Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
Alex’s idea of trying to build out their own set of smart home devices is exactly the problem (and a little ridiculous to suggest if you’ve watched the history of the companies that build this stuff). Literally drilling one company’s products into your wall is a decision that needs to last decades. I’m not replacing my doorbell just because Apple wants to use a new protocol. Same goes for my light switches, thermostat and garage door opener. These are not quick and easy upgrades. If I gotta break out the tool belt, it needs to be worth my Sunday.
He’s right that home automation is a total disaster, but wrong in thinking that closed systems are the solution. Apple’s not going to spend the next 30 years making low-margin light switches and other devices people don’t want to upgrade more than once in a mortgage. Make an open standard and commit to it. That’s the only way forward for this market.
And yes, insert relevant XKCD about competing standards.
Perhaps if someone made an anti-Google like statement saying “We will support this doorbell for a MINIMUM of 10 years” (and here’s our plan how that will be done.) Would that reassure you more?
Our current doorbell is 54 years old, so 10 years isn’t really, erm, ringing my bell…
Remodeling is not a cheap proposition for any home, so no one is going to be willing to accept intentional obsolesce in something that’s as expensive as a home. And I don’t want to think what that could do to home value if people figure out built-in smart home products could stop working because the vendor doesn’t want to support them anymore.
Tangentially related to Apple Pay
Great episode! I was locked out of my apartment for 2 hours today and enjoyed the show from my fire escape. I like Andy’s Casio watch. I saw it on Instagram. I couldn’t find it available in Canada.
As a kid I always wore TimeX IronMan (not the superhero) watches IRONMAN Classic 30 Full-Size Resin Strap Watch - T5E901 | Timex CA
Apple said the Vision Pro was aimed at a small number of buyers. Wasn’t there a figure of 500,000 units bandied about?
If the sales are disappointing, that means they sold less than 250-300,000 units?
We’ll talk about this next week, but the latest from the Information is that Apple is stopping production of the Vision Pro altogether. Work on the cheaper VP continues, but for how long?
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-sharply-scales-back-production-of-vision-pro?rc=lykptg [paywall]
I agree in that open standards (and local control) are necessary. I disagree that the smart home is a total disaster.
I have all sorts of smart devices. I use both Apple Home and Home Assistant. There are a couple devices that I wish were available outside their app, but it’s fine. I think of Matter as a growing OS that’s still in infancy. And once Matter updates, the platform and the devices have to update, so that takes time and care from those down the chain. Hopefully over time, Matter can get feature parity on all of its devices (meaning you can do everything in your home app that you can in the device app).
Light Switches, T-stat, doorbells, I did not find difficult to replace since the existing wiring was there. I wouldn’t change a full garage door motor myself, but there are many 3rd party modular devices that are easy to velcro to the garage door.