At WWDC in June, Apple said iOS 13 would bring live radio requests to Siri from iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and Radio.com, but it looks like that rollout is already underway ahead of the software's release in the fall.
Macerkopf.de this morning reports that some users in Germany are having success asking Siri to play live national radio stations over HomePods running the latest official software and via Apple Music on devices running iOS 12.
It's not clear how far the company has got in laying the groundwork for live radio Siri requests elsewhere, but Apple says that come the official global rollout in the fall, Apple device owners will have around 100,000 radio stations to choose from.
Other new features destined for HomePod this fall include Handoff for music, podcasts, and phone calls, as well as individual voice recognition for up to six users.
Apple says the latter feature will enable a personalized listening experience and personal access to messages, reminders, lists, and calendars, as well as the ability to make phone calls from the user's contacts.
Top Rated Comments
Four years after Alexa...
no one cares. Stick with your surveillance hardware.innovation!
I would like this on my iPhone natively. If the iPod could do it would love my phone too.. Surely with all the antennas in there it can pick up radio. Just saying, even in emergencies it would be useful, instead of relying on an app and data.
I'd like it too but to clarify it sounds like this is about internet radio. Actually picking up FM/AM stations via radio waves isn't supported, it sounds like, and instead this is live-streaming via wifi or mobile data.Non of my local channels seem to work.
Happy that at last we have an easy way to listen to "Normal" Radio, Hardware Radio on the iPhone should have long time ago be enabled, now it needs data, if they just had the (Hardware) radio enabled by default it would not cost people any data.