How to live with a smart home addict or reviewer, on the HomeKit Insider podcast

This week's HomeKit Insider podcast has a surprise guest-host, and the pair tackles the news before having an in-depth discussion about the pitfalls and benefits of testing so many smart home devices.

As always, we start the episode with the news. This week Apple released iOS 15.1 which brought a few changes to the Home app as well as support for lossless audio on HomePod. Apple also released more than 250 mood-based playlists for Apple Music as announced during its "Unleashed" event.

We saw some app updates this week including popular app Signals making the jump the Mac. Developer Matt Corey also put together a great shortcut to scare trick-or-treaters that would play music and flash your porch lights whenever the doorbell is pressed.

Home Devices was also updated, now with over 600 HomeKit devices listed.

While not live now, Eero has announced that its current routers that support Thread, will be updated next year to support Matter as well.

Finally, while Stephen remains exiled to the mountains, Andrew and Faith chat about what's like testing so many smart home devices, what features devices need to have for non-tech savvy users, and more.

Links from the show

Those interested in sponsoring the show can reach out to us at: andrew@appleinsider.com

Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast — and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.

If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.