“Tucked in the middle of Apple’s WWDC presentation this week was a series of updates meant to bolster Apple’s smart home efforts, which revolve around software called HomeKit,” John Patrick Pullen writes for TIME Magazine. “But over the past year, a triad of market forces — Apple’s goals, competition from rivals like Amazon and Google, and consumers’ needs — have been pushing the smart home around like a Ouija’s planchette. So what is the future for the smart home? As with the Ouija, the answer may depend on who pushes the hardest.”
“Apple’s biggest announcement around smart home technology was the unveiling of a new ‘Home’ app, to be included in a forthcoming iPhone update,” Pullen writes. “A control center linking together all of a user’s HomeKit-compatible devices, Home’s capabilities had previously been sprinkled around between the iOS Settings screen and individual device’s apps.”
“Apple’s new Home app should let you turn down your thermostat in the same place you turn on your lights. It’s a step in the right direction, especially when programming what Apple calls “scenes,” or favorite settings for given devices and given situations,” Pullen writes. “(Dimming the lights for movie night, say.) In fact, it’s remarkable people like me tried to embrace the smart home before a solution like this existed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, it is remarkable. But, John is an early adopter.
Home automation is actually in the first seconds at the start of the game, so there’s no need to toss up a Hail Mary. Apple just needs to take charge and grow this thing up, which is exactly what they’re doing with the Home app.
This is finally the realization of HomeKit that I thought it would be from the beginning. Now that there will be a single point of integration, people will see the benefit of buying IoT devices. I know it has me interested.
With HomeKit, as with all other “Kits” from Apple inc., we are witnessing multiple “Pucks skating to the future, not where the Puck has been”.
Unfortunately, analysts, naysayers and the competition like to pounce on anything coming out of Apple inc. as “unfinished”, “inadequate” etc, when in truth they (especially the competition) are s..t scared of the how the future will likely play out!
The different “Kits” from Apple inc. are starting to show some Real Teeth!!
The Home app could have been the only thing Apple announced at WWDC and i would have been happy.
As the folks at Iris by Lowes can tell you… One app to rule them all is harder to pull off than you think. Sure, there are the simple things like turning a light on and off, but it’s far more complicated. More complex devices have different feature sets. It’s almost impossible to build one app that can account for every option and feature. My concern with Apple is that they’ve shown repeatedly that it’s their way or no way… and that doesn’t work with the number of manufacturers involved. I hope Apple proves me wrong.
Well, it would be nice to be able to afford a house so that I could at least check out the catalogs for home automation….
Sounds like you have a life goal. Good, I know you can achieve it if you make a plan and stick to it.
Many of us were in your position at one time or another. Invest in education, get that good job, and forego the latest fads and toys, and you will soon have a house of your own.
I am still waiting for the dust to settle regarding HA. At the moment it sucks for most of us, unless you pay big bucks for custom integration services. Apple is going the right direction, thinking about IoT security and common interface, regardless of manufacture.
IoT would be a bad idea to install without hardening against hacking, mass surveillance and other bad players.
Microsoft showed us the idea of medicin containers that know how much and when you need to take your prescription. These are connected objects and serve as an example of the sensitive nature being proposed on how technology could be used to make our lives better.
More domestically, how do we know that our smart thermostats couldn’t be used to burn down our houses, when we aren’t home? I say this because it’s already a proven fact that somebody wrote Stuxs and destroyed equipment used to make refined uranium 235.
HA needed to be solid and safe. It needs a master control system that is smart enough to know when it’s not working correctly and shut things down and keep unauthorized users out.
I already have a huge investment of Zwave and Zigbee standard home automation devices ( Amazon Echo, Phillips Hue, Wink Hub and Nest thermostat and smoke detetectors and then many switches and sensors, it’s wrong on Apples part not to support these standards without me having to buy some kind of bridge for the addition to HomeKit, There were already these heavily used standards which work well for me.