What you need to know
- A new Apple job listing mentions the unannounced homeOS software.
- A job listing earlier this year also mentioned the same software.
A new Apple job posting appears to have once again outed the unannounced homeOS software. The name homeOS first appeared in a similar posting earlier this year — with Apple later removing all mention of it.
The job in question this time is for a senior iOS UI engineer associated with Apple Music. The full summary, first seen by MacRumors, currently reads:
Are you passionate about Music? The Apple Music team is looking for stellar software engineers to create awesome listening experiences for our over 1 billion active users. Our team enjoys a tremendous impact — we are one of the first applications on every new Apple platform, and our app is often featured in Keynotes and in marketing materials. The experiences you enable are sure to be tweeted and blogged about all over the internet. 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.
It was thought initially that the first homeOS outing was a mistake, but its appearance a number of months later does suggest that the term is at least one being used internally at Apple. Whether we'll see a product ship with homeOS installed isn't clear — Apple Tvs run tvOS and HomePods run a modified version of iOS, for example. Could that all change with a future homeOS taking over?
All eyes will now be on that job listing to see if homeOS goes missing once again. I sure hope not, there's no doubt that homeOS is the best alternative HomePod software name yet and it definitely fits well with Apple's smarthome initiative and HomeKit tools.
