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HomeKit

developer.apple.com

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Re: HomeKit

#51

Post by wwweston »

general_failure wrote: post #33
untog wrote: post #25

Shrug. 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.

> This is a very myopic view. Technology needs to advance in all fronts

Citation, please.

Or at least a clarification of what you mean by "advance."

If you like, here's an example from writer Wendell Berry:

"To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces. 5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body. 6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools. 7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible. 8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair. 9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships."

http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html

(I don't expect everyone would necessarily share all these standards -- I suspect 10 in particular might be an issue for HN participants, for example --but they serve as an example and all of them have some merit.)

Re: HomeKit

#52

Post by michaelvanham »

JackWebbHeller wrote: post #41
gergles wrote: post #17

Here's hoping the "common protocol" they mentioned in the keynote is Z-Wave (strongly suggested base on Tim's use of the word "scenes" and the vendor list they put up) and not some Apple proprietary garbage. I'm still bitter about FaceTime being an 'open standard'.

Is Z-Wave the same thing as a Zigbee mesh network? I know that's what Philips Hue uses.

zwave and zigbee are similar but competing standards. the devices are not interchangeable but some home automation controllers support both.

more info: http://m.electronicdesign.com/communications/what-s-differen...

Re: HomeKit

#53

Post by logn »

tmuir wrote: post #27

Does anyone have any shred of information about this at all? Since when do placeholder pages completely devoid of any details whatsoever make it to the top of HN?

On that page, there are links to both the API reference and a beta SDK.

Re: HomeKit

#54

Post by rblatz »

From what I've seen, it looks like you will modify your existing iOS app to register with the HomeKit subsystem. This will give HomeKit hooks into the existing control functionality that is in the app. IE Nest will register that they have a thermostat and this is how to turn the temp up down.

Re: HomeKit

#55

Post by michaelvanham »

untog wrote: post #25

Shrug. 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.

How about turning a few lights on remotely when one is unexpectedly caught working late? Now it looks like someone is home instead of looking like a big dark burglary target.

Or maybe one might want to lock the font door from the office when one left in a hurry to get to the meeting on time?

Re: HomeKit

#56

Post by runako »

guyzero wrote: post #28
runako wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds interesting, but a Google search for me doesn't link to any product information that's recent. Could you share a link?

That's the point. It's dead.

Thats's what it looked like to me, but the prior poster seemed to have other data.

Re: HomeKit

#57

Post by voltagex_ »

zmmmmm wrote: post #34

Dear 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'm looking forward to things like the Almond+, which will use Z-Wave. I don't hold out hope for Apple opening anything up after the Darwin components started disappearing and after the broken FaceTime promise.

Re: HomeKit

#58

Post by Already__Taken »

wwweston wrote: post #51
general_failure wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> This is a very myopic view. Technology needs to advance in all fronts Citation, please. Or at least a clarification of what you mean by "advance." If you like, here's an example from writer Wendell Berry: "To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for technological innovation in my own work. They are as follows: 1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least…

I can shorten that list;

1. I don't care for change, everything is terrible as long as I can pick at least one problem.

3 and 9 clearly contradict! This is garbage.

Re: HomeKit

#59

Post by OverlordXenu »

krschultz wrote: post #39
zmmmmm wrote: post #34

Dear 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.

Yeah, but many devices support both AirPlay and DLNA or whatever else. I bet we'll see devices that support both Google and Apple. Or someone will reverse-engineer the API, like they always do.

Re: HomeKit

#60

Post by aroch »

krschultz wrote: post #39
zmmmmm wrote: post #34

Dear 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.

Or at Google...Hangouts, their AIO messaging framework, is not either
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