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HomeKit

developer.apple.com

121–130 of 146 posts

Re: HomeKit

#121
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like mp3 players and touchscreen smartphones never took off due to Apple maintaining a walled garden around the iPod and the iPhone? If they come up with a compelling product there will be competitors and standardization.

The MP3 codec already existed, and touchscreens have nothing to do with a "common protocol", unless you count being a human with a capacitance as a protocol.

MP3 existed but was proprietary.

Re: HomeKit

#122
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darwin is fair enough, but FaceTime was due to a patent held by another company. The fight cost them something like $500 million but in the end there's nothing apple could do about it.

Reference?

This irritates the hell out of me. You want a reference? Before snarkily replying with 'Reference?', fucking search for it; http://lmgtfy.com/?q=facetime+patent+issue

Re: HomeKit

#123
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MP3 codec already existed, and touchscreens have nothing to do with a "common protocol", unless you count being a human with a capacitance as a protocol.

MP3 existed but was proprietary.

Irrelevant: free encoders were popular, and the early days of Napster meant most MP3s are CD-rips being uploaded by users.

Apple made out like a bandit from that ecosystem since it was the original reason to own an iPod.

Re: HomeKit

#124
post #90
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that doesn't matter. They continued to use XMPP so long because it was still profitable for them to, not because of some implied ethical stand on open software. Android is "open" because it is more profitable for Google to give it away and make the ad/Play/certification money than it is for them to personally get into the hardware market like Apple.

> They continued to use XMPP so long because it was still profitable for them to More like, they continued to use XMPP for 8 years at enormous loss, watching while it acted as a massive sink hole of users to their competitors who exploited it ruthlessly ... I too wish they hadn't ended federation, but do note that to this day XMPP clients continue to work just fine. They did not abandon XMPP as everyone loves to impl…

- XMPP is deprecated as far as Google is concerned.

- Google Hangouts (non-XMPP) replaces Google Talk (XMPP) on Android.

- Apparently I always appear online in Google Hangouts even when I'm signed out of Google Talk leading to people messaging me and being confused that I don't respond, or never got the message (apparently it just goes into the aether, or maybe only shows up if I switch over the Google Hangouts).

Saying "look XMPP still works!" doesn't prove much as it's a second-class (or even third-class) citizen in Google's ecosystem.

Re: HomeKit

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, 3 and 9 together mean you cannot ever replace something good with something better.

3 is talking about technology. 9 is talking about aspects of people's lives.

How is technology not an aspect of people's lives? Not to mention, some aspects of people's lives might be good, but could be better. Should they not be improved? Well, not according to 9.

Re: HomeKit

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that still believe in google's good will and use it as a measure for the industry are really too big an amount. That's embarrassing for a community with this level of knowledge and deep understanding of IT matters.

Whether you believe it or not, companies like Facebook, Google, Dropbox etc. have so much lose by deceiving the user than Apple or Microsoft and so much to gain from the good will of the user that they will weigh doing good more than bad to keep their business running.

And yet, they do deceive their users, just in subtle ways with plausible deniability (e.g. Facebook profile options related to privacy that are poorly named. Is it just a mistake, or a purposeful decision?)

Re: HomeKit

#127
post #3

This seems a lot like a response to Google's Nest acquisition. Google and Apple are rapidly moving in to an area with a lot of activity. There has been a recent surge of home automation startups and platforms like Revolv ( http://revolv.com/ ), SmartThings ( http://www.smartthings.com/ ), WigWag ( http://www.wigwag.com/ ). One of the problems they are addressing is how to marge multiple different home automation stan…

Yes, any mention of Nest was conspicuously absent during the WWDC keynote.

Yeah, but Nest is hosting a 3 hour WWDC event tonight :).

Re: HomeKit

#128
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you believe it or not, companies like Facebook, Google, Dropbox etc. have so much lose by deceiving the user than Apple or Microsoft and so much to gain from the good will of the user that they will weigh doing good more than bad to keep their business running.

And yet, they do deceive their users, just in subtle ways with plausible deniability (e.g. Facebook profile options related to privacy that are poorly named. Is it just a mistake, or a purposeful decision?)

Indeed. I feel a lot more deceived by the companies you named than by Apple or Microsoft. With them I know I am paying for a service or product and I clearly know where they take their profit. With Google and Facebook? Not so much. With them I feel used, induced to some behaviors because that way they can profit more and so on. I guess that's a lot more deceptive than selling high priced closed products that you can simply decide not to buy.

Re: HomeKit

#129
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…

But...

They won't. Please, if you're developing on iOS don't do this. Apple is hungry and looking for another market segment to lock out the slow, but good, innovation taking place. Today I happily control 70% of my house with full access to scene programming and enjoy no vendor lock-in other than the protocols my choice of controller supports. The biggest things here is I have access to a local API, I don't need to rely on Internet connectivity - something most everyone gets wrong.

Home automation is huge. Apple mindlessly taking it down to simplistic "Xfinity home automation levels" but making it pretty doesn't help.

SmartThings, WigWag, Revolv - all suck. They lock the smart home user out by not exposing an API. Why? They want to collect sit in the middle and collect data. None of these companies seem to get that there's a middle ground and the initial users are not all ones that trust a start-up 1) with their data and 2) to be around next year. There's only a few that get it right and they're not the prettiest by far or they'd, likely, rule the landscape.

I've been running home automation for over 3 years now on the same platform - nothing today is anything new or different. If I want my phone to be a piece of my HA system I'll use applications specific that help me make those tie-ins, but I don't want Google, Apple or some other fly-by-night-startup to get in the middle of that. It's my home, that's personal.

Re: HomeKit

#130
It'd be interesting to tie this in with geofencing, so that I'd know I left the garage door open before I get too far away.
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