4 ms·

Couldn't agree with your points more. Found this one particularly salient: 5. A lot of big names are in this game pro-actively, in case it actually turns out t

Couldn't agree with your points more. Found this one particularly salient: 5. A lot of big names are in this game pro-actively, in case it actually turns out to be of some value. This is why you see big companies that should know better demoing embarrassing things (like LG's drunken robot). They need to be sure they have a foot in the door in case this actually takes off, but aren't willing to invest the funds needed to provide a serious, integrated system. Many big companies are hedging their bets and playing catch up, which is downright dangerous when you're selling devices that scale up the threat vector for life-critical devices such as refrigerators, security cameras, door locks, thermostats, and cars. I think Apple has the best shot at winning the connected home game due to their ownership of the iPhone ecosystem (used as a remote for the smarthome), tight product control, and their new marketing story of we are security - and they actually do implement the most rigorous key management and cryptography standards in the industry. I'm looking forward to their next hardware reveal - I think a Siri-integrated router (ala Amazon Echo) would complement their portfolio really well at the moment.

Ixiaus 11y ago
Negatory on Apple winning. I think Amazon is much more likely. They're dominating the connected home right now with the Echo; as a developer, integrating the Echo with Plum's Lightpad is extremely easy, I can't do the same thing with Siri.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  > They're dominating the connected home right now with the Echo Have any numbers to back up this assertion as opposed to sales figures of iPhones, iPads, AppleTVs, Macbooks, AirPorts, etc. - all integral fixtures in the smarthome ecosystem? > integrating the Echo with Plum's Lightpad is extremely easy Amazon does not have tight enough control over its smart home ecosystem. While it may be easy for you to integrate your thoroughly designed and tested product, it's also easy for shady vendor x to integrate their cheap, disaster of a product, and Amazon will not expend the resources to vet it, but in the end the user will blame Amazon when that product catches fire because they branded it as OK to work with Amazon products. Apple doesn't want an outside dev ecosystem building up around its products before its in a position to tightly vet and control what engineers create to enhance the ecosystem. Third party applications/devices are an integral part of the user experience, and by extension, the customer's feeling towards Apple as a brand.
  - Ixiaus 11y ago
    > Have any numbers to back up this assertion... Nope, just anecdata (based on being a startup in the IoT space). > Amazon does not have tight enough control over its smart home ecosystem... I don't know that for sure, TBH, though I think the more open and universal platform will win. Currently the Echo is that, it's not an app you have to launch from your phone (Revolv), you just talk to it, and it does things for you. Echo's superbowl ad also catapulted it, we have emails from people left and right asking for Echo integration (not Apple TV integration). Also, why would the customer blame Amazon if their bulbs cause a fire? The customer clearly bought the bulbs, then hooked Echo up to the bulb (in the case of Philips Hue), I'm not saying Echo is infallible but I do think your criticism is unfair.
notalaser 11y ago
I also expect Apple to be the winner here, but for a very different reason -- they just seem to be the only ones involved in this market that also have the ginormous financial and management services required to pull this off. The hip startups who sell web-enable smart watches or whatever is trendy nowadays won't come up with the first smart fridge that's actually useful, not because they lack vision or understanding but because they won't be able to build a fridge that doesn't suck in the first place. The SF get-something-through-the-door-quickly development model is fine for stuff that you patch in production, but it can barely produce a working thermostat, a device of barely sufficient complexity to be considered as an engineering diploma project. I've seen at least five projects ran this way. All of them were utter failures. In some cases, by the time the umpteenth prototype had revealed the correct direction, the market had long moved on or the amount of money and time spent had long outweighed even optimistic sales provisions. In other cases, the first thing that lasted through a fifteen-minute demo without crashing was christened an MVP, but it later turned out to be not quite what was needed because no one bothered doing specifications and studies, so the devil in the details made it a nightmare to use. By the time this was realised, it was too late to change anything anymore and an almost-but-not-quite product got released. Developing connected appliances is a complicated and expensive business and they require a great deal of interdisciplinary expertise that's very hard to find. It may not seem so, but a dishwasher or a refrigerator worth their money are a lot harder to design and build than the Pebble. (I should stop eating chips over my keyboard. Half of my past tenses are wrong because I have bread crumbs uner my D key. Crap).

Ixiaus 11y ago

Negatory on Apple winning. I think Amazon is much more likely. They're dominating the connected home right now with the Echo; as a developer, integrating the Echo with Plum's Lightpad is extremely easy, I can't do the same thing with Siri.

roymurdock 11y ago
> They're dominating the connected home right now with the Echo Have any numbers to back up this assertion as opposed to sales figures of iPhones, iPads, AppleTVs, Macbooks, AirPorts, etc. - all integral fixtures in the smarthome ecosystem? > integrating the Echo with Plum's Lightpad is extremely easy Amazon does not have tight enough control over its smart home ecosystem. While it may be easy for you to integrate your thoroughly designed and tested product, it's also easy for shady vendor x to integrate their cheap, disaster of a product, and Amazon will not expend the resources to vet it, but in the end the user will blame Amazon when that product catches fire because they branded it as OK to work with Amazon products. Apple doesn't want an outside dev ecosystem building up around its products before its in a position to tightly vet and control what engineers create to enhance the ecosystem. Third party applications/devices are an integral part of the user experience, and by extension, the customer's feeling towards Apple as a brand.
- Ixiaus 11y ago
  > Have any numbers to back up this assertion... Nope, just anecdata (based on being a startup in the IoT space). > Amazon does not have tight enough control over its smart home ecosystem... I don't know that for sure, TBH, though I think the more open and universal platform will win. Currently the Echo is that, it's not an app you have to launch from your phone (Revolv), you just talk to it, and it does things for you. Echo's superbowl ad also catapulted it, we have emails from people left and right asking for Echo integration (not Apple TV integration). Also, why would the customer blame Amazon if their bulbs cause a fire? The customer clearly bought the bulbs, then hooked Echo up to the bulb (in the case of Philips Hue), I'm not saying Echo is infallible but I do think your criticism is unfair.

notalaser 11y ago

I also expect Apple to be the winner here, but for a very different reason -- they just seem to be the only ones involved in this market that also have the ginormous financial and management services required to pull this off. The hip startups who sell web-enable smart watches or whatever is trendy nowadays won't come up with the first smart fridge that's actually useful, not because they lack vision or understanding but because they won't be able to build a fridge that doesn't suck in the first place. The SF get-something-through-the-door-quickly development model is fine for stuff that you patch in production, but it can barely produce a working thermostat, a device of barely sufficient complexity to be considered as an engineering diploma project. I've seen at least five projects ran this way. All of them were utter failures. In some cases, by the time the umpteenth prototype had revealed the correct direction, the market had long moved on or the amount of money and time spent had long outweighed even optimistic sales provisions. In other cases, the first thing that lasted through a fifteen-minute demo without crashing was christened an MVP, but it later turned out to be not quite what was needed because no one bothered doing specifications and studies, so the devil in the details made it a nightmare to use. By the time this was realised, it was too late to change anything anymore and an almost-but-not-quite product got released. Developing connected appliances is a complicated and expensive business and they require a great deal of interdisciplinary expertise that's very hard to find. It may not seem so, but a dishwasher or a refrigerator worth their money are a lot harder to design and build than the Pebble. (I should stop eating chips over my keyboard. Half of my past tenses are wrong because I have bread crumbs uner my D key. Crap).