14 DAY TRIAL // Apple will reportedly beef up its HomePod smart speaker this year with new features and improvements that would make it more competitive and finally have a chance against Amazon Echo or Google Home.
According to a report from iGeneration, someone leaked the major features of the upcoming HomePod OS 12 software, which will launch this fall alongside iOS 12, macOS Mojave 10.14, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12. Apple currently only seeds as a private beta of HomePod OS 12 to retail employees and internally to some Apple stuff for testing.
The HomePod OS 12 private beta apparently includes two new features that we expect to arrive for all HomePod owners later this year. The first one is the ability to answer phone calls, just like on your Mac computer, as well as to listen to your voicemail messages, redial numbers, search your call history, and even call emergency numbers.
Earlier this year, we already learned that Apple is working on adding Calendar support to its HomePod smart speaker that would allow users to add calendar events with a simple request, in addition to the device's capabilities of sending and reading messages, adding reminders, or creating notes. So now it looks like there will be support for Contacts too so it can access your address book.
HomePod will finally be able to manage multiple timers simultaneously
A feature that every iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch user out there is expecting for so long that we can't even remember is the ability to manage multiple timers simultaneously, and the HomePod OS 12 private beta revealed the fact that the HomePod smart speaker will be able to handle several named timers at a time with different tones.
Apart from the ability to answer phone calls and handle multiple timers simultaneously, the HomePod will also allow owners to remotely control the smart speaker through the Home app on their Macs, which will be ntroduced with the forthcoming macOS Mojave 10.14 operating system, to change the Wi-Fi network and other settings.