A new report today claims that that after analyzing the latest HomePod firmware a discovery was made. Apple had made a quite shift in operating systems for HomePod. Apple's HomePod, beginning with version 13.4 will be powered by tvOS. The discovery was mad by a team member at 9to5Mac. The report went on to generally speculate as to what this move could mean. Yet an Apple patent report that we posted back in January 2019 presented a few other ideas of how HomePod would would work with Apple TV in the future.

The obvious part of the patent was HomePod being used as a Home Theater within a Home Hub scenario. The patent also covered in-home messaging for HomePods. The future HomePod would come with a new "presence" feature to detect who was in the room to ensure the message went to the right person in the room.

While that feature seemed off-the-wall at the time, it was only recently revealed in a second HomePod patent filing that a depth camera was coming to a future HomePod as well as camera accessories that users could place within a room and within a home to provide Siri with eyes to understand who is the room and their particular gaze. The presence described in the January 2019 patent therefore is now understood in context with a HomePod with a camera.

(Click on image to Enlarge)

At the end of the day the discovery by 9to5Mac supports the fact that Apple has a bigger vision for HomePod that's more in-tune with Apple TV and tvOS as their patents have suggested.  

While future users will tell Siri on HomePod to dim the lights or turn on the lights, it's clear that it will also provide Siri with the ability to understand commands such as 'turn on Apple TV' or 'show me documentaries' or "Pause content" as well as being tied into controlling appliances with smart home instructions. 

While the patents may not have mentioned it yet, we know that for years Apple TV users have complained about the Apple TV remote being unwieldy. Combining HomePod + Apple TV + Siri and a Depth Camera for User ID would definitely be a move in the right direction in supplementing or replacing the TV remote. Yet another possible benefit of tvOS with HomePod.