“I should have checked to see if Vegas would have given me odds,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “Pursuant to Tuesday’s Apple’s ‘Smart Home’ Levels Android All Over Again and other reports of Apple’s forthcoming game changer, gaggles of tortured Google/Android fans responded reliably, predictably and, in trademark form, irrationally. Here’s a representative specimen from the comments section of the aforementioned article:”
Apple is about 5 years too late getting into this market to demolish anyone. Most smart home appliances, smart security systems, and automation vendors are already Android compatible… or at least running some form of linux… and have been for a while. The market has just been getting organized, and if Apple truly wants a piece of the pie they would be best served to make their iHome systems compatible with what the linux/Android/open source crowd has been building for many years now. Of course, it would be more like Apple to ignore history and just claim they invented the entire thing. That would take Rocco level of ignorance, which they are certainly capable of.
“There’s so much cluelessness in that comment it might not be possible to address all of it in a single article, but I’ll try,” Pendola writes. “‘Apple’s too late getting into this market to demolish anyone.’ Ask the artist formerly known as RIM about that… ‘Android already does this so what are you so excited about?’ …The logic here showcases the wholesale misunderstanding that keeps people, particularly Apple haters who counter as Android or Windows Mobile fans, from being able to wrap their heads around why Apple’s great.”
“Apple doesn’t commit to and execute an initiative on the basis of what everybody else is doing or even how a particular space is performing. Apple acts when it knows it has something that will be better than what’s already out there. It acts when it knows it has something that will further enhance its own ecosystem and help it maintain a monstrous level of hardware sales via the halo effect, regular upgrades and new customers,” Pendola writes. “Often, action by Apple ends up disrupting the competition and breathing fresh life into a space. But that’s not the premise Apple operates from when the chalk first hits the blackboard. Apple takes care of Apple first; when it does this well the hurt it historically has put on its competition flows naturally.”
Much more in the full article here.
well-written.
Let the Android/Google hurt begin!
droidroid in 3…2…1…
BS, how long was Microsoft in the “tablet” business before Apple “got it exactly right with the iPad”. How long was Motorola, Nokia, Ericson and everyone else in the cell Phone when Apple came out with ONE phone model and demolished the cell phone business worldwide?
I’ve never had any “home automation” because it never works right and is too fractured. However, Apple comes out with an app and a controller hardware that all fits together and actually does something compelling, then I’m there.
What they’re missing is that there’s a difference between being “in a market” and that same market actually making money.
Thus, okay fine: Linux/Android has “Beaten” apple to the home automation market … and having done so, just how big is that market, expressed in dollars?
The analogy to MS’s tablets is that Apple’s sale of the original iPad back in 2010 eclipsed a decade’s worth of MS-Tablet’s sales … in its first week.
-hh
Actually Apple made the first tablet perfectly. They setup a system that worked for web browsing and some apps. The next tablet was thinner and faster making former tablet owners trade up, and have followed this procedure with speed, lightness and features. Great for making money. They kept their phone small so as not to confuse the phablet or using the phone as a tablet like almost all android phones. They kept the same iOS on the phone and tablet just upgrading as they went. Android has so many flavors, sizes and speed differences it’s just to hard to choose and who wants a tablet when you can surf on your 6 inch phone.
It’s going to be very special to hear Google voice tell me to purchase Rogaine every time I walk under the smoke detector. Better yet – an audio ad for Preperation H every time I’m making biscuits on the throne. Or – “I notice your performance in the bed is a little weak. There, I said it. If you have low testosterone take ____”.
“Making biscuits on the throne”
Thanks a lot that’s one analogy my life could have done without!
I have not made any home automation investments for the single fact it’s over priced, and the eclectic mix of devices and systems is so screwed up. I am waiting for the right system to come along. Maybe Apple has the right system.
Yup, and these appliances really don’t add anything I need/want. Why do I care if my refrigerator can display the weather? That’s what my iPhone/iPad are for, and I don’t have to walk over to the fridge to see it. Plus, my fridge is supposed to be energy efficient, so now I’m sticking a touch screen on it to use more electricity? So it can tell me my eggs are constantly at 38º (exactly where I set it)?
The fact is the home automation market is ripe for being revamped. It is too expensive, you have to buy a plethora of plugs/devices, some of which are very large, to simply turn a lamp on or off, and based on reviews I have seen the reliability is seriously questionable.
Any home automation solution Apple will develop will allow these devices to plug into Apple’s system, or the device makers will offer some upgrade.
Home automation is ripe for Apple to do what Apple does best: Come into an existing industry (music players, smartphones, tablets) and turn it on its head with quality solutions that just work. With Bluetooth LE, fast WiFi and other solid technologies, having an iPhone/iPad control your entire house is well within Apple’s ability to achieve.
I seem to recall an Apple patent on a whole-house control scheme using a signal modulating the 60Hz power signal in house wiring
Home automation is going to be much bigger than most people think. There are changes coming in the electric utility industry that will make an automated home extremely valuable. Do you have a “smart” meter on the side of your home? If so, you are a candidate for Time-of-Use pricing, perhaps voluntarily, perhaps mandatorily. A home that runs the dryer at 2 am automatically has the potential to save you a lot of money. State PUCs are salivating over the social engineering possibilities of Time-of-Use pricing for utilities.
Here’s just one facet of this technology: Presently a utility that is 10% short (maybe 300 MW) of needed generating capacity two hours a day is faced with a few choices. It can go to the spot market to buy that capacity on the common grid at roughly 10 to 20 times the price it normally might pay to generate that power if it had the capacity. Such payments can completely offset any profits it made the other 22 hours of that day.
It can build another $150M power plant to run 2 hours a day, and sit idle the rest of the time. The PUC is then faced with the onerous choices of either including that $150M into the rate base, to be recovered over a period of 20 years from the rate payers, or telling the utility and its shareholders that it simply has to eat that investment.
Or, the utility can somehow get its customers to do certain work, like laundry, cooking, heating the hot tub, etc. during some other time period where there is currently excess capacity. The problem is how to do the asking/influencing. With the old metering systems, unless you were a large commercial customer, like an auto manufacturing plant, a KWH was a KWH, undifferentiated by the meter as to when it was consumed. Meters were read once a month, and a total KWH usage figure was billed. With Time-of-Use rates, the meter records when a KWH was used. Totals are reported on a 15 minute basis every hour by the smart meter. The utility can bill its customers a different rate for KWHs used at 2 am than it does for KWHs used at 6 pm. Under this plan, everyone is happy. The PUC doesn’t have to wrestle with rate increases for new generating facilities to meet short peaks in demand. The utility doesn’t have to buy power from someone else or build new, mostly idle generating plants. The customer can reduce his or her bill by shifting usage to off hours.
The problem for the customer is how to conveniently shift usage of appliances and systems to the off hours. What if, after loading your dryer, you could tell it to start at 2 am? Better still, what if you could tell it to start whenever the price of electricity drops below a certain figure? The entity that makes this possibility a reality, and does it in an elegant and easy way will own a huge market.
Business Insider had an article today about how the power industry is doomed with the mass-market pricing of home solar generation and storage. Forward thinking companies are using solar and fuel cells to power their needs. Software for home energy management (of solar acquisition and storage) is going to be huge.
Business Insider is one of the largest collections of stupidity all in one place that I’ve ever seen. Solar does not provide enough power to allow a typical homeowner to leave the grid. The last system I priced that provided significant power was about $40K. Even at half that, it still can’t compete with power from the grid. A $20K system amortized over 10 years costs $166 per month, more if it’s financed with a loan. That’s more than the average homeowner pays to an electric utility. And a typical battery bank won’t last 10 years.
Wow, an intelligent post on MDN.
“Irrational” and “cluelessness” pretty much describes the vast majority of Android users.
As usual Android owners feeling very insecure and blathering about things they know nothing about.
I never got this whole “Apple haters” thing. I use both Mac n Windows computers at home. I like both the Iphone and my Note 2, have switched back and forth between Apple/Droid. Plenty of things I like about both. I will probably go back to the Iphone when the 5.5″ version comes out later this year (Well next year when my contract is up). Tho I do wish Apple would allow more customization with the Iphone. Most of the bells n whistles on these phones do nothing for me, but I do like playing with the background, home screen, icons and different keyboard themes (and other themes). If Apple is finally giving in to the demand for BIG phones, maybe customization will be next? Either way I like BOTH. Can’t wait for an Apple TV set tho!! Putting off buying a new TV until that happens…..
heh, yeah ya’ are.
Certain medical researchers believe ‘Apple hating’ is a type of neurological disorder, a conditioned response characterised by a reduction of coherent communication in response to a trigger phrase that includes the word “Apple.”
Symptoms include emotional displays and the delivery of rambling diatribes accompanied by automatic or repetitive speech. There is no known cure.
And most of these appliances, etc. that use Android/Linux have no resemblance to Android for a smartphone or tablet. The OS was chosen because it’s free and relatively easy for the appliance/device maker to adapt to the simple functions it will perform. You’re not playing Candy Crush on your fridge, or checking email or surfing ESPN. You’re keeping vegetables and milk fresh and cold, and ice in the dispenser next to your Eggos. You may turn lights on or off, or maybe even dim them. And they don’t talk to each other or really do much else. It’s technology stuck in something “because we can”, not because it helps anything.
The fact that google labels its code ‘jellybean’, ‘snickers bar’ and ‘pizza’ reveals it’s true intended target audience of overweight, foul-smelling and generally useless Apple-hating neckbeards.
Most of which are incapable of reproducing so a very short-lived species to be basing market share upon.
Apple is not the first to enter a market, but Jesus, when they do, they do it so perfect all previous attempts look utter shit in comparison.
Examples:
MP3 players. They used to all be different, shapes styles formats etc etc only good if you pirate music. Apple come along and perfect the MP3 player with a great design a standard connector and a legal way to buy songs. Standard connector led to iPod docks etc
Phones: before apple there was so many OS’s and EVERY one of them were clunky and shit and crashed quite often. Manufactures just kept adding more physical buttons and carriers kept adding more JUNK software to the bloated phones. Apple come along and blow the competition away.
You know it, Lil’ Phil.
Apple is not a ONE HIT WONDER, they continue to prove this with innovation after innovation.
I’ve been saying for decades, Apple studies the industrial landscape. Carefully, picking what will better a product by the choice of its materials and/or processes for manufacturing. Then added to the mix; Apple implements a simplified user interface software and its hallmark operating systems. Resulting in Gorgeous Hardware, integrated with Amazing Software. Yes, its design innovation and Technologies advancements that are developing today which Apple then borrows and puts its signature on it. Unlike Samsung, where whatever Apple does – they follow to a tee.
The end recipe is absolute bliss for consumers.