Apple's Own Home Security Camera Still Coming Next Year

Hey Siri, someone is walking around the room, call the police

SIRI: playing Walking on the Moon, by the Police ('https://www.google.com/search?q=the+police+walking+on+the+moon+initial+title&client=safari&hs=Y8QB&sca_esv=b919e3d03946e9cf&biw=1194&bih=702&sxsrf=APpeQnsrx6c7F_mMsWq0pFYFjZvekquHqw%3A1791374031816&ei=zzLGary9MeGiptQPprvLkAo&uact=5&oq=the+police+walking+on+the+moon+initial+title&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiLHRoZSBwb2xpY2Ugd2Fsa2luZyBvbiB0aGUgbW9vbiBpbml0aWFsIHRpdGxlMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigATIFECEYoAFI2zxQjAhYzDtwAXgBkAEAmAGSAaABywuqAQQxNi4zsAEAuAEDyAEA-AEBmAIToALQC8ICChAAGEcY1gQYsAPCAgYQABgWGB7CAggQABiABBiiBMICBRAAGO8FwgIOEAAYgAQYigUYkQIYtAfCAggQABiABBi0B8ICBRAAGIAEwgIFEC4YgATCAggQABgWGB4YCsICCxAAGIAEGIoFGIYDwgIFECEYqwLCAgUQIRifBZgDAOIDBBgAIF3iAwQYACBe4gMEGAAgX-IDBBgAIGDiAwQYACBh4gMEGAAgYogGAZAGCJIHBDE3LjKgB8ppsgcEMTYuMrgHxgvCBwYwLjIuMTfIB1OACAE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp')

LG 🤨

I know y’all will argue that LG will only make the hardware and Apple will do the software. But LG have shown to hold very little regard for your privacy and I do not trust any of their devices to be on my network.

For those not familiar with the current heat:


Tl;dr. LG devices. Even when on standby will harvest details about your network and actually listen to your conversations. They claim it’s all part of what everyone does but the issue is everything you do then has an advertiser ID attached and they themselves have boasted how because of what they know about you they can serve ads even when not looking at your TV.

Was interested in it. But with rumors suggesting that it won't record video, it is very disappointing and don't think I will buy it. Also it might require some higher storage tier of iCloud for it to fully function.

Gurman just can't let things go when he's wrong. It's always "still coming", never "I was wrong".

This is starting to sound like a mess

That video again 🙄. I understand it fooling the gamer crowd, but I would have expected more technical aptitude here on MacRumors. It mixes some long-known information (like most TV manufacturers will use ACR to look at the TV screen to figure out what you're watching, and tell their servers what you're watching - if you let them), with a whole lot of handwaving and speculation, and ominous interpretation of mundane operations, and you can rile up a crowd - who then go out and recommend the 2+ hour video to everyone they can find, who watch it and spread it further - all generating lots of view/click revenue for GamersNexus. It's sloppy sensationalist "journalism" (I saw it referred to on Reddit as "a highly technical exposé" - smh).

They spend 20 minutes or so documenting how sensitive the TV's mics are - you know what else has sensitive mics? A HomePod. You know what both a HomePod and an LG TV are doing with their mics 99.9% of the time? Listening in a possibly noisy environment for a wake phrase ("Hey Siri" or "Hi LG"). But if you demonstrate that the mic can hear you from down the hall even if you're saying something really embarrassing, and then make shocked Pikachu faces, you can get your audience all worried. The HomePod could hear that too. And they make a big deal, with more concerned faces, about how "it's listening even when the screen isn't on! 😱 Yeah, it's listening for "Hi LG, turn the TV on." But if you carefully avoid mentioning that (or are too dumb to figure it out), you can pretend that the TV is malevolently sitting in the corner recording your every conversation to use against you.

Oh, they also speculate heavily that the TV could connect to an open WiFi network to upload all this data to LG. But they don't show any proof of this happening, because they don't have any proof of this happening. Just speculation, and probably hoping you'll jump to the scary conclusion that they cannot prove (numerous others have run experiments to try to catch this and haven't see the TV actually connecting to open networks).

My advice is the same as it was 5-ish years ago when I looked around at the options and bought an LG C1 - don't connect any Smart TV to the internet. Don't give it WiFi credentials ever. If you want it on the network to update firmware, use Ethernet, but you can also download firmware updates from LG's website and transfer them using a USB flash drive. Don't agree to the latter half of the licensing agreements, the ones that turn on things like ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), webOS apps, and AI stuff. So it's been told not to upload anything, and then given no path to upload anything - so it's effectively reduced to being a dumb screen. And then connect an Apple TV to provide the user interface / user experience - it's faster, prettier, more private, and not filled with ads.

The average consumer can't get a "dumb TV" any more, largely because the average consumers all kept going for the model that was $20 cheaper no matter what, creating a race to the bottom, so now we have TVs that often sell for barely what the hardware costs, and the manufacturers expect to make their profit off of the consumer after the sale - by sales or rentals of videos, commissions on streaming service subscriptions, and offering very targeted ad sales to companies, based on your viewing habits, and potentially data they can sell to data brokers (but that data will be "user at address 123 Main Street watches Dukes of Hazard reruns nearly 20 hours a day", and NOT "Joe Smith said $VERY_EMBARRASSING_THING" - because they're not uploading that information.)

(My understanding is there are less-smart TVs sold into commercial applications, like hotels, but you're not going to find great deals on them and their software will likely be a pain in other ways. Alternatively you could use a computer monitor, but they are optimized for different things - often higher DPI with smaller screen size, but less likely to support home theater standards like DolbyVision that modern TVs support.)

Seems a good few have put gamers nexus claims to the test and seen that yes, indeed the LG tvs are sending a lot of data to Lg.



But it’s not just speculation about what they do with data. The gamers nexus video includes the folks at LG boasting about how they own the glass and tell you exactly what they are doing with all that data.

And even if you opt out they send data.

What’s also bad is the Paramount app on my tvs. I’ve opted out of all consent and that thing floods my network attempting to send telemetry home.