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Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#41

Post by dangus »

ranger_danger wrote: post #5
dangus wrote: post #2

> For example, he expects there to be a hexagonal grid of apps, just like on the Apple Watch. One of the worst UI experiences out there.

28 million watch sales may suggest that not everyone shares your opinion.

This type of comment is so tiring. I didn’t say other people’s perspective wasn’t valid. I’m just offering mine.

By the way, by your logic $200 laptops/Chromebooks are better than MacBook Pros, since they sell so much better. McDonald’s is actually better than Michelin starred cuisine, too.

Also you’re basically locked into an Apple Watch as the only wearable that can actually do anything so it’s not really a free market of wearables on iOS.

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#43

Post by DrBenCarson »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #16
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has on a few occasions in the past come in after people have spent a lot of time and energy developing things and making a small market, figuring out how it should actually work, making a nice version 1.0 of how it should actually work, making that market explode 100-fold and taking all the money. That smart homes are more trouble than they are worth currently sounds to me like ripe territory for Apple to poach…

Was Johnny Ive really a driver of innovation? Or just trading repairabily for vanity metrics?

You tell me, was the iPhone innovative?

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#44

Post by nytesky »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #3

In one sense this is logical. A HomePod with a screen and an iOS variant. On the other hand, what is this for? What uses do these smart home devices serve? We are a decade plus into the “smart home” era and most of these things are more trouble than they are worth.

We do so much on phones now and sometimes it’s easier on a big display.

This sounds like it would be a quick home hub to add stuff to the calendar, check that email about soccer game carpool, buy plane tickets or pay a bill you got in the mail.

Like this but way more functions.

https://www.costco.com/skylight-15%22-smart-touchscreen-cale...

I personally like to not carry my phone around the house, and in kitchen having recipes displayed or an interactive reader would be great. We have a Google home but it doesn’t have a proper browser or search other than voice so it’s very kludgy. Recipes on phone are annoying because the screen timeout.

I would recommend a laser display keyboard or maybe onscreen for somewhat more sophisticated actions, but maybe an LLM will suffice

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#45

Post by colechristensen »

codeaether wrote: post #42

It's such a pity to see how much respect Apple has lost due to its lack of real technological ambition. Just a few years ago, Apple was admired for pushing boundaries—now it feels like history is repeating itself.

I think it's more there's nothing left to be done.

There have been little refinements but airliners look the same as they did in the 60s and the basics of all of it are just the same as they were 60 years ago as now.

Operating systems are the same.

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#46

Post by kcplate »

jayd16 wrote: post #33
joshmarinacci wrote: post #3

In one sense this is logical. A HomePod with a screen and an iOS variant. On the other hand, what is this for? What uses do these smart home devices serve? We are a decade plus into the “smart home” era and most of these things are more trouble than they are worth.

Multi-user support is possibly something deserving of a larger rewrite to iOS. It's been a pretty big assumption in all of the devices outside Macos, right?

On the iPad and iOS front, I feel like the real driver of support for multiuser is families. I just can’t see it being a big desirable ask beyond families with kids because the devices form factors. If I am Apple, I am wondering if that subset market is big enough to add the feature. I love my wife and she loves me, but a single shared phone or iPad among us would create more problems than a coke bottle amid the bush people of the Kalahari.

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#47

Post by ranger_danger »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #12
ranger_danger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 million watch sales may suggest that not everyone shares your opinion.

Apple Watch lets you switch between the unusable hexagonal grid and a list. I’ve been an Apple Watch user for over ten years and switched from the grid to the list as soon as that was an option. Also, thanks for introducing me to the term argumentum ad populum. I didn’t know what that was called before.

If you're trying to passive-aggressively imply my comment is a logical fallacy, I would counter with another one and say I think that's a false equivalence, as there is scientific data that shows quality of a product (which I am defining in this context as not thinking it is "one of the worst UI experiences") can in fact influence sales.

I also qualified my comment with "may suggest" so as to not imply it as some kind of unfounded fact.

https://www.enrichment.iocspublisher.org/index.php/enrichmen...

https://www.firstinsight.com/blog/price-vs-quality-what-matt...

Maybe your definition of quality differs from mine or these people though.

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#48

Post by underlipton »

ajkjk wrote: post #32
joshmarinacci wrote: post #3

In one sense this is logical. A HomePod with a screen and an iOS variant. On the other hand, what is this for? What uses do these smart home devices serve? We are a decade plus into the “smart home” era and most of these things are more trouble than they are worth.

I feel like Apple has historical been good at taking things that are "good ideas but everyone is doing the execution so badly they haven't really caught on" into the "everyone uses it all the time" category (eg ipod, iphone, airpods). Certainly smart home stuff is kinda in the first category right now, like you said. Perhaps they believe they can give them the same treatment? It seems kinda plausible to me: there's n…

We tried the, "One company makes everything in your house," thing in the mid-century, and it didn't work. A home is an ecosystem - not the corpo buzzword that actually means "walled garden", but an actual ecosystem, with a diverse set of (often competing) "organisms" coexisting. An average room needs seating, storage, entertainment, and its contents are highly influenced by culture, lifestyle, memory, family, desire/ambition. Smart home products have become better over time as manufacturers realized that any given room is going to be a chaotic mix of other manufacturers' products, including those of competitors, and that the only way for the entire ecosystem to succeed is for all of the parts to play as nice together with each other as possible.

I feel like this is one of Apple's weaknesses. The AVP was a massive indication that they're not ready for that kind of paradigm, because even within their own product, apps (organisms) that should have been able to exist as complete digital "objects" and interact with others were instead siloed off experiences that took over the whole device.

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#49

Post by exe34 »

jayd16 wrote: post #33
joshmarinacci wrote: post #3

In one sense this is logical. A HomePod with a screen and an iOS variant. On the other hand, what is this for? What uses do these smart home devices serve? We are a decade plus into the “smart home” era and most of these things are more trouble than they are worth.

Multi-user support is possibly something deserving of a larger rewrite to iOS. It's been a pretty big assumption in all of the devices outside Macos, right?

OS X was a multi user UNIX wasn't it?

Re: Apple rumored to be working on a smart home operating system version

#50

Post by mgh2 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #16
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has on a few occasions in the past come in after people have spent a lot of time and energy developing things and making a small market, figuring out how it should actually work, making a nice version 1.0 of how it should actually work, making that market explode 100-fold and taking all the money. That smart homes are more trouble than they are worth currently sounds to me like ripe territory for Apple to poach…

Was Johnny Ive really a driver of innovation? Or just trading repairabily for vanity metrics?

He was a great designer with low business acumen (without Jobs).

His realm at Apple began crumbling when he executed a flawed strategy for the Apple watch launch as a fashion item, instead of a technology product geared toward health (Fitbit was 1st). It costed Apple 25M, and seemed like buying advertising from influencers (similar to 23andme launch).

I usually value this youtuber's insights, but he has recently been reaching the wrong conclusions: https://youtu.be/JUG1PlqAUJk?si=_Y87UQGdhIo92a7r&t=469

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