“In June, Apple (AAPL) announced HomeKit, its platform for integrating smart gadgets through iOS. If all goes according to Apple’s plan, your iPhone or iPad will become the hub for controlling your personal Internet of Things,” Belinda Lanks reports for Bloomberg. “But for that to happen, the tech giant needs companies to develop home gadgets for its framework, much as it needed apps to build up the App Store. That’s why it will be selling, in all its U.S. stores, a smart lock designed by Yves Béhar and called August.”
“August joins a handful of other products that can connect to HomeKit, including Philips’s remote-controlled Hue light bulbs, Belkin’s WeMo switch, and the iBaby monitor,” Lanks reports. “With August, Apple is beginning to amass an ecosystem of products that can be triggered just by talking to your iPhone. Tell Siri you’re turning in for the night, for instance, and, through HomeKit, the lights will be turned off, the baby monitor will go on, and the doors will lock.”
“Part of the beauty of the design is how easy it is to install using a single screwdriver,” Lanks reports. “You remove the two screws holding the thumb turn (that knob you turn to lock and unlock a standard dead bolt), secure the August mounting plate over the hole with the same screws you took out, and clip the electronic lock onto the plate. August then functions like your old thumb turn, locking and unlocking when rotated. The process takes about 10 minutes… The lock retails for $249 — the same price as Google’s Nest thermostat.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nest is likely already rueing the day they sold out to Google and Android. Cheapskate customers who settle for BOGOF knockoffs can’t or won’t spend $250 on thermostats and door locks. iPhone users can and do.
Any home automation scheme that doesn’t work well with iPhone and iPad is DOA. And, the home automation solution that will work best with the devices that the vast majority of affluent homeowners use, iPhone and iPad, will be Apple’s [HomeKit]. Period.
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