“With iPhones in pockets, Macs on desks, iPads in bags, and iWatches soon coming to the wrist, Apple is said to be eyeing another category for continued growth: Smart Home hardware,” Mark Gurman reports for 9to5Mac. “The Cupertino-company is said to have assembled a team to work on various hardware products for the home that deeply integrate with the existing array of Apple devices on the market.”
“The development of these home products could be paused at anytime, but Apple is said to be beyond the exploratory phase of development,” Gurman reports. “The sources say that Apple is unlikely to move forward with devices to compete directly with Google’s Nest as the Cupertino-company feels it can build products that can gain usage wider than that of thermostats and smoke detectors.”
“It is likely that Apple is building advanced speaker systems or control panels for homes, the sources say,” Gurman reports. “It is possible that Apple’s recent acquisition of Beats Electronics and the audio company’s existing speaker systems play into this vision… The Information is also reporting that Apple is developing hardware built on HomeKit software.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Someone, have a heart, and send Sonos execs a case of adult diapers, will ya?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Well may be total imagination but fits in completely to my previous logic for buying of Beats, they need another brand with which to expand into non prime areas that WON’T conflict with the Apple brand (but tie into the that platform), which likes to keep things in both product category and product as core and minimalist as possible.
I use a Control 4 system to run lights, stereo, TV, garage door, driveway gate, and alarm. It can do much more but is not 100 percent reliable. I get tired of always troubleshooting it, plus it is too expensive, so I don’t recommend it except for the tinkerers. This product market is ripe for a killer app and hardware to just work. If Apple comes in and does it right, they would own the market.
Lest we forget: Apple Inc. was declared a Consumer Electronics company with the name change
Lights, locks, cameras, doors, thermostats, plugs switches as per the slide in the article.
These are pretty nice, and frankly relatively simple controllers and feedback loops. I can see it being done easily have fun in competition.
Now when I can toss my laundry in at one end and out the other I’ll be impressed.
When the fridge has an electronic display telling me that something is about to expire and presents a list of items I can add to my shopping list, which I’ll send to the grocery store like an email I’ll be impressed.
When I come out of my house in the morning and see the daily headlines and store specials coming up from the sidewalk as I do my daily jog I won’t be impressed, I’ll be on a google avenue.
Your imagination is a thing of wonder, that last bit gives me the shudders
Hope it works better than AirTunes on airplay. It’s so unreliable my wife refuses to use it. Prefers to drag a Bose speaker around the house.
Fix your home network.
I have the Honeywell RedLINK system installed with 3 wifi thermostats and wifi controlled zones. It works amazing well. The other night during a storm we lost power and when I woke up I had 16 emails warning me my system was not working. It will warn me if the temperature is 10 degrees over or under where I have it set. Very nice setup.
Apple would have a very hard time competing with Sonos, and I’m not sure why they’d want to take that on considering Sonos works so incredibly well with Apple products.