Apple HomeKit Aims to Make Your Home Smarter

[Guest]

Apple's iOS 8 promises to make it easier for developers to integrate their smart home devices with the iPhone and iPad.

Apple HomeKit Aims to Make Your Home Smarter : Read more

 

[spdragoo]

Hmmph.

So far, I'm not seeing anything that would actually help me out:
-- Shutting the garage door: I already do that, either as I'm walking out of the garage (my side) or as soon as I step inside the back door where the spare opener is (my wife's side).
-- Locking the back door: Already do that as soon as I walk into the house, because we don't leave it unlocked (my parents used to have this bad habit of just walking into the house unannounced, even though it's our house & not theirs).
-- Turning down the thermostat: First of all, not sure why that's even an option. I hope they realize that it would only be an energy saver in cold weather (turning the temperature down when the AC is running tends to keep the AC running). Second of all, like the majority of people out there I'm not home during the day, so if I'm going to have the heat turned up (or the AC turned down) it'll be at night, not during the day. And finally, I've found that it's less stressful on the AC/furnace to keep the house set to a constant temperature, rather than having it cycling more often during the day to adjust the temperature.
-- Turning off the lights: we already have the habit of only leaving lights on when we're in the room. The manual light switches are well within easy reach whenever we're moving from 1 room to another, & we don't waste energy by leaving them on. So turning off the light from the bedroom isn't very helpful when I already turned it off well before I even reached the bedroom.

And then, of course, there's the whole "energy saving" thing. I'm sorry, but we're already told about how "wasteful" it is to have all of the devices in our home essentially in a "standby" mode, where it's drawing power so that it can respond to a remote. But now, in addition to that, you'll have to have it hooked up additional power so that the device can wirelessly connect to other devices so that it can be ready to respond to Siri or app-based commands. And this, of course, is completely ignoring the security threat of the situation. I'm sorry, but no WiFi- or Intenret-based service will be 100% effective...which means that if you have single-app control of devices in your home (including the door locks, lights, security system, etc.), that means that a hacker can have access to it as well.

 

[erick81]

Will I have to buy a more powerful house every software update?

 

[erick81]

Will I have to buy a more powerful house every software update?

 

[Rhinofart]

LOL @ erick81. I like that.