Apple to Attend CES 2020 in Rare Official Appearance

[Small White Car]

I’m honesty shocked to see there are people here that are happy with HomeKit.

We use it at work and I never know if my phone will allow me to control the lights on any particular day. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes not. I’d say it has an 80% success rate, which is horrible enough that I’ve scrapped my plans of installing any of this stuff in my own house.

Thank goodness for Hue’s own app, which seems to work pretty much all of the time.

 

[mpainesyd]

With a bit of tinkering apple could own this space

They could start by creating a Homekit section in their Discussions/Communities space. Users who have Homekit issues are posting questions all over the place.
As it happens I have had reasonable success with Homekit. I have a mix of smart device brands and appreciate the common interface for them all.
I wish that Automations was more powerful - I still can't do things that I achieved with a Sinclair Spectrum computer (~BASIC) and DAC more than 30 years ago.

 

[Takeo]

Love HomeKit but to each their own. We're using Home Assistant to bridge in some accessories that don't work natively with HomeKit but it hasn't been the easiest to set up and when that bridge fails, half of the house doesn't work until its fixed. Its awesome at 3am when your keen smart vents (installed in the ceiling) start flashing that they've lost connection. Its like waking up to an apocalyptic hospital scene. I think its the mac mini running HA in a docker installing OSX updates at that time and rebooting that messes everything up. I need to see if I can change the time for auto-updates to be installed, or disable that option all together.

I run homebridge.js on a Raspberry Pi for the same reason. Pretty solid.
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I don’t understand all the frustration with Homekit or siri...is it perfect absolutely not...my whole house was set up with Alexa, I’m mean everything! I finally switched to homekit exclusively over the summer, all I own are apple products, iphone, apple watch, apple tv...having Alexa was just not needed when my ecosystem was completely apple. Have set up 4 homepods around the house, cut down from 20 echo devices (dots, shows, speakers, they were everywhere, I give them for free to friends now lol)...my WHOLE house is now controlled by Homekit and Siri, garage doors, all lights, all tv‘s, thermostat, arlos....all products that support homekit work rock solid, apple shortcuts are amazing, products that don’t support homekit I connect with hoobs...that is all you need, if you don’t know how to set homekit up and do the homework then blame yourself...geez! Siri understands my whole family, has hiccups just like Alexa...I can truly say homekit is fine and truly destroys Alexa! try setting up a really cool automation on Alexa, lol please...u can do one on homekit in 2 minutes, if u know what you are doing...what I wish, was that Apple still had wifi routers, I truly believe Homekit would be perfect with a router built by apple for homekit, cheaper homepods, and Apple version of a Alexa show...that is all Homekit needs...people you need to research homekit, figure out what really works with it, and be amazed...don’t fall for the ring traps, where they promise homekit and never deliver, but hey I was still able to integrate ring security with hoobs, and if you don’t know about hoobs and homebridge, that explains why you don’t know anything about homekit...enough ranting...and yes all my blinds and drapes are all controlled by homekit too...rant over

I run homebridge.js on a Raspberry Pi and it’s cool but honestly, the fact that I even have to do that (which no normal non-techie person would do in a million years) says a lot about the “success” level of HomeKit. The number of supported devices is pretty sad compared to Alexa.

 

[klunernet]

I just want them to fix the constant bugs I have with HomeKit.

Devices randomly “not responding” even though I can control them fine in their official apps. Controlling certain devices in the Home app actually affecting completely separate devices in a different room. The “status” of lights being the opposite of what they actually are (shows ON when it’s actually OFF and vice versa).

in all cases I encountered it, it was the devices hub’ no longer advertising their presence via bonjour. Particularly my Ikea tradfri was notorious for this, and still requires a monthly power cycle.

 

[gk4]

Please point me to an industry leading Apple smart home product.

For me personally, it would be the AppleTV itself. I don’t know whether that would be considered a smart home product, but considering it’s the central hub and controller of my entire smart home I think it qualifies.



For me its innovative in that it does what the other ecosystems do, but locally with privacy as a core aspect.