favorite new feature by far. just awesome.
Have you heard of Android@Home?
yes, and what has happend to android@home since it was presented more than three years ago??
HomeKit
31–40 of 146 posts
Re: HomeKit
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes but does it notify twitter??
Sadly not, but if it stops working, it will sing to your phone to tell it what is wrong: http://www.lg.com/us/support/answers/washers2012/smartdiagno... I tried to use fldigi to decode this - sadly wasn't able to.
Our washing machine has the same functionality, but mostly my wife just likes that it sings to us when it finishes its dishes.
Re: HomeKit
#33Shrug. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but am I the only one not really excited for this kind of thing? Turning lights, air conditioning on and off isn't exactly a huge problem in my life.
This is a very myopic view. Technology needs to advance in all fronts. Once these things are integrated as part of your daily life you wont notice them anymore and will take them for granted.
These things will actually end up conserving energy in great amounts.
Re: HomeKit
#34Dear Apple, please for the love of god and the good of everyone, get together with Google and iron out a common protocol for this stuff. Don't make this one of your competitive technologies designed to fragment the world into Apple and not-Apple. Home automation is just dying to take off and there's a pile of gold for everyone if you just show a tiny bit of cooperation to get it started ... And you can all still sue each other afterwards if you like about the design of the light switches or whatever turns you on, but can we please just let the industry move forward first?
Re: HomeKit
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, any mention of Nest was conspicuously absent during the WWDC keynote.
They went as far as to use a competing smart thermostat in their visuals - arguably a slight
They used the thermostat of a company that is partnered with them... not a slight. Nest isn't a partner, thus wasn't used in their visuals.
Re: HomeKit
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can even buy locks that will unlock with bluetooth but that makes me paranoid. Honestly, locks are so easy to pick that something with Bluetooth would probably be much more secure. A lock stops people from randomly walking into your house but anyone who actually cared about getting in would have no trouble.
Every software developer in the world should read Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language , and learn the relevance of the appearance of security versus actual security. A lock is only as strong as its context. Better lock? Did you upgrade the door frame as well?
> Did you upgrade the door frame as well?
And the windows?
I strongly second _A Pattern Language_. It's significantly augmented my sense of what in a living space works and what doesn't.
Re: HomeKit
#37Shrug. Maybe I'm stuck in the past, but am I the only one not really excited for this kind of thing? Turning lights, air conditioning on and off isn't exactly a huge problem in my life.
May I counterpoint?
I live in a 1200 sq foot condo, 1 floor, with limited natural light. Automated lighting activation via Bluetooth LE (Tasker on my Android phone) is very handy when I come home late at night, because walking through ~15 feet in the dark to a light switch isn't fun (yes, first world problem).
More importantly, my Nest thermostat. Am I lazy for changing the house temp from my bed? Most definitely. But that's not the point. I have saved quite a bit in utilities with its auto-away functionality, as well as its airwave cooling function (detects how long it can keep cooling the home from residual coolness in the air exchanger coils after the compressor has shut down).
Energy efficiency plays (Google buys Nest for $3.2 billion) turns tech companies into utility MVNOs. And almost everyone needs some form of power or HVAC.
Re: HomeKit
#38The critical part here is not standards and not even the usability from a graphical UI perspective, but who is put in control by the technology. Home automation has always faced this difficult hurdle.
In most families, the lightswitch, a thermostat, etc belong to everyone who wants to use it and who is near it.
I like Siri being in control, but she will have to be like a Butler that can bridge conflicts if this is to make it beyond single-person households into family homes.
Re: HomeKit
#39Dear Apple, please for the love of god and the good of everyone, get together with Google and iron out a common protocol for this stuff. Don't make this one of your competitive technologies designed to fragment the world into Apple and not-Apple. Home automation is just dying to take off and there's a pile of gold for everyone if you just show a tiny bit of cooperation to get it started ... And you can all still sue…
I absolutely doubt that Apple will. Look at AirPlay. Look at AirDrop. Look at iMessage and Facetime. Even their original content formats were not all that portable.
Some of those are for technical/licensing reasons, but many are not.
Re: HomeKit
#40I've been working on my own pile of HA scripts, hacks and controls - just for the fun of it. When I heard Google was buying nest and a security camera company and now Apple is jumping in - I'm glad I'll have my own. I don't care for either company to know exactly what is going on in my house. I do want my house to yell at me when the A/C is running and windows are open or the garage door is left open when I leave. There will always be a market for the big names, but this is one cloud I'll keep out of my hosue.