echo has been a surprise hit, with analysts and even Apple engineers caught off guard by its success.