iPod godfather and ex-iPhone team launch previously stealth startup

I assume its trivial for a device as advanced as this, but has anyone spotted if it supports Celsius? Not a big deal in an American market but i'd totally buy one for my home but we silly British people use the metric system.

I'm wondering about the installation part. It doesn't seem to me that the average user is just doing to go grab one and get it in himself.

I made my own computerized replacement for the thermostat in my house(1) and discovered that there were about 5 different possible wiring patterns depending on if you've got heat pumps, multi-stage, e-heat, gas, etc.

After much research I figured out how they are wired, how my house should be wired and... burned out a fuse on the circuit board inside the furnace because the original installer had switched 2 wires and just said "screw it" and left it that way.

I had to remove and trace the circuit board with my fluke meter just to get my AC back. Its one thing for rich guys building their smart-house in Tahoe to choose this, but quite another for Joe average to go grab one at Home Depot and take it home and get it going. Calling your "Nest dealer" to schedule an install just seems like a nonstarter for the added cost this will add to what already seems pretty high.

As a geek though, the wifi part seems pretty cool. As long as it was sufficiently open, it could have saved me a bunch of work making my own HVAC interface.(2)

(1) My philosophy was that I didn't need a "thermostat" at all. The computer that does all of the other smart-house stuff for me should control the temperature as well.

(2) Proliphix makes a pretty decent openly programmable WIFI enabled thermostat but they cost around $600.

I love this...this is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. Ever since I built my first web app, although it's not a major achievement, I have looked at the world so differently.

There are so many little things that I look at and say, there MUST be a better way to do this....or...why does this still look so ugly?

I am glad that Tony has done this with the Thermostat, but it just dawned on me that this could be Steve Jobs legacy.

It is these startups that are founded by people that spent a few years working with Jobs that are so unhappy with the status quo that they have to build something themselves.

The future looks bright.

Even though I don't have central cooling here in Jamaica, I can definitely understand that Thermostat problem and I feel like buying one because it looks so sexy.

It solves a major problem in an elegant way, and helps control my energy bill?

Plus 1!

Off hand, I'd guess that the contractor who builds the house puts in the cheapest thing he can find, it works until it breaks and the HVAC guys get called "cuz the heat's broke". If a new thermostat is required, the cycle begins again.

If this is indeed the case, then its no surprise that thermostats are the most boring, user unfriendly things imaginable because they are more or less universally selected by price alone.

There's some negativity here, but I have to say I'm impressed. This is a nice bit of low hanging fruit for a segway into smarter home technology, something we've been promised for ages but which has consistently failed to deliver IMHO. Add in the green factor and I think this has the potential to be a pretty damn good business with plenty of room for future product growth.