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Now Apple is turning its eyes to smart homes, after Samsung and Google made incredible progress in this field. On Monday, during the annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple rolled out its new iOS 8 and related upgrades. It also presented the world with the Apple HomeKit program, a platform which intends to make your house more connected and, of course, smarter.
Some prior predictions speculated that Apple wouldn’t show its own range of smart products, cameras, locks, refrigerators and so on, but an integrated and cohesive program to support third – party smart home devices manufacturers. It was a developers’ conference, after all, and the company wanted to give everybody some hope to future collaborations. According to journalists covering these rumors,
If Apple chooses to share something about its smart home, it will probably revolve more around ideas and hope and not around ready software.
These predictions turned to be correct, as the Apple HomeKit Program represents the company’s promise to support smart home products coming from other vendors.
According to Apple Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, quoted by the tech journalists present to the event, in the nearest future, people
will be able to set up “scenes” to control home devices, and security will be high enough to ensure that “only your device can unlock your house.”
So far, we have pretty interesting smart home devices that work together with Apple products, such as iPhones and iPads, but the promise Apple made revolves around the plan of turning the Apple HomeKit Program into a holy grail for developers and manufacturers, as they will be able to create easier and faster new smart home devices that work together as one. Coherence and integration seem to be the major key – points and goals of this program and Apple knows how to sell ideas to enthusiastic developers.
Tech specialists listed a few third – party smart home developers and products that might benefit from the Apple HomeKit. Among these, we have the already famous Dropcam cameras, home and safety alarms provided by the new Canary and Simplisafe, the connected smart bulbs from Phillips, smart door locks and a myriad of home appliances, many of them signed by Apple’s most fierce competitor, Samsung. They could all fit with the Apple HomeKit Program and they are not the only ones.
For sure, we will find out more about this project and we will keep you informed in the days to come.
