Update November 3: Although Apple removed references from the job board earlier this year, today it appears that the company is referring to ‘homeOS’ in a new job posting. It concerns a vacancy for a User Interface engineer for Apple Music – similar to the previous vacancy from June. This text is on the website:
You'll get to work with system engineers across Apple, learning the inner-workings of iOS, watchOS, tvOS and homeOS, and optimizing your code for performance in ways only Apple can. Come join our team and make a real difference for music lovers worldwide.
Below is our June 2 article:
Update 18:40: Apple has removed the reference to homeOS in the job description and replaced it with HomePod and tvOS. See the new quote later in the article.
Apple's plans for the smart home have been dominated for years by HomeKit and the annual improvements Apple releases for it. The HomePod has also been added for a number of years, and the Apple TV also plays a role in this. All these platforms and systems each have their own name, but it could just be that that will change soon. Apple talks about a homeOS operating system in a vacancy about Apple Music.
homeOS: vacancy reports new operating system
Bloomberg previously reported that the teams working on the HomePod and Apple TV will be combined in 2020. For the past year, the HomePod's software has also been based on tvOS, rather than iOS. Apple has been preparing for significant improvements in the smart home for a while. We already wrote in 2019 that Apple wants to invest more in smart home and even wants to market its own products. An overarching operating system would certainly not be out of place and it may be called homeOS.
As of late May, a vacancy has been posted online for a senior iOS engineer for Apple Music. That in itself is not so exciting, but the description clearly states the mention of homeOS.
You'll get to work with system engineers across Apple, learning the inner-workings of iOS, watchOS, tvOS and homeOS, and optimizing your code for performance in ways only Apple can. […] The Apple Music Frameworks team owns the technology stack that enables the system-integrated Apple Music experience on all of our mobile platforms: iOS, watchOS, and homeOS.
New quote since 6:40 PM:
You'll get to work with system engineers across Apple, learning the inner-workings of iOS, watchOS, tvOS and HomePod< /b>, and optimizing your code for performance in ways only Apple can. […] The Apple Music Frameworks team owns the technology stack that enables the system-integrated Apple Music experience on all of our mobile platforms: iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.
Whether there will actually be a separate homeOS, of which, for example, tvOS and HomeKit are parts, remains to be seen. Last year during WWDC, the improvements for HomeKit, HomePod and tvOS were already discussed together, so in that light it is certainly not an unexpected development. Apple could also use the term homeOS mainly internally, which has now accidentally ended up in a vacancy.
More smart home developments
This year Matter will start, the smart home initiative of Apple, Google, Amazon and Zigbee, among others. It is a new platform that should make cooperation between different services much easier. Another recent development is Thread, a new protocol that allows devices to connect to each other. The new Apple TV 4K 2021 has Thread support.
Revision history:
- 2021 – June 02, 18:45: Article updated after the reference to homeOS disappeared.