“The first products to take advantage of Apple’s home automation technology won’t likely reach stores until this spring,” Dawn Chmielewski and Ina Fried report for Re/code.
“That’s nearly a year after Apple announced HomeKit, the software that allows consumers to use their iPhones like remote controls to activate various automated appliances, during its keynote last June at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco,” Chmielewski and Fried report. “Among the reasons for the delay, the launch of HomeKit-enabled hardware certification efforts that sources tell Re/code began later than Apple had hoped.”
Chmielewski and Fried report, “‘Like AirPlay, Apple wants very tight tolerances to deliver what they believe to be the best experience,’ says Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead. ‘On one hand, the slower time to market is annoying, but given the fact that AirPlay works well and everyone knows it, it make sense. Apple is trying to ‘fix’ what a plethora of companies haven’t gotten right, yet.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Better to “get it right” than “be first”.
I’m willing to wait.
Please don’t screw up AirPlay in the process.
Better to release something new in Apple’s 3Q and 4Q for positive growth in slower quarters.
Take the HomeKit spec, design your product and get it manufactured in nine months. This is very fast by any manufacturer’s standards. And this buffoon calls it a delay.
My thoughts entirely not many products could get to market in that timescale especially silly with the required certification.
“Apple is trying to ‘fix’ what a plethora of companies haven’t gotten right, yet.”
Speaking from personal experience, I am sitting in a room with LED lamps dimmed at just the level I want set from my iPhone. It’s really nice. BUT . . . the setup of my GE Link system was not a pleasant one and took a long time to get it right. Yes the software UI is very good but it is a pain in the a** to add each light bulb and even though I moved the GE Link hub to the living room in the middle of the house, the underpowered hub can’t reach my bedroom in my modest size single story house.
Very disappointing.
Apple, please don’t let the cheep tendencies of third party manufactures ruin your design.
As for Philips Hue? Seems like a nice design, but they just priced themselves out of the market.
Wait forever to get it right, customers spend money on products because they work, then in a future iOS update, that same functionality stops working (like the Apple TV app remote), then apple never fixes it (like the Apple TV app remote), then Apple announces new product category, takes forever to get it right, history repeats itself. I feel no confidence in spending more money on something with an apple stamp of approval, just to have apple cripple it themselves, then never fix it,