And the race is on: echo versus Apple TV versus every other hub

Apple wouldn’t be first, at current count they are about ninth. :wink: And as I’ve said before I don’t really expect to see a lot of the devices for homekit available to actually buy until summer a year from now.

But homekit is already here, at least for developers to use. The smart watch is likely intended to fit in. And it seems very clear that AppleTV will have a very important role in homekit deployment, because it’s going to be the only way to control HomeKit devices when you are away from home.

(For those not familiar with Apple TV, this is not a TV set. It’s a small streaming device like Roku or chromecast. Current cost is under $100, and a new version is expected this summer, probably to be announced at the June apple developers conference.)

Apple will move slowly, and there are a lot of things they want to get right, but I think the trajectory is established.

1 Like

They might be easy to initially setup, but the one I was working on was already setup but was not working. You have to install their software to even do anything. I prefer having a web based interface, primarily because I’ve used it so many times before.

1 Like

The ipad has become a smash hit ( I love mine by the way) because it offered so many things that every tablet before it had lacked. The same goes for the iPhone and their watch. In the realm of Home Automation, they would have to offer something earth shattering to unseat smartthings. If it rolls out like they did Apple pay where they pre-establish partners like Lutron, Leviton, Kwikset, e.t.c. it might work. But I believe timing is everything and they’ve waited a little too long.

Yes… I’m very surprised Apple didn’t just bite the bullet and buy Nest. Very expensive company, but seems a better opportunity than their purchase of Beats headphones.

2 Likes

I’m still annoyed that Google didn’t buy SmartThings. :wink:

3 Likes

I think you’re half right…timing is everything.

On the “waited too long” element, I think Nokia might disagree, as would Blackberry, Motorola, Ericsson, Compaq (remember the iPaq?) and 3Com (remember the Palm Pilot?). Between them they owned the cell phone and PDA markets. Then along came Apple who had never played in the cellphone space and who’s previous PDA (the Newton) was long dead and buried.

It doesn’t matter when you have it, if you have a dramatically better product than what is then available in the market, and can then stay ahead long enough, you can slay the biggest giants in the marketplace.

Whilst SmartThings have the backing of a veritable giant in the consumer product space (Samsung), I don’t believe either of them will be discounting Apple’s potential impact in this space. Apple not only has the ability to implement, they have an enormous installed base of enthusiastic users they can leverage and a war chest to fund any efforts that is the envy of nation states.

Perhaps Apple’s greatest strength is that it doesn’t allow the competition to dictate the nature of the competition; they determine for themselves on which field of battle they wish to engage. E.g. almost every other vendor is competing with each other on price, whilst Apple has long determined they’re better off continuing to charge a premium price and the market continues to reward them regardless.

I think Apple are keenly aware of getting the timing right - I think they learned these lessons with the Apple III, Apple Lisa and the Newton. But for Apple, the right timing is when they have a product which “just works” for the average Joe whilst the competition is still predominantly understood and appreciated by the techie consumer. That’s when Apple can swoop in and capture a huge chunk of the market.

E.g.

  • Apple Mac vs. PC DOS command line
  • iPod vs. every other MP3 player at the time
  • iPhone vs. PDAs, Symbian phones, styluses, etc.
  • iPad vs. netbooks, Windows “tablets” of the time (keyboardless laptops), etc.

Often, the ability to produce such a product is constrained by the limitations of current technology - be that CPU power, memory capacity, battery capacity, display or input devices, etc. Many competitors are happy to push the bleeding edge and get products into users hands before they are fully baked, seeking to gain the advantage of first mover. Apple, however, prefers to wait until they have a fully formed solution for the general public; they prefer to come in late with the right product rather than early with something that won’t live up to their users’ expectations. It’s an approach which has rewarded them handsomely for many, many years, so I don’t expect it to change any time soon.

4 Likes

I’m not saying that Apple could never come up with a successful home automation platform, just that such a platform would be difficult right now with the current lay of the market. The reason why the iPhone was such a success is that it provided something that everyone wanted: Their Palm pilot and cellphone in one device. This paradigm shift had been attempted by several other manufactures, but they had done a horrible job of it.

In the current HA market, Apple needs to provide a paradigm shift in order to see expansion beyond their own base of die hard “Apple is the best at everything” fans. So let’s figure that paradigm shift is a hubless design “that just works”. The closest model I can think of to compare to a hubless design is an Industrial Process Protocol called Foundation Fieldbus. In this model the controller only tells the instruments and actuators what it wants, and the instruments and actuators work amongst themselves to accomplish this. In order to accomplish this you have to build all the smarts into each instrument and actuator. One device still has to be the Link Active Scheduler to ensure that communications occur between all devices in a timely manner and one device doesn’t hog the transmission medium.

In order to make something similar work in the HA market Apple needs to design a system, which knowing Apple, will probably involve building their own proprietary protocol called something like “airmate”. They will most likely have to do this in order to make something that “just works”. Apple builds good hardware and likes to have control over their hardware so I’m not sure that they will try get other device manufacturers on board. The problem with this is that up to this point all of Apple’s products have been standalone with some accessories. In this case they have to build a network of devices that talk to each other. If they fail to convince Lutron, Leviton, GE, Fibaro, etc. to build devices for their proprietarty protocol, your left with Apple devices with names like iSwitch,iLight,iLock. Devices which will all probably cost $75 dollars a piece because:

  1. Apple products always cost more than anything else on the market
  2. You have to build all the smarts of a hub into each device.

In such a case I would be unlikely to make the jump to Apple Automation because now I have to replace all my hardware with Apple hardware. Also since apple typically doesn’t do anything open, your limited to what ever features they feel fit to provide. This system will work great for those whose Idea of home automation is that you can control it from your smartphone.

A final salient point on the “It just works” concept is that since the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple has had an increasing number of less than completely baked products (see iOS 8; Apple Maps). 3 years after the release of Apple Maps they still can’t make a product that doesn’t completely decimate the battery of my iPhone 5s when navigating to location in the next town. With google maps I can navigate to a location a 100 miles away and still have battery life to spare.

To conclude I really like my 5s, and my iPad. I would probably buy a macbook if I had the money. However they would have to build something groundbreaking to convince me to leave my current HA setup. This is not to say that ST couldn’t become the Blackberry of the HA industry. In fact I worry about this possibility. Especially because in the 4 month period that I’ve been a ST user the only feature I’ve seen that wasn’t built by a community member was widgets for iOS.

2 Likes

HomeKit’s announced partners so far include: Schlage, Phillips, Cree, Honeywell, August, Kwikset, Broadcom, iDevices, netamo, withings, Haier, Skybell, Chamberlain, and more. On trajectory.

But it won’t likely be Lutron. Homekit involves a special chip and WiFi to bluetooth tunnels (which is genius, btw. This is a tree network with bluetooth point to point to the bridge point, most likely an iDevice outlet.). Not mesh, except for ZLL. Not hub based.

The devices will be expensive in terms of energy and per device cost compared to a mesh installation, but they will be fast, reliable, secure, easy to install and sexy as hell. And voice controllable.

The bet is that everybody who wants home automation already has WiFi, so shovel the gritty tech setup stuff onto that. The bluetooth devices will be pre-paired with the required HK chip, similar to ZLL without a bridge but with the phone doing the authentication.

It will be hipster home automation, fully compatible with Phillips hues that change color when you get tagged in a facebook post. No one will need it, but a lot of people are going to want it, very much, and be willing to pay premium prices for it.

It’s going to do a lot less than a smartthings-based install, and it’s going to cost a lot more. Whether it will do enough to attract anyone currently using a hub-based system, including most of the community members here, is still up in the air. But I don’t see timing as the issue.

4 Likes

I’m actually going to do a modified backpeddle from my previous comment. Yes, they will put some home automation (homekit) features in their next generation of Apple TV. They will be limited, work pretty well, and touted as “simply breathtaking” by the masters of the Apple reality distortion field. I still don’t think they’re going to be anything major.
Google and Amazon WILL however go whole hog into this.

2 Likes

Just the announcement will cause many people who may have considered something like SmartThings to wait for the Apple products.

You hit the nail on the head! I am already in a holding pattern until I find out what the Boys of 1 Infinite Loop are doing.

1 Like

As I mentioned earlier, due to the rumors surrounding the Apple TV hubs I had a self-imposed buying freeze until I know what Apple is up to… A friend just sent me this article that has caused me to lift the freeze. Some of you might be interested as well:

Sources: Apple’s HomeKit will talk to 3rd-party hubs

Not to put you back on your freeze, but the feedback is that Apple TV will feature prominently at WWDC in June. I expect big homekit announcements and new hardware.

1 Like

Apple does not need the blessing of these other companies. HomeKit will include “bridges” for consumers to use devices made by other companies. This will give consumers more flexibility than they’ve ever had before.

That’s fine, I always have $ to spend on Apple products that I want. The freeze was due to the fact that I was unsure if what I have currently, or what I may purchase between now and WWDC isn’t supported. That doesn’t look like that is the case.

Most in the industry feel that Apple will be coming out with a second HomeKit enhanced Apple TV. Seeing how they just recently dropped the pricing of the original Apple TV from 99 to 69.00, it will probably sell for between 99 - 129.00. We’ll know more June 8th. I am happy that Amazon is bringing out Echo, but I really don’t see it as being in competition with Apple TV or any hub. It’s more of Siri on steroids. I will order one after June 8th after I see what Apple has to offer.

That’s my expectation too. I’ve been down an Apple TV for a few months, but I’m holding out for the new hardware. The real question is whether they try to put zwave/zigbee in there and provide full HA functionality or if it’s simply a dumb wifi/bluetooth gateway for homekit commands out to various devices.

I’m really excited for my Echo, especially if I can integrate it with ST!

1 Like

It would completely out of character and contrary to what they’ve said publicly for them to put z-wave/zigbee radios into Apple TV. They are much more likely to stick to their MFi program for HomeKit accessories. You probably will see them open up Apple TV to developers, and most likely that will be on some variant of iOS. In which case, there should be HomeKit APIs available.

2 Likes

This is a pretty vague announcement; perhaps WWDC participants and other persons under NDA will get clarifying details.

Apple’s Homekit architecture being centered on iPhone’s Bluetooth is an interesting choice, but there must be tremendous arguments as to whether or not this is a wise choice. At the surface, it could be viewed cynically (or positively?) as a proprietary walled-garden which is typical Apple.

This is a huge difference from SmartThings which is explicitly open (even if not “100%” Open) to any “Thing”, with a substantial portion of “Things” integrating seamlessly, and with both Community and Partner programs evolving to ensure the Platform can continue to grow in this fashion.

1 Like

I got my crystal ball out this afternoon, and here is what it says:

Apple TV gets upgraded to include Bluetooth, and is opened for apps with a subset of iOS, including HomeKit APIs. That way, when the iPhone is away and wants to control the house with a HomeKit app, the Apple TV can provide the last link to the accessory with an app, all under iCloud security.

SmartThings comes out with a hub that is MFi certified, and an iOS device with a HomeKit app could talk to it once it’s been setup. Or should I say that Siri could command it. This would be a fairly straightforward integration. In some ways it would be conceptually similar to SmartTiles, in that, you would install a SmartApp and give it certain things in your ST setup for it to control. These things would become accessories in HomeKit, and Siri could control them. You wouldn’t need 100 of these, so that limit isn’t important. You couldn’t do locks this way, but there are other ways including however you do them now.

Thus would we obtain Siri control over key aspects of our home, both while home and away.

3 Likes

feature I’ve seen that wasn’t built by a community member was widgets for iOS.

Yeah, the community IS ST … There is no one behind the development curtain at ST

Reply as linked Topic