ATV is certainly a part of the HomeKit ecosystem as was mentioned in Apple official statements. Not as a “hub”, but rather as a bridge to allow remote access to the HomeKit devices. The problem is that the “old” ATV typically goes to a sleep mode. The new one should have an “always on” mode, but the software was probably not ready for the announcement.
What’s funny to me is how all of the enthusiasm about HomeKit centered around Siri control of HA devices. Now, Echo has beat them to it by a long shot.
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Apple is not going to be the first mover on home automation. If you look back over their history, and there is plenty of it, you will see that they wait until it has been established that their is a market for a product and that they can innovate. Homekit is a curiosity at this point but probably not revealing at all what their end game is when it comes to HA.
Surface Pro had them beat by a long shot too, and I don’t think that it’s a very tough call to predict how this one is going to turn out. Smart Cover, Stylus er Pencil, Multi-tasking, etc.
Wait until someone has just about nailed the smart home and you will see what Apple really has in mind for the space.
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This is true, but nevertheless, it’s not typical for Apple to announce a product and then have virtually nothing to show for it more than a year after the initial announcement. I have a sense that the HomeKit was de-prioritised in favor of enterprise computing deals with IBM, etc. That’s surely can generate more sales than HomeKit.
I just dug into what very little documentation there is about tvOS, and found this gem in differences between iOS 9 and tvOS 9:
Homekit (Removed)
Ha! Won’t be anything integrating on that front any time soon!!!
What has been added are things soling relating to what Apple publicly said Apple TV can do.
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Would this have anything to do with the authentication co-processor chip requirements?
That would be just too funny…
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Oh, and maybe that would explain why they jerked ATV and tvOS from Apple Developer’s Conference. HaHa. They got hoisted by their own petard, I’d say. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving group!!
So, what do you want to bet that the all new ATV doesn’t have that chip at all?
The auth chip is required for 3-rd party devices (MFi licensees), not for Apple products, so no surprises here. I guess the reason HomeKit did not fly is because smart home gadgets is a fairly low-volume and low-margin business, so forcing a $2 extra part down OEM’s throats didn’t sit very well with most of them.
HomeKit R.I.P. for now. 
Ya, but they wouldn’t they need something similar in ATV to do the iPhone handshakes? Something was obviously fishy when they pulled it from WDC. Either the h/w was late, or some aspect of the s/w. My bet is on the former, and that some schedule was just not predictable enough to expose to the public. They are pretty good at their software predictability, at least from the public’s perspective.
On the other hand, TV user interfaces are notoriously and horrendously difficult to do well. I mean, look at ATV UI, it’s a piece of crap. Most are.
It seems to me that HA is a tail trying to wag a dog for Apple. How many incremental sales of iPhones/iPads would HomeKit deliver? Is that their thought? Why are they pursuing HA, because that great HA guy down the road at Google is?
Echo, on the other hand, has all of the motivations in the world for HA. HA can significantly drive sales of Echo.
Actually no, ATV is not a HK client device. It’s just a proxy, so it will act as an iPhone when you connect remotely.
Something was obviously fishy when they pulled it from WDC.
Not at all. The ATV is the lowest priority product as far as resource allocation is concerned. Apple did a full development cycle on ATV every year, only to cancel it because of lack of resources and start over the next year. Priorities has always been iPhone - #1, iPad - #2, iPod - #3 and ATV at the very bottom. Well, except for this year, when the Watch took the #1 spot.
Why are they pursuing HA, because that great HA guy down the road at Google is?
Beats me, but I can assure you that very few people at Apple (if any) take it seriously. Like I said, they have bigger fish to fry.
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I have to agree with @Ben. I find that I rarely use the ST app. Between all the door sensors, motion sensors, and time checks I rarely have to control anything in my house. The only things I ever adjust on a normal basis is the fan in the living room and my amazon echo is amazing for turning that on. Even more, since I have a fan controller, being able to tell Alexa what speed to run the fan at is a whole new level of laziness, I mean home automation!
I have an early version of the echo which came with the remote, which is awesome! I how the remove in my bed room so I can pick that up and talk to it (on a different floor) so I don’t have to by additional echos.
Siri would be cool and the concept of the apple watch, also very cool, but I find the echo is far more convenient.
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Home automation provided an obvious theoretical use case for Apple Watch in the early marketing. My own reason for buying the watch when I did was to get convenient voice control of SmartThings via IFTTT and voice texts. It worked better than anything else I had up until then, but then Echo came along and crushed it in that category.
If they can get micro presence on the watch, they’ll have a whole new home automation story to sell both watches and potentially iPad minis.
So I think there are still HA opportunities for Apple that make sense, but a lot depends on whether the third party device manufacturers can solve the issues they’ve been facing, which is a whole separate issue.
Sure, there will be at some point. But for the time being, they have their hands full trying to figure out how to position the Watch, which apparently does not sell as well as they’ve hoped. With the HomeKit, they put a stake in the ground, but the whole Smart Home market is such a mess that they’ve probably decided it’s not worth their while trying to clean it up. They’d rather wait for the market to mature before entering it in full force. Pretty much the same strategy they used with smart phones. Just my opinion, of course.
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Yeah, although there was not one mention of HomeKit at the recent Apple meeting in fact, I OS 9 rolled out a bunch of new homekit support features. They just still don’t have the devices to go with them. 
The biggest changes from iOS 8, all of which are actually very cool:
One) pairing now allows you to use the camera on your iPhone to scan the device ID which then does all the pairing stuff. This is actually awesome. Since this is a walled garden approach, every device is known to the Apple database, so they already know what features it has and what device class it is. True, it means a very limited set of devices, but pairing for that set will be very smooth.
Two) they’ve significantly expanded the set of device classes, and now includes door locks as well as a bunch of different sensor types. Schlage and the other lock manufacturers leaned on them, and Apple now does allow voice control of locks, even though they previously said they wouldn’t. P
Three) you can now train Siri to recognize your specific voice. That goes along with the unlock capability from two above, but it’s really interesting. It’s a feature that the watch could really benefit from.
Four) they’ve now split scenes into two separate categories. There are four predefined scenes which will be known to every participating manufacturer, including third-party app designers. The predefined scenes are Getting Up, Leaving Home, Returning Home, and Going to Bed. Separately you can create your own custom scenes like “Movie night” or whatever. This all makes perfect sense, they just didn’t have it before.
Five) they now have “triggers” which are intended to work in an IFTTT type structure. Triggers can include Geopresence or other devices like sensors or some other things I’ve forgotten. I know time of day and sunset are there. They’re still trying to keep this simpler than the full rules engines like the one in Fibaro, but still it’s the kind of thing that people expect from home automation. It will be possible to build much more complex real structures in a third-party app, but the base level of triggers will work with any homekit devices.
Six) Remote access no longer requires an Apple TV, it can be done just with an iCloud account.
Seven) greatly improved Apple Watch integration. If you didn’t try it with iOS 8, you probably won’t notice because now it works the way you expect it to. But now with iOS nine, the voice commands actually work on the watch the way they work on the phone. It’s not super fancy, but it’s real now.
Anyway, without more devices, they’re still not ready to really compete in the home automation space yet. But they do seem to be on the trajectory for the summer 2016 date that I’ve projected all along.
I expect CES 2016 to include a number of homekit device announcements which actually will be available for sale by July 2016. There is now in the functionality in the base system to allow for the basic marketing type scenarios.
No word yet on how/if there will be any AV functionality to take advantage of either iTunes or Apple TV. We’ll just have to see what happens there. But door locks, open close sensors, moisture sensors, motion sensors, garage doors controllers, thermostats, and lighting all look to be Coming over the next year. For real this time. But again we’ll see.
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And for those who like words to go with their pictures, a couple of weeks ago a retailer accidentally put up a listing for a brand-new hue bridge that can operate with existing hue bulbs and homekit. The problem is it wasn’t supposed to be officially released yet and it was quickly withdrawn.
It appears that the new bridge will sell for about the same price as a single Phillips hue bulb. What isn’t clear yet is whether you also need the original hue bridge as well.
Still waiting on official word, but for those who like leaks and rumors here you go:
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It’s clear that Apple is not dropping out of this game. It’s just moving at a slower pace than some expected, but I tend to agree with your prediction on the timeframe.
It is going to take time, but I believe this will be where the bulk of the market eventually goes. Apple or Google. As for the limitations vs ST, I’m not seeing that as a permanent wall - at least not from the jailbreak world.
Hope does spring eternal after Apple says it’s so. Time will tell…
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Two New HomeKit SDKs Announced
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