Apple would be working on a smart home device like Amazon Echo

Rumors have been circulating for a while about a possible Apple speaker with the Crab built-in and very similar to Amazon Echo.

After Ma released the assistant's SDK, everyone thought it would really come out. In the end, they were just preparations for virtual assistant enhancements to the company's new operating systems, which were presented at WWDC 2016.

However, it seems that the rumors were not that wrong. This is because Bloomberg published today a story saying that Apple would actually be working on a Siri own smart home device.

After the great success of Echo, several other companies have also entered this market, such as the recently announced Google Home. Anonymous sources claim that Apple's device would differentiate itself from the others by better microphones and speakers, as well as a camera with face recognition technology, which we have heard of before.

In terms of operation, the speaker with the virtual assistant would bring both the functions of Siri that we already know in iPhones, iPads and Mac, as well as new functions related to smart devices of the house such as lights, curtains, locks, etc. Another anonymous source cites that it would also be possible to get information from Apple Maps, most likely to let the user know the best time to leave home.

Before thinking of a part speaker model, Ma tried to embed them into Apple TV, as three people told. The idea has been discarded, but many functions of Siri have come new generation of set top box in October 2015. Even so, the initiative to allow the assistant to control every corner of our homes has not stopped; The project is already in the prototyping phase, and even many company engineers are already testing the device in their own homes.

Despite the good intent, Apple certainly needs to make significant improvements so that Siri can level off or surpass Amazon's assistant Alexa. According to more people, Ma is also working on a project called Invisible Hands (something like “Invisible Hands”) intended to allow users to control and access any information on their systems without having to call an app or call Siri multiple times. An example of this would be the user opening a web page and sharing with friends without having to touch their device. Another example would be to say "print" on some document while it is open.

Whether we will actually see such a product appearing to us is not yet certain. But we need to recognize that Apple has been paying close attention to smart home automation like HomeKit and now also the Home app (Home), and several advances are already appearing to further improve your virtual assistant.