Apple held its launch event for the new iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, but while the tech giant talked at length about its new hardware, it said nothing about its HomeKit smart home platform. It’s been quiet since its developer conference, and the only recent news regarding the potentially huge home automation service has come from iDevices, which confirmed that it would soon be releasing a Bluetooth connected cooking thermostat on the HomeKit platform.
iDevices’ CEO, Chris Allen, used a company press release to show us that he is rather enthusiastic about the potential for his thermostat in the grand scheme of things. He also said that the iDevices app would be updated for use in HomeKit, and it is worth noting that the release schedule coincides with the Apple press event in October. This is perhaps the only bit of HomeKit news that we can glean from the September 9th event, so it seems that we will have to keep waiting until then.
Allen said “we are confident that this product, which will be unveiled to the public in late October, or early November, will play a pivotal part in changing the home automation market as we see it today. There will be no need for a complex system, or even a separate hub. The new iDevices product is the only thing you’ll need to transform your home into a ‘smart home.'”
While we are certainly not as enthusiastic about cooking thermostats as Allen, we are rather optimistic about the potential for integrating Siri’s voice control functionality with the HomeKit devices. Apple’s own description of HomeKit reads “HomeKit is a framework in iOS 8 for communicating with and controlling connected accessories in a user’s home. You can enable users to discover HomeKit accessories in their home and configure them, or you can create actions to control those devices. Users can group actions together and trigger them using Siri.”
That last point is rather understated in our opinion. Being away from home, at the office for instance, and being able to effectively tell your house that you want the oven’s pre-heating routine to coincide with your arrival home is a small feature that adds a lot of value to the Apple platform. The device manufacturers benefit from attaching their products to what is currently considered a premium experience, and the users are able to interface with their homes via spoken commands and questions.
Here at RIoT, we think that voice communication is the ideal means of controlling the smart home. It’s a hands-free method that also has inherent security and authorization functionality, and with only a few microphones in the home, or in this case using an iPhone or Apple Watch, the kids in the home can turn their bedroom lights on but are denied access to the heating controls and the garage opener.
But while Apple keeps us waiting on the HomeKit announcement, we can report that the Apple Watch has been released, after years of dogged rumors. While the much-rumored sapphire displays failed to materialize on the new iPhone, they have made an appearance on the new Apple Watches. Billed by Apple as a “comprehensive” device, the watch will go on sale early next year, with prices beginning at $349 – around a hundred dollars more expensive than rival smartwatches. The rectangular watches must be paired with an iPhone 5 or later to work, and come in 38mm or 42mm screen sizes.
There will be three versions of the new Apple Watch, the regular Watch, the Apple Watch Sport and the Apple Watch Edition. While the Sport’s name gives a pretty solid clue as to its functionality, the Edition is the premium version – featuring an 18-karat gold enclosure in either a yellow or rose shade.
Common to all is the crown – used in regular watches to change the position of the hands – which will let users cycle through menus without obscuring the screen. This gives the new Watches a method of navigating that doesn’t seem to be limited by the small screen size.
We have to give it to Apple; this is a navigation function so obvious and common-sense that it is painful to notice in hindsight that other smartwatches haven’t already made use of it. Perhaps there’s an unknown patent lurking in the shadows that dissuaded others from using the design.
The touchscreen can differentiate between taps and presses, which Apple says will improve the options for app developers, and the underside of the watch features a heart rate monitor which will integrate with the paired iPhone’s Health app. The UI will zoom in on elements to make touch navigation easier, with taps and presses differentiating from zooms and selections.
The mid-range Sport forgoes the sapphire glass screen in favor of strengthened Ion-X glass (which is a little confusing seeing as sapphire is supposed to be super-tough), and instead of the metal or leather bands of the other two versions it uses a “durable” fluoroelastomer band, which looks and acts like rubber. This is the most colorful of the range.
All three watches use a charging system very similar to the magnetic coupling seen on Apple’s laptops. Wireless charging has failed to surface in the watch, to the disappointment of many who hoped that Apple’s choice of wireless-power standard might unify the disparate competing protocols.
WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 are the only connectivity options for the watches, but given their dependency on the iPhone to work, this isn’t particularly surprising. There’s still the potential for the watches to act as presence sensors in the smart home, but we’ll have to wait and see how the watches integrate with Apple’s HomeKit ambitions. Apple did at least mention an app for controlling a Honeywell thermostat, as well as a tracking app for those BMW owners who manage to lose their car in a parking lot.
Two apps called Activity and Workout will relay their sensor data to the HealthKit app on the phone. This data is gathered by the heartbeat monitor, accelerometer and GPS coordinates, to give a readout of the user’s activity. Activity is the more passive application, which acts in the background, while Workout is used by the user to track more intense physical exercise.
This data could prove valuable to the healthcare industry, which is worth around $3 trillion in the US, and Apple has partnerships with a few US institutions to see what it can do with the HealthKit data. No solid news has arisen from these partnerships, but it does show that the company is seeing how it can monetize the data that its iDevices can gather from their users.
The watch also serves as a quick-messaging platform, where users can draw shapes, uses emoji symbols and even send brief audio messages using the Walkie-Talkie function – all methods that avoid asking users to input text on a small screen. The software looks much more functional than Android Wear, but we’re still not sold on the idea that a watch can sufficiently boost usability that’s worth the $250-350 price tag.
An SDK, called WatchKit, will be available to developers soon. The watches themselves will make it to market in early 2015, missing the potentially lucrative holiday season. But it’s still hard to envision a future where smartwatches are commonplace. They are simply too expensive – regardless of the small conveniences they might offer – and won’t take off until they come down in price.