11 ms·

Apple explores home robotics as potential 'next big thing'

69 points by apike 2y ago

huytersd 2y ago
I wish Apple went back to being more secretive and closed off like before. I don’t want to hear about anything unless they have a completed product.
apike 2y ago
https://archive.is/Yi6p3 https://archive.is/Yi6p3
zachbee 2y ago
"Smart home" has really fallen flat across the board, from smart speakers to the Roomba. It would be great if Apple changed that, but I'm not optimistic. I just don't think people really want smart home devices all that much.
- doubled112 2y ago
  I think the issue is that smart home devices didn't do anything I couldn't already do, but a physical switch is faster than arguing with the computer. Hey Google, can you turn off the baby bedroom light? I'm sorry, I don't know that device.
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    This is why it’s requirement that all “smart” devices in my house can fall back to “dumb” use. Smart switches are the way forward here. They work just the same as existing switches, but I can also control them via automation, voice, or an app. I normally recommend people start their home automation journey with smart bulbs, ideally in their bedroom so they can speak their lights off and on while in bed, but long-term, switches are the best.
  - racl101 2y ago
    > I think the issue is that smart home devices didn't do anything I couldn't already do, but a physical switch is faster than arguing with the computer. Exactly this. I've had so many "aw fuck it I'll do it myself" moments with tech. I no longer use any smart home devices. It was a passing fad as far as my experience goes. Seemed cool, didn't really change my life.
  - ado__dev 2y ago
    I used to have a dozen or so Google Home devices for all sort of automation, but have mostly given up on it. I feel like Google is going to kill these any day now, the Google Assistant on them has been getting dumber and dumber. Where in the past, it would do its best to provide an answer, now for 99% of queries it just says "idk how to help with that." So the only thing these devices are used for these days in my household are setting alarms and turning lights on/off. In the next home, probably won't even bother.
    - KoolKat23 2y ago
      Probably A/B testing but mine answers most questions these days, I swear even those it couldn't answer in the past. It hasn't given me the I don't know answer in a long while. Still mostly used for lights, morning alarms, shop opening hours, asking if my dog can eat my snack and the weather. I know others here saying they can do it themselves but nothing beats asking google to turn off the lights in the house when I've forgotten and I'm cosy in bed already.
    - rubatuga 2y ago
      I've totally disabled my entire smart home ecosystem. Philips hue thankfully has a hubless fallback (with the Zigbee remote). I just hate the unreliable nature of wireless devices, and having to manage an account for every accessory (Philips hue account, wemo account, iCloud account, etc.). Matter/thread which was supposed to be a smart home revolution turned out to be a crapshoot requiring proprietary Thread border routers.
  - crabbone 2y ago
    There's also profiteering and security issues. Thermostat that wants to connect to "cloud" and needs to know my street address, my name etc.? -- Not happening. Companies selling "smart" devices instantly overcomplicated relatively simple appliances making them beyond DIY repair level, and, on top of it, wanted to sell service of supporting these overly complicated devices. It's just very hard to see the benefit, when all that eg. the thermostat does is turning the boiler on and off, saving a few seconds to someone who'd otherwise have to do it manually. There also aren't that many areas where automation could possibly accomplish much. I think, the main directions are: * Optimize energy usage (the same thermostat thing). It doesn't really amount to much. It could be useful in industrial setting, but for households it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well. * Cleaning. Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible without a significant change in approach. Similarly for surfaces that are above the floor (desk, shelves etc.) Cleaning the exterior could be its own an quite an interesting thing though. Stuff like removing dead foliage from the roof for instance, or repainting the walls. * Cooking. This could be potentially interesting, but will probably require a complete redesign of the tools used for cooking today to be reasonably priced. Eg. there would be no need for knives with handles for humans, because it's easier to make a slicing / chopping machine that has a very different configuration. Stoves and ovens would need to have some way of moving pots in and out automatically. Also, they'd probably have to be connected to the fridge and other kitchen storage... Which, in the end, means that it's not going to be an incremental upgrade. It will be also probably difficult to make the automated system coexist with human cooks...
    - kccqzy 2y ago
      > it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well You should see how wasteful typical American households are when they use a dumb thermometer. The best energy-saving feature is simply at-home vs away-from-home detection. I don't want my HVAC at home to run when I'm away at work or worse away at vacation, unless the temperature is really extreme. This easily saves me hundreds of dollars for a month-long vacation. > Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible Roomba the company hasn't innovated in years. Switch to a different brand like Roborocks. Also don't choose models with a camera for privacy and performance reasons: lidar is much better.
- slongfield 2y ago
  I have a Roomba, it works pretty well for doing 'maintenance level' vacuuming--keeping the level of cat hair to a manageable level, etc. For the most part, robot vacuums have succeeded in becoming boring, which is what I really want in an appliance.
- ilovetux 2y ago
  I want a smart home, but I also do not want to send my data to anyone else and I don't really have the time to cobble something together. If apple can refrain from sending the data to icloud or any other servers, then I would be very interested.
  - nostromo 2y ago
    That exists today. Apple's Homekit is the only real solution for a smart home that doesn't send everything to/from the cloud.
    - rubatuga 2y ago
      I'm trying to update to v2 of HomeKit in the Home app but it won't let me unless I login to iCloud. From what I recall v2 of HomeKit relies on a hub spoke model, as opposed to v1 which relies more on broadcast packets.
- TheFuzzball 2y ago
  Sonos would like a word.
  - pquki4 2y ago
    I'm not holding my breath after seeing their stock price.
- leetharris 2y ago
  I think it's that most actually useful smart home stuff was very quickly saturated. It is great to be able to adjust my lights easily. It is great to turn my TV off in the other room. It is great to have a robot vacuum. But a smart coffee maker? A smart clock? A smart dishwasher? All this garbage ended up being gimmicks and it ran out of steam so quickly. I hope the things that are useful continue to get support as the big players abandon smart home expansion.
- ramenmeal 2y ago
  From what I hear, it's a nightmare to get Siri to know what light you want to turn on. Unfortunately it seems like apple is trailing the pack in the smart home area.
  - racl101 2y ago
    In terms of mental development Siri, is at best, a 5 year kid. It has never been useful to me.
- modoc 2y ago
  I really do want smart home devices! My biggest issue so far has been stability and interoperability issues between each vendor and system. Those things have gotten better, but are still a headache. Apple is in a pretty good position to solve those pain points (at the cost of buying new devices (Apple brand or Apple Certified maybe?). Or maybe I need to dive deeper into HomeAssistant...
  - SparkyMcUnicorn 2y ago
    > Or maybe I need to dive deeper into HomeAssistant... This is the answer. HomeAssistant is fantastic and has unified everything of mine into a single platform. Control mostly happens through Google and Apple/Homekit devices (other than hardware switches), and everything works pretty seamlessly.
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  As another commenter alluded to, good Smarthome tech becomes an appliance, which isn’t a desirable high margin business, and bad tech becomes a nuisance which is also not a desirable business. That’s why Google is slowly getting out of it and shifting their focus from Nest. That’s why Apple never did much beyond a few speakers, and it’s why Amazon is right at home in that business (but even they’re getting out of the money-losing voice assistant aspect). Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision. Apple surely has some great tech left over from the car R&D so who knows. Apple is unfortunately not great at a “communal” perspective when making things. I think a big issue no one talks about will be robot storage/garages. It’s already an issue for Roomba and anything bigger will be a no-go for many households. That is probably apples best chance - make it pleasant to look at and a status symbol.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    > Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision. SwitchBot is working on something I haven't seen elsewhere yet: Making robot vacuums double as mops is becoming common, and and a few have modifications to hook into the water/waste lines so you don't have to refill it, but SwitchBot made that as part of its primary design because they got the idea to use the robot to ferry water around other places: it can automatically refill their humidifier and empty their dehumidifier. I could imagine further enhancements for watering plants, or maybe if it's a success a future one that cleans rugs may become feasible.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    > Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming Even vacuuming was pretty hard. Most vacuum robots were a disappointment until maybe 2 or 3 years.
    - vineyardmike 2y ago
      Oh absolutely, it just has the advantage of being a well know and relatively simple machine (the vacuum), that is expected to roll across the floor, and is expected to avoid household objects instead of interacting with them. Almost all other tasks either operate at human-hands level (significantly bigger robot) or need intimate understanding of you and your home (eg picking things up off the floor) or need a ton of dexterity (folding clothes). Or all three.
- chongli 2y ago
  I like smart devices for their automation potential. I use smart plugs to turn on and off lights, coffee makers, grow lights, heating mats. The ability to quickly program a plug to turn on every morning at 10am and turn off again at 10pm is valuable to me. It's even more valuable if you get into hobbies like aquarium keeping where you can automate lights and fish feeders. Yes, you can do all of these things manually, but are you good at keeping a flawless schedule? It may not matter if you forget to turn on the coffee maker but it matters a lot if you forget to feed the fish. And you won't always be available to handle these things every single day, unless you work from home and follow an extremely rigid schedule.
  - stevage 2y ago
    I'm curious about the coffee maker bit. I drink espresso and I can't really imagine a benefit in turning something a device on if someone isn't there to also put coffee in it, pour it etc. How much time does it save you having your coffee maker or before you go to get coffee?
    - chongli 2y ago
      I drink espresso as well. It takes 1/2 hour to warm up the machine after I turn it on. Having it turn on and be ready for me when I want to make a coffee saves 1/2 hour. Plus I have time-of-use billing for electricity so having it turn on early in the morning during off-peak hours saves money! It takes more energy to heat the thing up to operating temperature than it does to maintain that temperature all day.
      - stevage 2y ago
        Ah yes, makes sense. I use a stovetop pot on an induction plate. It heats up super fast.
  - rubatuga 2y ago
    The thing with a fish feeder is that it can be completely analog and still work fine.
- pjerem 2y ago
  I have the feeling that basically all current smart home products are either a disappointment in their limitations or useful but really time consuming. The only smart appliances I got are Philips hue lights which are nice but well, after the initial discovery, I use them as classical light bulbs 99% of the time. I’ve found zero useful automation (not saying they don’t exists) and I can’t see why I would control lighting from my phone (at least not enough to justify spending hundreds into smart bulbs and smart switches). Ultimately, I’m not against smart home but since each home is unique, by definition, those objects are only useful if the user is willing to invest enough time to tailor the configuration to be useful in his own unique house. Oh I thought about ranting about my experience with Sonos speakers which are really nice speakers with great audio quality for the money and size and everything you’d want except the "smart" part you are forced to use with their terrible (and closed) software.
- stevage 2y ago
  I thought I would be into smart home devices, but the companies fucked up by turning them into privacy and security liabilities, with poor interoperability and likelihood of turning into junk when the company goes under.
- Reason077 2y ago
  > ”“Smart home" has really fallen flat across the board,… I just don't think people really want smart home devices all that much.” Or are these devices just so common, unremarkable, and ubiquitous now that you just aren’t noticing them anymore? I can’t think of any of my friends and family who don’t at least have some smart speakers and smart lighting devices in their home. Smart door locks that you can open with your phone, and smart door bells and security cameras that you can monitor remotely are becoming pretty common too.
- layer8 2y ago
  HomeKit and HomePods are such a mess, I don’t think Apple has it in them.
pazimzadeh 2y ago
It would be nice to have a tripod on wheels that can have my iPad follow me around, and possibly respond to voice commands (move up, move down) or possibly integrate with the iPad camera to automatically be at eye level. I've been using this and it's great but has its limitations: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6HBY1Q https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6HBY1Q
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
pquki4 2y ago
I see it as the potential 'Next Apple Car'
purpleblue 2y ago
They should just fix Siri and iTunes. Siri is shockingly useless. If Siri were even a little more useful I would get a Home Pod but it's utterly useless for most things except setting timers and turning on lights.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  Whisper >>>> Siri
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Yeah, in retrospect, it was silly to think the company responsible for Siri was going to succeed in the self-driving car business... or the robot business. They need some actual management talent, evidently.
newhotelowner 2y ago
I want something that cleans my bathroom and toilet. I will buy it for my business and will pay 20-30k/year. Also, something to Clean my dishes (Load in the dishwasher, turn it on, and put it away). Doing my laundry - load, wash and fold. Mow the lawn.
- huytersd 2y ago
  Automated lawn mowing is relatively mature at this point and works well, assuming you have a relatively flat lawn. A one time purchase price of 20k would be acceptable. $20-30k per year is ridiculous. For that price you can hire a person to come and clean your toilet for 5 hours a day, every single day.
  - sgt 2y ago
    So... I have a gardener. He works two days a week doing all kinds of stuff. The mowing itself (and trimming) takes 5% of his time, or even less. Funny how people enjoy automating the part that you easily could do yourself without a massive time impact.
    - bartonfink 2y ago
      That's part of why tech products disappoint. The MO is to reduce a complex problem to a simple base case (our robot can vacuum an entire house provided you have no stairs or furniture), half ass solving the complexities, and market your product as if they don't matter. I'll continue doing stuff myself or paying humans. My time is too valuable to waste on empty promises that tech will save me time.
    - huytersd 2y ago
      It depends. My backyard lawn is about 2 acres in size. It takes me 1.5 hours to manually mow it with a small 21 inch powered push mower. I just let the auto mower do its thing continuously and it charges itself. Costs almost nothing since I sharpen the blades about once a month myself. It’s also nice because the grass is always trimmed. You don’t have to go through the let it get tall and the landscaper mows it down every two weeks cycle.
paxys 2y ago
I know being late to the game and doing the tech "right" in terms of design and usability is kinda Apple's thing, but lately it seems like they have been only picking areas that weren't successful for a reason, like insurmountable technical difficulties or lack of customer interest, and no amount of Apple's design or marketing magic can fix that. See – self driving, AR/VR, smart speakers, folding phones, now home robotics. I know for a fact that they have been hiring a bunch of engineers from Google's Everyday Robots division (which shut down last year), but I really can't see why the same people will be successful under a new corporate overlord.
- petre 2y ago
  Good luck to them. Xiaomi has been already doing it for years at approachable prices. They now also have a car, the Su 7, a project which Apple gave up on. Of course, it possibly comes with th CCP/PLA embedded spyware.
- rain_iwakura 2y ago
  that failure is much more a leadership issue than a talent issue. Google was founded by PhD students and it shows. (I am one.) It's like a giant lab where things get prototyped and innovations are pushed, but where product ends up sidelined by bloated admin (how many levels are there and why does it feel like an MMORPG i.e World of Warcraft) and lack of clear capitalist vision (I'm actually anti-capitalist but even I can admit to this LOL). Honestly, it sounds exactly like a university. I used to think Google was slated to be the king of AI back when I starting out because they had ALL the talent (even OpenAI is its offshoot if you consider early employees and Ilya himself). I feel like it was so lateral that it was a loose federation of small tribes of smart people that live under the same banner, but not a tight organization where each team had its purpose within a giant mechanism. But as the saying goes too many cooks spoil the broth. Apple is WAY different internally. For all its dreariness and corpo atmosphere (not allowed to talk to each other, teams siloed and laser focused on shipping a specific product) they have much clearer vision of what will sell and what not, usual company missteps (AR glasses) notwithstanding.
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  I also can't imagine a home robotics use case that I would get excited over. Can anyone think of anything? I would guess any new product would be more complex, less efficient, and a security risk. It'll be cool and trendy for a few months and then die off. Just like the Alexa and Google speakers that can tell you the weather or adjust your lights...is it REALLY that useful outside of entertaining your nieces and nephews? My guess is that they'll make some revenue from collecting user data and selling it to data brokers or something. Edit: someone below said laundry folding robot. I'd see that as useful.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
d--b 2y ago
There are a bunch of things in a house that are time consuming that would benefit from the help of robots. In fact it’s all the things that rich people can afford to hire someone to do: - cooking - cleaning - taking care of kids You can be sure that a ton of people are working on those.
- testfrequency 2y ago
  Ok. Now you’re just reading the script from the hit Disney channel movie Smart House
- alden5 2y ago
  apple already sells a device for taking care of kids, just get them an ipad and it'll keep them entertained all day long! /s
woah 2y ago
> Near its campus in Cupertino, California, Apple has a secret facility that resembles the inside of a house — a site where it can test future devices and initiatives for the home. Apple has a condo in Cupertino?
- testfrequency 2y ago
  WWDC21
- buescher 2y ago
  UL has, or had, a whole house in Fremont (maybe Milpitas) associated with their Fremont lab location for testing Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/etc interoperability in a "real-world" setting. They're not the only test lab to do something like that, either. It would not surprise me at all if Apple had a similar facility for themselves, especially for internal demos, user testing, and sanity checks.
- 1-6 2y ago
  They even have a small medical facility.
thangalin 2y ago
Barring major technical glitches, installation and configuration of a reliable locally hosted Zigbee-based solution is on the order of two hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s Here's what I used: Raspberry Pi Model 4 B Raspberry Pi CPU Raspberry Pi CPU heatsink (w/self-adhesive) Raspberry Pi manual Raspberry Pi A/C adapter Raspberry Pi case ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway USB ADATA Micro SD card reader USB cable Micro SD card (for operating system and Home Assistant) Ethernet cable (probably not needed because the Pi 4 has onboard WiFi) Thermostats: https://www.sinopetech.com/en/products/thermostat/ https://www.sinopetech.com/en/products/thermostat/ I haven't tried running a local text-to-speech engine backed by an LLM to control Home Assistant (HA). Maybe someone is working on this already? TTS: https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper LLM: https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile/releases https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile/releases LLM: https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-DPO-GGUF/blob/main/nous-hermes-2-mixtral-8x7b-dpo.Q4_K_M.gguf https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-D... HA: https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ It would take some tweaking to get the voice commands working correctly.
prewett 2y ago
Sounds like Apple needs to increase its dividend, this does not sound like a promising use of capital for Apple.
- howerj 2y ago
  I was about to say the same thing, Apple have too much capital and they do not know what to do with it. It would be better to give it back to their investors instead of...this.
mmcconnell1618 2y ago
Japan makes incredible bidet toilets that got some traction during the pandemic. The jokes write themselves but a smart toilet that had health tracking features liked to the rest of the Apple fitness eco-system could be interesting. The security camera, door lock, and thermostat space has room for improvement. The annual subscription model for cameras combined with their privacy gaps opens a space for Apple. My car unlocks when I walk up to it. Shouldn't my house do the same? Kitchen appliances have gone done in quality to the point that they are replaced every few years when the linear motors fail. I don't know if there is enough margin for Apple but knowing what food is cycling through the kitchen would be another interesting health input. 3D printer, laser cutter, replicator machine that manufactures physical goods in your house. Automatic pool/hot tub system that keeps chemical levels balanced and orders supplies as needed. Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home.
- astrange 2y ago
  > Japan makes incredible bidet toilets that got some traction during the pandemic. But Google actually got rid of theirs because they can't be used with recycled water/greywater, since it isn't clean enough. > Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home. Pretty much anything involving urban gardening is a fake hippie pastoralist idea. Centralization and professionalization is good.
notyourav 2y ago
I wish there was a vacuum bot that didn’t need so frequent maintenance.
bandyaboot 2y ago
I’m guessing if they’re successful, the result will be something extremely expensive.
kgwxd 2y ago
facepalm emoji
futureshock 2y ago
This seems like one of the most hideously complex products you could possibly choose. Self driving cars were already out of reach for Apple and their team abandoned the effort. How do they think they are going to navigate and clean people’s homes!?
ENGNR 2y ago
For me the "transformative" aspect of personal robotics is... maintenance Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do? I think it's because paying ~$500/year to get it running again when it breaks feels like a waste to almost any home owner. The same with other random innovations, like a car stacker to push your car into the garage roof when not in use so you can use the garage (the hydraulics would break), fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation. So homes end up with the absolute minimum number of things that could break. Calling out trades for the few things people must have requires smart people who are physically able, that have their ticket in a protected industry (in many countries). But a robot could have the same knowledge and physicality - at a fixed yearly cost. If that were to happen, homes would transform as all sorts of things that require very occasional maintenance would start to appear. If something breaks even a very weak robot could diagnose it, find the parts online, have them delivered and probably install them.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Izkata 2y ago
  > fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation. Um, what? AC and sprinklers? Those are common in homes.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  It's also just laziness. Even in homes with very few things to do maintenance on, things still go unmaintained.
- r00fus 2y ago
  > Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do? This is easy to answer: I don't want a door that opens by itself (except in my dreams) because it's potentially dangerous, might open when I don't want (and let my cat out) and it's likely an energy sieve. The juice isn't worth the squeeze - even not counting maintenance.
xen2xen1 2y ago
They Gonna have a division names U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men?

69 points by apike 2y ago

I wish Apple went back to being more secretive and closed off like before. I don’t want to hear about anything unless they have a completed product.

apike 2y ago

https://archive.is/Yi6p3 https://archive.is/Yi6p3

zachbee 2y ago

"Smart home" has really fallen flat across the board, from smart speakers to the Roomba. It would be great if Apple changed that, but I'm not optimistic. I just don't think people really want smart home devices all that much.

doubled112 2y ago
I think the issue is that smart home devices didn't do anything I couldn't already do, but a physical switch is faster than arguing with the computer. Hey Google, can you turn off the baby bedroom light? I'm sorry, I don't know that device.
- joshstrange 2y ago
  This is why it’s requirement that all “smart” devices in my house can fall back to “dumb” use. Smart switches are the way forward here. They work just the same as existing switches, but I can also control them via automation, voice, or an app. I normally recommend people start their home automation journey with smart bulbs, ideally in their bedroom so they can speak their lights off and on while in bed, but long-term, switches are the best.
- racl101 2y ago
  > I think the issue is that smart home devices didn't do anything I couldn't already do, but a physical switch is faster than arguing with the computer. Exactly this. I've had so many "aw fuck it I'll do it myself" moments with tech. I no longer use any smart home devices. It was a passing fad as far as my experience goes. Seemed cool, didn't really change my life.
- ado__dev 2y ago
  I used to have a dozen or so Google Home devices for all sort of automation, but have mostly given up on it. I feel like Google is going to kill these any day now, the Google Assistant on them has been getting dumber and dumber. Where in the past, it would do its best to provide an answer, now for 99% of queries it just says "idk how to help with that." So the only thing these devices are used for these days in my household are setting alarms and turning lights on/off. In the next home, probably won't even bother.
  - KoolKat23 2y ago
    Probably A/B testing but mine answers most questions these days, I swear even those it couldn't answer in the past. It hasn't given me the I don't know answer in a long while. Still mostly used for lights, morning alarms, shop opening hours, asking if my dog can eat my snack and the weather. I know others here saying they can do it themselves but nothing beats asking google to turn off the lights in the house when I've forgotten and I'm cosy in bed already.
  - rubatuga 2y ago
    I've totally disabled my entire smart home ecosystem. Philips hue thankfully has a hubless fallback (with the Zigbee remote). I just hate the unreliable nature of wireless devices, and having to manage an account for every accessory (Philips hue account, wemo account, iCloud account, etc.). Matter/thread which was supposed to be a smart home revolution turned out to be a crapshoot requiring proprietary Thread border routers.
- crabbone 2y ago
  There's also profiteering and security issues. Thermostat that wants to connect to "cloud" and needs to know my street address, my name etc.? -- Not happening. Companies selling "smart" devices instantly overcomplicated relatively simple appliances making them beyond DIY repair level, and, on top of it, wanted to sell service of supporting these overly complicated devices. It's just very hard to see the benefit, when all that eg. the thermostat does is turning the boiler on and off, saving a few seconds to someone who'd otherwise have to do it manually. There also aren't that many areas where automation could possibly accomplish much. I think, the main directions are: * Optimize energy usage (the same thermostat thing). It doesn't really amount to much. It could be useful in industrial setting, but for households it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well. * Cleaning. Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible without a significant change in approach. Similarly for surfaces that are above the floor (desk, shelves etc.) Cleaning the exterior could be its own an quite an interesting thing though. Stuff like removing dead foliage from the roof for instance, or repainting the walls. * Cooking. This could be potentially interesting, but will probably require a complete redesign of the tools used for cooking today to be reasonably priced. Eg. there would be no need for knives with handles for humans, because it's easier to make a slicing / chopping machine that has a very different configuration. Stoves and ovens would need to have some way of moving pots in and out automatically. Also, they'd probably have to be connected to the fridge and other kitchen storage... Which, in the end, means that it's not going to be an incremental upgrade. It will be also probably difficult to make the automated system coexist with human cooks...
  - kccqzy 2y ago
    > it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well You should see how wasteful typical American households are when they use a dumb thermometer. The best energy-saving feature is simply at-home vs away-from-home detection. I don't want my HVAC at home to run when I'm away at work or worse away at vacation, unless the temperature is really extreme. This easily saves me hundreds of dollars for a month-long vacation. > Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible Roomba the company hasn't innovated in years. Switch to a different brand like Roborocks. Also don't choose models with a camera for privacy and performance reasons: lidar is much better.
slongfield 2y ago
I have a Roomba, it works pretty well for doing 'maintenance level' vacuuming--keeping the level of cat hair to a manageable level, etc. For the most part, robot vacuums have succeeded in becoming boring, which is what I really want in an appliance.
ilovetux 2y ago
I want a smart home, but I also do not want to send my data to anyone else and I don't really have the time to cobble something together. If apple can refrain from sending the data to icloud or any other servers, then I would be very interested.
- nostromo 2y ago
  That exists today. Apple's Homekit is the only real solution for a smart home that doesn't send everything to/from the cloud.
  - rubatuga 2y ago
    I'm trying to update to v2 of HomeKit in the Home app but it won't let me unless I login to iCloud. From what I recall v2 of HomeKit relies on a hub spoke model, as opposed to v1 which relies more on broadcast packets.
TheFuzzball 2y ago
Sonos would like a word.
- pquki4 2y ago
  I'm not holding my breath after seeing their stock price.
leetharris 2y ago
I think it's that most actually useful smart home stuff was very quickly saturated. It is great to be able to adjust my lights easily. It is great to turn my TV off in the other room. It is great to have a robot vacuum. But a smart coffee maker? A smart clock? A smart dishwasher? All this garbage ended up being gimmicks and it ran out of steam so quickly. I hope the things that are useful continue to get support as the big players abandon smart home expansion.
ramenmeal 2y ago
From what I hear, it's a nightmare to get Siri to know what light you want to turn on. Unfortunately it seems like apple is trailing the pack in the smart home area.
- racl101 2y ago
  In terms of mental development Siri, is at best, a 5 year kid. It has never been useful to me.
modoc 2y ago
I really do want smart home devices! My biggest issue so far has been stability and interoperability issues between each vendor and system. Those things have gotten better, but are still a headache. Apple is in a pretty good position to solve those pain points (at the cost of buying new devices (Apple brand or Apple Certified maybe?). Or maybe I need to dive deeper into HomeAssistant...
- SparkyMcUnicorn 2y ago
  > Or maybe I need to dive deeper into HomeAssistant... This is the answer. HomeAssistant is fantastic and has unified everything of mine into a single platform. Control mostly happens through Google and Apple/Homekit devices (other than hardware switches), and everything works pretty seamlessly.
vineyardmike 2y ago
As another commenter alluded to, good Smarthome tech becomes an appliance, which isn’t a desirable high margin business, and bad tech becomes a nuisance which is also not a desirable business. That’s why Google is slowly getting out of it and shifting their focus from Nest. That’s why Apple never did much beyond a few speakers, and it’s why Amazon is right at home in that business (but even they’re getting out of the money-losing voice assistant aspect). Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision. Apple surely has some great tech left over from the car R&D so who knows. Apple is unfortunately not great at a “communal” perspective when making things. I think a big issue no one talks about will be robot storage/garages. It’s already an issue for Roomba and anything bigger will be a no-go for many households. That is probably apples best chance - make it pleasant to look at and a status symbol.
- Izkata 2y ago
  > Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision. SwitchBot is working on something I haven't seen elsewhere yet: Making robot vacuums double as mops is becoming common, and and a few have modifications to hook into the water/waste lines so you don't have to refill it, but SwitchBot made that as part of its primary design because they got the idea to use the robot to ferry water around other places: it can automatically refill their humidifier and empty their dehumidifier. I could imagine further enhancements for watering plants, or maybe if it's a success a future one that cleans rugs may become feasible.
- pjerem 2y ago
  > Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming Even vacuuming was pretty hard. Most vacuum robots were a disappointment until maybe 2 or 3 years.
  - vineyardmike 2y ago
    Oh absolutely, it just has the advantage of being a well know and relatively simple machine (the vacuum), that is expected to roll across the floor, and is expected to avoid household objects instead of interacting with them. Almost all other tasks either operate at human-hands level (significantly bigger robot) or need intimate understanding of you and your home (eg picking things up off the floor) or need a ton of dexterity (folding clothes). Or all three.
chongli 2y ago
I like smart devices for their automation potential. I use smart plugs to turn on and off lights, coffee makers, grow lights, heating mats. The ability to quickly program a plug to turn on every morning at 10am and turn off again at 10pm is valuable to me. It's even more valuable if you get into hobbies like aquarium keeping where you can automate lights and fish feeders. Yes, you can do all of these things manually, but are you good at keeping a flawless schedule? It may not matter if you forget to turn on the coffee maker but it matters a lot if you forget to feed the fish. And you won't always be available to handle these things every single day, unless you work from home and follow an extremely rigid schedule.
- stevage 2y ago
  I'm curious about the coffee maker bit. I drink espresso and I can't really imagine a benefit in turning something a device on if someone isn't there to also put coffee in it, pour it etc. How much time does it save you having your coffee maker or before you go to get coffee?
  - chongli 2y ago
    I drink espresso as well. It takes 1/2 hour to warm up the machine after I turn it on. Having it turn on and be ready for me when I want to make a coffee saves 1/2 hour. Plus I have time-of-use billing for electricity so having it turn on early in the morning during off-peak hours saves money! It takes more energy to heat the thing up to operating temperature than it does to maintain that temperature all day.
    - stevage 2y ago
      Ah yes, makes sense. I use a stovetop pot on an induction plate. It heats up super fast.
- rubatuga 2y ago
  The thing with a fish feeder is that it can be completely analog and still work fine.
pjerem 2y ago
I have the feeling that basically all current smart home products are either a disappointment in their limitations or useful but really time consuming. The only smart appliances I got are Philips hue lights which are nice but well, after the initial discovery, I use them as classical light bulbs 99% of the time. I’ve found zero useful automation (not saying they don’t exists) and I can’t see why I would control lighting from my phone (at least not enough to justify spending hundreds into smart bulbs and smart switches). Ultimately, I’m not against smart home but since each home is unique, by definition, those objects are only useful if the user is willing to invest enough time to tailor the configuration to be useful in his own unique house. Oh I thought about ranting about my experience with Sonos speakers which are really nice speakers with great audio quality for the money and size and everything you’d want except the "smart" part you are forced to use with their terrible (and closed) software.
stevage 2y ago
I thought I would be into smart home devices, but the companies fucked up by turning them into privacy and security liabilities, with poor interoperability and likelihood of turning into junk when the company goes under.
Reason077 2y ago
> ”“Smart home" has really fallen flat across the board,… I just don't think people really want smart home devices all that much.” Or are these devices just so common, unremarkable, and ubiquitous now that you just aren’t noticing them anymore? I can’t think of any of my friends and family who don’t at least have some smart speakers and smart lighting devices in their home. Smart door locks that you can open with your phone, and smart door bells and security cameras that you can monitor remotely are becoming pretty common too.
layer8 2y ago
HomeKit and HomePods are such a mess, I don’t think Apple has it in them.

pazimzadeh 2y ago

It would be nice to have a tripod on wheels that can have my iPad follow me around, and possibly respond to voice commands (move up, move down) or possibly integrate with the iPad camera to automatically be at eye level. I've been using this and it's great but has its limitations: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6HBY1Q https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6HBY1Q

oldpersonintx 2y ago

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pquki4 2y ago

I see it as the potential 'Next Apple Car'

purpleblue 2y ago

They should just fix Siri and iTunes. Siri is shockingly useless. If Siri were even a little more useful I would get a Home Pod but it's utterly useless for most things except setting timers and turning on lights.

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
Whisper >>>> Siri
CamperBob2 2y ago
Yeah, in retrospect, it was silly to think the company responsible for Siri was going to succeed in the self-driving car business... or the robot business. They need some actual management talent, evidently.

newhotelowner 2y ago

I want something that cleans my bathroom and toilet. I will buy it for my business and will pay 20-30k/year. Also, something to Clean my dishes (Load in the dishwasher, turn it on, and put it away). Doing my laundry - load, wash and fold. Mow the lawn.

huytersd 2y ago
Automated lawn mowing is relatively mature at this point and works well, assuming you have a relatively flat lawn. A one time purchase price of 20k would be acceptable. $20-30k per year is ridiculous. For that price you can hire a person to come and clean your toilet for 5 hours a day, every single day.
- sgt 2y ago
  So... I have a gardener. He works two days a week doing all kinds of stuff. The mowing itself (and trimming) takes 5% of his time, or even less. Funny how people enjoy automating the part that you easily could do yourself without a massive time impact.
  - bartonfink 2y ago
    That's part of why tech products disappoint. The MO is to reduce a complex problem to a simple base case (our robot can vacuum an entire house provided you have no stairs or furniture), half ass solving the complexities, and market your product as if they don't matter. I'll continue doing stuff myself or paying humans. My time is too valuable to waste on empty promises that tech will save me time.
  - huytersd 2y ago
    It depends. My backyard lawn is about 2 acres in size. It takes me 1.5 hours to manually mow it with a small 21 inch powered push mower. I just let the auto mower do its thing continuously and it charges itself. Costs almost nothing since I sharpen the blades about once a month myself. It’s also nice because the grass is always trimmed. You don’t have to go through the let it get tall and the landscaper mows it down every two weeks cycle.

paxys 2y ago

I know being late to the game and doing the tech "right" in terms of design and usability is kinda Apple's thing, but lately it seems like they have been only picking areas that weren't successful for a reason, like insurmountable technical difficulties or lack of customer interest, and no amount of Apple's design or marketing magic can fix that. See – self driving, AR/VR, smart speakers, folding phones, now home robotics. I know for a fact that they have been hiring a bunch of engineers from Google's Everyday Robots division (which shut down last year), but I really can't see why the same people will be successful under a new corporate overlord.

petre 2y ago
Good luck to them. Xiaomi has been already doing it for years at approachable prices. They now also have a car, the Su 7, a project which Apple gave up on. Of course, it possibly comes with th CCP/PLA embedded spyware.
rain_iwakura 2y ago
that failure is much more a leadership issue than a talent issue. Google was founded by PhD students and it shows. (I am one.) It's like a giant lab where things get prototyped and innovations are pushed, but where product ends up sidelined by bloated admin (how many levels are there and why does it feel like an MMORPG i.e World of Warcraft) and lack of clear capitalist vision (I'm actually anti-capitalist but even I can admit to this LOL). Honestly, it sounds exactly like a university. I used to think Google was slated to be the king of AI back when I starting out because they had ALL the talent (even OpenAI is its offshoot if you consider early employees and Ilya himself). I feel like it was so lateral that it was a loose federation of small tribes of smart people that live under the same banner, but not a tight organization where each team had its purpose within a giant mechanism. But as the saying goes too many cooks spoil the broth. Apple is WAY different internally. For all its dreariness and corpo atmosphere (not allowed to talk to each other, teams siloed and laser focused on shipping a specific product) they have much clearer vision of what will sell and what not, usual company missteps (AR glasses) notwithstanding.
7thaccount 2y ago
I also can't imagine a home robotics use case that I would get excited over. Can anyone think of anything? I would guess any new product would be more complex, less efficient, and a security risk. It'll be cool and trendy for a few months and then die off. Just like the Alexa and Google speakers that can tell you the weather or adjust your lights...is it REALLY that useful outside of entertaining your nieces and nephews? My guess is that they'll make some revenue from collecting user data and selling it to data brokers or something. Edit: someone below said laundry folding robot. I'd see that as useful.

deleted 2y ago

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d--b 2y ago

There are a bunch of things in a house that are time consuming that would benefit from the help of robots. In fact it’s all the things that rich people can afford to hire someone to do: - cooking - cleaning - taking care of kids You can be sure that a ton of people are working on those.

testfrequency 2y ago
Ok. Now you’re just reading the script from the hit Disney channel movie Smart House
alden5 2y ago
apple already sells a device for taking care of kids, just get them an ipad and it'll keep them entertained all day long! /s

woah 2y ago

> Near its campus in Cupertino, California, Apple has a secret facility that resembles the inside of a house — a site where it can test future devices and initiatives for the home. Apple has a condo in Cupertino?

testfrequency 2y ago
WWDC21
buescher 2y ago
UL has, or had, a whole house in Fremont (maybe Milpitas) associated with their Fremont lab location for testing Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/etc interoperability in a "real-world" setting. They're not the only test lab to do something like that, either. It would not surprise me at all if Apple had a similar facility for themselves, especially for internal demos, user testing, and sanity checks.
1-6 2y ago
They even have a small medical facility.

thangalin 2y ago

Barring major technical glitches, installation and configuration of a reliable locally hosted Zigbee-based solution is on the order of two hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s Here's what I used: Raspberry Pi Model 4 B Raspberry Pi CPU Raspberry Pi CPU heatsink (w/self-adhesive) Raspberry Pi manual Raspberry Pi A/C adapter Raspberry Pi case ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway USB ADATA Micro SD card reader USB cable Micro SD card (for operating system and Home Assistant) Ethernet cable (probably not needed because the Pi 4 has onboard WiFi) Thermostats: https://www.sinopetech.com/en/products/thermostat/ https://www.sinopetech.com/en/products/thermostat/ I haven't tried running a local text-to-speech engine backed by an LLM to control Home Assistant (HA). Maybe someone is working on this already? TTS: https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper LLM: https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile/releases https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile/releases LLM: https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-DPO-GGUF/blob/main/nous-hermes-2-mixtral-8x7b-dpo.Q4_K_M.gguf https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-D... HA: https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/ It would take some tweaking to get the voice commands working correctly.

prewett 2y ago

Sounds like Apple needs to increase its dividend, this does not sound like a promising use of capital for Apple.

howerj 2y ago
I was about to say the same thing, Apple have too much capital and they do not know what to do with it. It would be better to give it back to their investors instead of...this.

mmcconnell1618 2y ago

Japan makes incredible bidet toilets that got some traction during the pandemic. The jokes write themselves but a smart toilet that had health tracking features liked to the rest of the Apple fitness eco-system could be interesting. The security camera, door lock, and thermostat space has room for improvement. The annual subscription model for cameras combined with their privacy gaps opens a space for Apple. My car unlocks when I walk up to it. Shouldn't my house do the same? Kitchen appliances have gone done in quality to the point that they are replaced every few years when the linear motors fail. I don't know if there is enough margin for Apple but knowing what food is cycling through the kitchen would be another interesting health input. 3D printer, laser cutter, replicator machine that manufactures physical goods in your house. Automatic pool/hot tub system that keeps chemical levels balanced and orders supplies as needed. Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home.

astrange 2y ago
> Japan makes incredible bidet toilets that got some traction during the pandemic. But Google actually got rid of theirs because they can't be used with recycled water/greywater, since it isn't clean enough. > Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home. Pretty much anything involving urban gardening is a fake hippie pastoralist idea. Centralization and professionalization is good.

notyourav 2y ago

I wish there was a vacuum bot that didn’t need so frequent maintenance.

bandyaboot 2y ago

I’m guessing if they’re successful, the result will be something extremely expensive.

kgwxd 2y ago

facepalm emoji

futureshock 2y ago

This seems like one of the most hideously complex products you could possibly choose. Self driving cars were already out of reach for Apple and their team abandoned the effort. How do they think they are going to navigate and clean people’s homes!?

ENGNR 2y ago

For me the "transformative" aspect of personal robotics is... maintenance Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do? I think it's because paying ~$500/year to get it running again when it breaks feels like a waste to almost any home owner. The same with other random innovations, like a car stacker to push your car into the garage roof when not in use so you can use the garage (the hydraulics would break), fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation. So homes end up with the absolute minimum number of things that could break. Calling out trades for the few things people must have requires smart people who are physically able, that have their ticket in a protected industry (in many countries). But a robot could have the same knowledge and physicality - at a fixed yearly cost. If that were to happen, homes would transform as all sorts of things that require very occasional maintenance would start to appear. If something breaks even a very weak robot could diagnose it, find the parts online, have them delivered and probably install them.

deleted 2y ago
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Izkata 2y ago
> fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation. Um, what? AC and sprinklers? Those are common in homes.
bamboozled 2y ago
It's also just laziness. Even in homes with very few things to do maintenance on, things still go unmaintained.
r00fus 2y ago
> Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do? This is easy to answer: I don't want a door that opens by itself (except in my dreams) because it's potentially dangerous, might open when I don't want (and let my cat out) and it's likely an energy sieve. The juice isn't worth the squeeze - even not counting maintenance.

xen2xen1 2y ago

They Gonna have a division names U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men?