Others have mentioned unusual HomeKit messages popping up on their iOSx devices. This is a more specific and weird one:
When I allowed the Ventura 13.4 update to run a couple of days ago, I started getting messages about all the devices signed in through my AppleID (some of them have been part of my ecosystem for 10 years or longer). It has been in the form of “A new device recently was signed in to your AppleID. If you don’t recognize this device, delete it and change your password.” The messages were at fairly spaced out intervals, like a couple of hours apart.
Fine, good advice.
But then the HomeKit Setup dialog popped up on all my devices (Mac and iOSx). It seems to imply that my device has to have “iCloud for HomeKit” enabled in order to use an iCloud account—whether or not I’m actually using HomeKit, which I’m not at this time.
I subscribed to the 200GB tier of iCloud storage recently to tackle the problem of photos being scattered across 6 devices over two people’s accounts. I will not trust my contacts, calendar, or email to it, but in line with appropriate backups I think it’s been useful for that one limited purpose so far.
Using the red stop sign/exclam icon, which in Apple UI parlance means a serious warning or even that you’re about to do something that will make the system crash, is extreme for something you can cancel, and it makes me think that this dialog and the code behind it was slipped in by a marketing-driven directive absent much input from developers.
In any case, does anyone know if the statement in the dialog is accurate? Yes, I tapped Cancel and then went to the HomeKit settings and restored them to “Off.”