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What a snobby thing to say. There are some excellent products out there that aren't compatible with HomeKit. Nest products are at the top of my list.

Some (perhaps many on this forum) hate Nest products solely because they're owned by Google. If they'd bother to look past that hate and at the actual products, they'd quickly realize that Tony Fadell (the 'father' of the iPod) and his team created some pretty amazing products with the Nest line. If Apple had bought Nest, many of the Nest haters out there would likely think they're one of the best products Apple had in its lineup.

Anecdotally, most of the people I know who interact with devices in their home via HomeKit/Siri aren't very satisfied with the experience. Siri is the primary reason for their dissatisfaction. Siri is the only voice control option if you're going all-in on HomeKit; and Siri is, in my estimation, the weakest link in the chain by far.

HVAC professionals think Nest sucks, so there's that. A 'learning' thermostat is inferior to one that uses geofencing to tell the instant the last person leaves the home to turn on Away mode and the instant someone arrives back home to go to Home or Sleep mode, ie ecobee. Nest is even copying one of ecobees best features.

http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?2023171-That-s-the-20th-NEST-Thermostat-I-ve-had-to-pull-out
 
Hilariously ignorant statement and makes it painfully obvious you know nothing about network security.

All you need is one vulnerable device on your network to make your day hell. Once a hacker is inside your network through a vulnerable device, they have intercept print jobs, file transfers, files in your unsecured shared folders, file backup systems, whatever you got, it's available.

The mission is to keep people out. And not just on the outside of your door.
The fallacy of course is this; are you so arrogant that you believe people want to do this to you:

"intercept print jobs, file transfers, files in your unsecured shared folders, file backup systems"

I mean they can; but the truth is no-one cares about you enough to do it.

You're not special.
 
Siri works I have google and it just doesn’t work the same, lag or not working at all . Google does work for a lot of things but if you want your stuff to just work Siri and apple home works 100 percent and is very Secure

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Hello Tim.
 
Most of the negativity is due to the relatively small amount of devices that it supports. HomeKit is IMO the cleanest and best platform to use, you just need to make sure the products you purchase support it.
I owned a Nest initially and switched to Ecobee to have much greater flexibility in programming and it has had external temp sensors for years. Plus it has greater security and doesn’t have Google using it as another “data collector” on you.
 
The fallacy of course is this; are you so arrogant that you believe people want to do this to you:

"intercept print jobs, file transfers, files in your unsecured shared folders, file backup systems"

I mean they can; but the truth is no-one cares about you enough to do it.

You're not special.
You are likely right. 99.999% of people will never need to worry about the security aspect of it, but if I am buying into this stuff why not go with the company who is well known to value personal privacy the most? You never know what your neighbors do in their free time...
 
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Have you ever used HomeKit? It really isn't a sad state of affairs.

I didn't say HomeKit was a sad state of affairs, I meant the way Apple has managed and marketed HomeKit is a sad state of affairs.

If you look at a good number of smart home appliances, they don't even mention HomeKit, even if they are compatible. They mention Google Home, Alexa, and IFTTT compatibility. HomeKit documentation is often relegated to the FAQ's section.

If HomeKit has no brand recognition it will die. People fail to recognize what a huge liability Siri is to the future of Apple. If it continues to be terrible for much longer, Apple itself will go the way of Microsoft. Too late to catch up in any emerging tech, surviving off legacy reliance to grind through the fiscal quarters.
 
There's no way you can call apple anything but a failure I'm this space, it's too bad too because they had a head start, Amazon and Google are just going to own this market. It seems apple always starts out with strong ideas and goes no where with them, look at their push to education for similar results
 
People only make this statement when Apple aren't #1 for 'numbers'... funny that.



Home kit also turns lights on and off.. if Siri understands what your saying....

I don't need Apple to curate devices / decide whats best. I'd rather read up and find the product best for myself. Using Google Home, there are more devices available. More choice, which is better.

First accurate thing you have said “I don't need Apple“.;)
 
You are likely right. 99.999% of people will never need to worry about the security aspect of it, but if I am buying into this stuff why not go with the company who is well known to value personal privacy the most? You never know what your neighbors do in their free time...
Please watch the film "Casino"

"Why take a chance"

(the argument is in your favour)
 
I didn't say HomeKit was a sad state of affairs, I meant the way Apple has managed and marketed HomeKit is a sad state of affairs.

If you look at a good number of smart home appliances, they don't even mention HomeKit, even if they are compatible. They mention Google Home, Alexa, and IFTTT compatibility. HomeKit documentation is often relegated to the FAQ's section.

If HomeKit has no brand recognition it will die. People fail to recognize what a huge liability Siri is to the future of Apple. If it continues to be terrible for much longer, Apple itself will go the way of Microsoft. Too late to catch up in any emerging tech, surviving off legacy reliance to grind through the fiscal quarters.
The biggest hurdle with HomeKit imo was the hardware authentication that was required. Now that they have changed that to a software component I think we will see HomeKit supported by more and more. Just recently the Insignia smart plugs gained HomeKit support.

Siri does have a ways to go in order to catch up to the other assistants, but it terms of using Siri with HomeKit I think it performs just as well if not better. Granted I have only used HomeKit and Alexa, have not used Google at this point. Might pick up one of their minis to see how that performs from a smart home perspective.
 
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Personally, I'd never trade my Google Home Minis for a HomePod. $49 is a lot easier to swallow than $349. If Siri had all of Google's smarts and then some, maybe I could talk myself into spending seven times more for the additional smarts and the vastly superior sound quality that HomePod provides over the tiny Google Home Mini. However, as both products sit today, there's not a chance in hell that HomePod is worth seven times more what a Google Home Mini costs -- at least as far as my household is concerned.
Oh I get that and I wish there was a mini home pod for people who aren't looking for sound systems. But in terms of what I can already integrate with a home pod vs the google mini, Apple still wins out regardless of how many products 'work' with google.
 
The fallacy of course is this; are you so arrogant that you believe people want to do this to you:

"intercept print jobs, file transfers, files in your unsecured shared folders, file backup systems"

I mean they can; but the truth is no-one cares about you enough to do it.

You're not special.

No you are the ignorant/arrogant one . At best your insecure internal devices are being used as bots for DDoS attacks against sites by “for hire” hackers. At worst they have been compromised by hackers with automated script engines that can hop over to your computer(s) and collect personal info mainly for identity theft. I handle network security for a living and see this weekly. There’s plenty of good information on the Internet covering this in detail. Take the time to educate yourself.
 
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This is like Cable TV. You may pay for 500 channels, but you only really watch only a handful. Google may have hooked up with 5000 services, but realistically if most people use a handful in the 200 that Apple supports, its covered.
Bad analogy. It's true that people generally watch only a handful of channels out of hundreds. But the right analogy here would be:
* you have 500 channels
* Apple picked 30 out of those 500 channels
* now you can choose out of 30 channels
What if your favorite channels were not selected by Apple? You are screwed.
 
No you are the ignorant/arrogant one . At best your insecure internal devices are being used as bots for DDoS attacks against sites by “for hire” hackers. At worst they have been compromised by hackers with automated script engines that can hop over to your computer(s) and collect personal info mainly for identity theft. I handle network security for a living and see this weekly. There’s plenty of good information on the Internet covering this in detail. Take the time to educate yourself.
Oh my God, you're right just because something is theoretically possible it means I've automatically fallen fowl to said hack and now I'm a bad internet citizen because I've unwittingly become part of the problem and I'm spoiling it for everyone else who are absolutely paranoid and can't see why everyone-one else isn't.
 
First accurate thing you have said “I don't need Apple“.;)


Correct: I don't need Apple for home smart devices, since HomeKit falls short; there are better alternatives.

However, I have many Apple products I like and need.

Please don't speak for me.
 
Google is right in this. Apple needs to figure out how to turn this losing war before Homekit becomes a ghost town.

For now I’m doing it with Homekit+Alexa, which alleviates the compatibility issues, at the expense of more devices and decentralized control.

Also, as someone said, it is ridiculous that Homekit doesn’t work on the Mac.
 
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I've got about a dozen Hue lights, and a light switch connected to Hue. I use Siri on my watch to turn off the lights at night, works every time. In my car, I'll use siri to send texts, or shuffle play certain playlists, again working very well. I'd never use it for searching I don't think, but for Home control, and playlist playback, no complaints.

That would be interesting if an oven timer or temperature could be controlled with Homekit, but more than happy to do that stuff by hand in the kitchen.
 
Reality Distortion Field: ENGAGE

"Oh no relax people everything's fine so what if Android has become the world's mobile OS and so what if Apple doesn't offer a sufficiently broad portfolio of home automation / IOT products meaning that we can now safely assume that Apple is relinquishing the IOT space to competitors and will become a minority player selling a few high-dollar gizmos to American yuppies while billions of people adopt Android.

At least the stock price is currently high and let me tell you the balance sheet is AMAZING! (Right now.)

So who cares about Apple failing to be competitive (or spend the needed R&D money) in one field after another that they enter?

We get DIVIDENDS which I'm sure will continue forever!"

/Reality Distortion Field: DISENGAGE
 
The fallacy of course is this; are you so arrogant that you believe people want to do this to you:

"intercept print jobs, file transfers, files in your unsecured shared folders, file backup systems"

I mean they can; but the truth is no-one cares about you enough to do it.

You're not special.

You're not special, and the ability to automate attacks to these vulnerable devices, and highly likely, vulnerable machines behind them, means you don't have to be special to get critical data stolen.
 
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So i have alexa, homekit and google at home, but I only have google through an nvidia shield so i dont really use it all that much for my smart home.
Alexa SUCKS for home automation. Half the time it doesnt work it just says DONE and nothing is done. When i ask it to switch all kitchen lights off it tells me there is no name for that, well ya there isn't but i have 2 smart switches in the kitchen and siri does it just fine and turns them all off.
While alexa could be smarter in other things I dont need it to answer stuff for me I just need it to do what I ask it and it has failed me so many times that I dont even bother using it anymore and strictly use homekit.
 
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Apples high security demands seem to be hurting them. But also, it seems too often Apple does a good job with new innovative features but does not advance them much. While Google introduces stuff that is trash then relentlessly works to make them better and passes up Apple. Almost tortoise and hare like.
 
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