You may think privacy is a top priority for Apple, and well, it is! The company is reportedly developing a home security camera that doesn’t shoot video or photos.
The report is from trusted Apple insider Mark Gurman, who is in his all-new podcast Power On (which is an extension of his newsletter on Bloomberg). The camera will be part of a “new Apple smart home ecosystem,” Gurman says.
They’re also putting together home security devices- first-party home security devices, third-party home security devices; the biggest one is called J450, and this is a cousin to the J490 display of the smart home, and these are little cameras that you can put around your house, and they have a very low frame rate; it looks like a cylinder. “Looks like a metal giant, you know, chapstick,” Gurman says per The Verge.
“And what does that mean? So, it is not able to actually capture real video footage, but rather a sensor that uses AI to analyse your home and surroundings.”
This strange new camera technology is “very similar” to the technology Apple is reportedly developing for its camera-enabled AirPods, Gurman says.
This will be the home camera that Gurman speaks about, which will be capable of facial recognition and such, and will tell the user that “Mark has walked in here,” and so on. However, it will not be able to bring into a room a video recording of that person walking into it. This system is in response to the society that is now being monitored by systems like Flock cameras, Gurman says.
“They have been selling it as an alternative to that really disturbing notion of mass surveillance; if you want to have a description of what is going on, that’s the way to go. So that’s the first home video security camera that doesn’t provide you with any video. I think that’s a pretty good selling point.”
However, there are cases where someone will need footage from a home security camera, such as a burglary, Gurman notes.
“What are you supposed to do with the [text] description? Turn over to the police? They’re not going to be able to do anything with this description — they’re going to be selling the actual tape — so it’ll be interesting to see how they market this thing,” he says.
