It feels like it’s 2001. Tons of companies had released tons of MP3 players, and they all sucked. The iPod was just months away.
But it’s 2016, and instead we’re drowning in smarthome gadgets, most recently the voice-powered Amazon Echo and whatever Google Home is.
Soon, Apple will change the game and release something perfect, a killer app that will finally make smarthomes work. That’s going to happen, right?
I honestly have no clue, but I can’t wait to find out. In fact, I’m getting impatient.
Sounds awesome but let’s not forget why you have to keep some perspective when considering how great Apple-Fanboys will have it with a fully Apple-Connected home.
It’s the personal opinion of this lowly blogger that if you’re waiting for Apple to sweep the floor with home automation’s current landscape, you may be waiting a while. Look at Siri. Why is it losing the AI Space-Race?
As written by Droid-Life (an Android focuses publication) a year ago:
Apple has always been more privacy focused than Google (and even privacy focused as a means to communicate a competitive advantage against the search giants), which is good for consumers, but ultimately bad for them if Google gets there first and is able to convince the vast majority of users that trading their information for features is a fair exchange. Part of me thinks that it is absolutely fair, but the other part of me wants to see Apple meet Google’s challenge and create something that is just as capable of helping me without me having to trust someone to keep my information safe on their servers. We need that kind of assistant so that we can live more present lives that allow us to use technology when it’s appropriate and let it work for us in the background otherwise.
The reason Google’s AI Assistant is so good is because Google knows everything about your life, can share your data with 3rd party apps across multiple devices (even your car) and Apple’s Walled-Garden is amazing. I love it but it has hurt Siri’s capabilities because Siri goes at it blind most of the time.
A 5-minute read of Apple’s Privacy page is great at letting the user know that Apple collects things you specifically allow it to grant and it keeps these safe in encrypted secure silos not available to any 3rd parties, once again, unless you give explicit permission to Apple to share this. If you’re tired of granting apps access to your Camera Roll, it’s because Apple wants the user to have the right to protect their data at all costs.
This section on HomeKit is telling:
Apple does not know what devices you’re controlling, or how and when you’re using them. Siri only associates your HomeKit devices with your anonymous Siri identifier, not you personally. Apps supported by HomeKit are restricted by our developer guidelines to using data solely for home configuration or automation services. Data related to your home is stored encrypted in the keychain of your device. It’s also encrypted in transit between your Apple device and those you’re controlling. And when you control your accessories from a remote location, that data is also encrypted when it’s sent. So HomeKit doesn’t know which devices you’re controlling or how you’re using them.
In addition, when apps perform automatic actions based on your location, such as turning on house lights, these actions are initiated by HomeKit, which makes your location invisible to the app. You can also disable use of your location at any time.
I think most home automation products today are weak offerings. Piecing everything together to have a connected home is difficult even if you can print your own money and spend $400 on lightbulbs. I hope Apple makes 1st party products so they can make our homes connected w/o breaking any of their privacy restrictions that keep us safe from 3rd parties knowing too much about us. On the same token, again using Siri as an example, Apple even keeps our data safe from themselves encrypting our commands, messages, activities and data.
Can an Apple Powered Connected Home work?
I want it to work but as long as Apple maintains their commitment to user privacy, it may be an offering that doesn’t compete with the same kind of products co-branded by Google where everything about you is shared with everyone and they use this to make products that are really impressive and cheap since your data sold to the highest bidder subsidizes more R&D to make even more products that take advantage of your data.
At the end of the day, I don’t mind turning on my light-bulbs with a switch if it means my coming and goings are kept private to everyone but me and my girlfriend.