Episode 21 - Metaio acquired, WWDC predictions, AppleTV, and HomeKit

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 19 of our show where we discuss the latest news about Apple iPhone iPad mac and more we're recording on Thursday May 28th 2015 today we'll be talking about Matteo Prime sense uh there was an acquisition by Apple WWDC predictions Apple TV and homekit we have with us this week Apple Insider senior editor El Presidente Neil Hughes hey how's it going guys Shane Cole leader I thought I wanted I was going to be El Presidente well exercise your leadership dude fine hola Shane Cole L President E hello yeah that presidential coup is working out well for you and I'm your host Victor marks so let's start off Shane you were talking uh earlier you'd written this story about prime sense and a recent acquisition of a company called Mato yeah so Apple bought a company called Mato who is uh right at this moment one of the most well-known or maybe the most well-known augmented reality companies in the world from the software side their technology Powers every important AR application right now Ikea's virtual catalog that lets you hold your iPad up and see how your new couch will look in your living room room uh Ferrari's AR sales app as though the Ferraris themselves aren't cool enough Audi's owner manual which is an AR owners manual for one of their higher end cars those are all AO things and apple bought them for what is presumably a large amount of money we don't know exactly how much yet um but given that it's probably one of the most public Acquisitions from Apple in a long time um aside from beats because Thea is a well-known firm uh it's surely quite a bit um fits in pretty well with another odd acquisition they made a few years ago in Prime sense which is was and is rarely semiconductor company that made basically Hardware that lets computers see in three dimensions uh it lets computers see like we see and uh they're most wellknown most publicly known for making the first generation of connect sensors and anybody who's used an augmented reality app knows that the better your data is the data about space around you the better augment the reality works it's no good if you you know look through your phone at a street and your phone doesn't know how far down the street the business is trying to show you is uh early versions of yelp's AR stuff were kind of like that it didn't work very well uh so I think these two in the future we're going to see these two Acquisitions be really complimentary to each other so you know when Apple acquires a company in in the past they've acquired for for technology you know the um they acquired a keyboard company that became a the the the touch sensitive technology the uh the touch panel in the iPhone they've acquired the mapping company that became part of Apple Maps the other kind of Acquisitions that that they do and other companies will do is is for the talent and then they'll take the talent and apply them to some other technology um so my question is is do we think that this is going to come together as some sort of augmented realityy product or is this a talent acquisition where these people are really talented let's put them all together in the room and see what they can do to our existing stuff I think when you put you want to go I was yeah I was just GNA say I think when you put the two together if you took Prime sense in and of itself and the Matteo in and of itself I think you could say that they're both Aqua hires but if you put the two together I think it's fairly clear that they're trying to do something with some sort of advanced depth perceiving vision um whether that's actually a consumer facing product is a whole other question entirely though but I think it is and a lot of this ties into mapping I think as well you could see pretty easily where stuff like augmented reality would be helpful uh you're trying to find a storefront or something like that um and you know overlays and those sort of things uh there's been products out there that have done that kind of thing before but if we're integrated into a mapping solution I think that that would be pretty helpful and it it kind of reminds me a little bit too of of a patent that apple had years ago it was kind of a a a crowdsourced uh street view concept where basically people would take pictures and opt into a service where you know you could take pictures of storefronts and stuff like that and it would integrate into a mapping system so I think you could see some of that stuff start to tie into mapping as well the prime sense is interesting because that could be consumer facing but if you look at their technology that they've had in the past with uh Microsoft Xbox Connect and all that it really didn't work for fine controls you really had to do like broad motions for it to work which is why connect was kind of like a fad that never really stuck around so whatever technology Prime sense had Apple was definitely going to have to improve on on it um if they were going to do a consumer facing product because a lot of that stuff that they had put out in the past uh in their Partnerships with other companies was not really not the kind of stuff that I could see apple doing well there are many other applications for threedimensional um sensing other than things like connect U you mentioned maps and that's a really important one but where I see that going it's not so much street view although there's almost certainly some sort of 3D street view coming that's a virtual certainty but uh something more to do with interior maps and my question about the about bridging that Gap with augmented reality is are people really going to hold their phones up in front of them if I mean I guess if it works right so that's I think something that's held wide use of AR down is who wants to stand out in the middle of the street and hold their phone up in front of them turning around in a circle trying to find the thing they're looking for right you look like a tool right it's the same problem that we have with Google Glass and and you wouldn't wear cardboard or Oculus in the daily use well I think people look really stupid when they go out and public with an iPad and take hold it up and take pictures and yet plenty of people do that so I mean oh does it look weird that we're holding a phone up in front of our face well we're already doing that all day anyhow so I I don't know it does I think if it works if it's responsive and quick it it'll be it'll catch on you know I'm thinking of like what was the name of that one that was out years ago it was called like layer or something and it would show you points of interest yeah it I haven't used it in years so maybe it's awesome now but when it when I first tried out oh were they well it was laggy it didn't work it was it was kind of like a Neato Concept in you were just like oh look at what they did but uh it didn't really have a practical application I feel like if something was responsive and valuable especially for like indoor maps and stuff like that like if you've ever tried to navigate a big mall or something trying to get around those places is a nightmare and so Apple has been uh really um acquiring a number of indoor GPS and and location positioning companies for indoor type of stuff if you think about it like if you're getting directions on the road well you follow streets you know turn here the streets have names if you're inside at a mall or something there's no streets no names or anything like that so getting around can be kind of difficult on foot especially in some of these big shopping centers so I could see where location plus augmented reality uh kind of stuff would uh definitely have a benefit cool so we we're talking about what we're thinking this could become and I want to get on to WDC because as we know that the worldwide developer conference is coming up and and we don't really know what to expect we we have a little bit of an idea about what not to expect now but what are your thoughts about this upcoming event well I uh wrote a uh article yesterday kind of giving a summary of what we were expecting at WWDC and as luck would have it uh about an hour after I published that is uh which was this long thing on a new Apple TV and how we're expecting a new Apple TV uh that is when uh New York Times and recode came out with stories saying oh actually won't be an Apple TV next week so I look like a big fat idiot after running that story great timing on my part um so we will not be seeing an Apple TV next week but uh it's already a sure thing I mean Apple's already said basically that we're going to see iOS 9 we're going to see uh OS 10.11 um and presumably we're going to see a new subscription music service and then beyond that um probably not a lot developer Focus conference so it's going to be all about the software and it's going to be all about the next gen operating systems Shane what do you have to add I have exactly nothing to add um Everything Neil said is what I would have said at the same time well and we'll also see we'll also see the watch we'll see the watch uh more integration with iPhone and maybe Mac and iPad more seamless kind of you're just going to see that uh that's kind of Apple's direction for the last few years right more more integration between the their different platforms so it's kind of bluring the lines between OS 10 and iOS and now watch OS and they're going to have a preview of software that's going to allow apps to run natively on the watch so you don't get that stupid loading screen every time you try to launch a third party app which will be nice um so what do I want to see uh I want to see what I just said more integration between the platforms we've actually been running a series at Apple Insider on um uh things that Apple might int have introduced on the Apple watch that it would bring to to other platforms and devices which is something that the company's done for years right introduce new technology and then gradually bring it elsewhere and one of the things that I wrote about that I really want to see is uh notifications being uh more intelligent as they come into your devices so right now if you're wearing an Apple Watch and your phone is locked you get the notification on your watch but not on your phone but if I get an iMessage uh it'll ring on my Mac first but then it'll ring like two seconds later on my iPhone and you know it's one of those things where I feel like the devices now all talk to each other and they know you know which one is my primary screen um if I'm on my Mac then I probably shouldn't be getting notifications on my wrist and on my phone and all that I should probably just be getting them on my Mac and then when I walk away from my Mac I could get them on my wrist and then when my phone's unlocked I could get them on my phone you know that kind of stuff uh that's something I'd really like to see in the next gen versions of iOS and Os 10 just kind of uh smarter notifications if I cancel out notifications on my Mac they shouldn't be on my phone anymore uh vice versa that kind of stuff uh there's just little little nagging little things that still exist between the platforms where they don't communicate quite as well as they should well said well said you know I've been thinking about things well for one thing I would really like for system preferences sound to work well that's something that we've noticed here um what about you know you didn't mention in the uh the rumor about an apple television service you mentioned the Radio Service the music service but what about a subscription video service well all the reports have said that there's not going to be anything until this fall maybe later just because they're trying to deal with these idiot television companies and content owners that don't want to change and they're stuck in the rabit ear Dark Ages and you know God forbid Apple come along and do something that uh uh you know might shake things up and get people subscribing and and you know paying money directly to them and rather than to cable providers and stuff like that but no one wants to shake up the status quo so it's a long arduous process of trying to get these companies in line you saw HBO now offers HBO now Showtime announced this week that they're going to have a similar service which is actually going to be a little bit cheaper than HBO it's going to be $12 a month versus 15 for HBO um and that's a step in the right direction but I mean that adds up quick right if I'm subscribing to Hulu and sling TV and Showtime and HBO uh you know for all my over-the toop SL IP TV services I'm paying as much as I was for TV before with a cable provider so you know it's kind of this uh catch22 situation where as all these networks come out uh with their own services and they want to charge a premium for their Network it's it's not going to it's not going to be cost effective for a lot of consumers so there's a lot of uh wrangling that Apple needs to do to get it to a price point where it's going to be palatable for a lot of consumers and so with those negotiations still ongoing there's no expectation that we're going to see a service announced next week um and presumably they wouldn't want to announce such a service without the new Apple TV Hardware anyhow so it seems like because the service can't go because of the contracts and whatever is going on with the hardware we're not going to hear anything about the TV next week okay now it is a developers conference and we've talked about product and things that out of it we haven't really talked about you know what is it what's in it for app developers and one of the things that I've been thinking a little bit about and you can see if you agree or if I'm thinking all wrong is we're we're in the middle of a a sort of transitional State between where Objective C is the original designated preferred path for creating applications for iOS and mac and Swift was announced but Swift was was very early and very gational I'm I'm hoping that at this WWDC Swift becomes more mature that that it's easier to convert between the two that um you know that version control works with swift better especially when you're talking about a historic conversion from an Objective C app and that C++ compatibility comes into Swift well we should see Swift go 1.0 this next week which I think is the rumor anyway and Swift has actually been increasingly popular I mean impressively popular I'm not entirely sure what changes we're going to see it's likely that there going to be not transformational changes but certainly you know um impressive changes to bring the tool chain along because there are still some issues in the tool chain but uh yeah I mean Swift has already even in its early beta stages has already been really impressively adopted yeah and can you think of of any applications that you've seen that are a good example of what a swift app should be I don't know that anybody publicizes exactly what they're doing I mean some people use metal obviously and apple pushes metal in the App Store but as far as Objective C versus Swift I don't know that I've seen anyone any big developers anyway publicize that they're switching over okay well I I know that's sort of um sort of inside baseball but I I like the uh the idea of knowing what's going on with the technology and that that the technology is still advanc I would like to see uh I would like to see the NFC chip on the iPhone 6 and the Apple watch opened up to third party apps uh in a secure way so we could see things like uh location based uh stuff you know within your home uh maybe you know entry to buildings and stuff that have NFC capable readers compatibility maybe with some public transit systems that sort of stuff let's get that going we were just talking about that the other day actually about how that might be done by we I mean mear and I think it's my presumption and I'm probably completely wrong because I'm often stupid but I think that there won't be an NFC API in the way we currently conceive NFC apis I think what you'll actually see is the addition of host card emulation to iOS 9 or iOS 10 depending on when this comes and that will be how Apple does NFC um so explain for our listeners what Host Card means that's what I was about to do um Host Card host card emulation is really basically a way for the NFC transfer to fake what it's sending um in the iPhones case the way NFC is implemented is they've actually taken the secure element and put it in the NFC tool chain with host card emulation with the way of traditionally using payment and this is how Android pay works and Android wallet before it with host card emulation the secure element is off somewhere else um the data is stored you know either in the cloud or in some cases in the SIM card which is why Google had such a problem with Android or with Google Wallet because it needed carriers U carriers approval to use a secure within the SIM card um and then what happens is when you say I want to use my Visa card with this at this particular store the HC kicks in and it tells the NFC hey this is the data descent rather than the data being there already it pulls it from the remote secure element and broadcasts it up and in this way you can actually send essentially anything um anything that can be transf transmitted over NFC and be done with HC you don't need special Hardware or anything else um that's why but the problem the problem with HC and that's what Shane and I were talking about the other day is it requires some sort of a data connection in order for it to work because presumably it's hosted in the cloud or something like that so if you're looking at the Apple watch as something you'd like to be a little more independent of the iPhone um you wouldn't be able to for example uh use hce on the Apple watch if it wasn't paired to a phone so right now you can use the Apple watch to authorize a transaction even if the phone isn't there because it doesn't ire data connection to do that it already has the credit card information stored on the device itself that's why you have to reload your uh credit cards onto the watch to get it on its own secure element on there um so you could do NFC without the phone there and it'll work fine in the current implementation on the watch but if it were hce then you could not uh use like let's say you're going out for a jog and you need to bring your phone or something and then you came back and you wanted to get into a building or something like that if it was using host card emulation to in place of NFC for something like that I'm not super sure about in scenario is or how if and for how long you could cash data within a device itself um right maybe they could have a workaround something I have to imagine that that's that's available because even Google with the their Mantra of well actually it's Facebook's Mantra move fast and break stuff but it could be equally over to Google um even with that in mind I don't think there's a scenario in which they Envision releasing something as fundamental as payments that requires pervasive data I just I can't see them doing that agreed agreed so we're all in agreement um we we talked a little bit about there being no new Apple TV hardware and I kind of want to use the Apple TV existing Hardware to segue into talking about homekit and to do that is is you know the existing Apple TV that third generation unit we've had around for gosh forever now um gained some abilities in in one of the most recent updates where it will work as a homekit access point for for remote control from outside of your home is that a good way of summarizing it Neil any of the homekit integration on your phone uh and your away from your home there needs to be some sort of a device that acts as a hub for homekit within your home to control those devices and so the brain so to speak of it is your Apple TV uh this only works with the third generation Apple TV so if you have the original hockey puck uh second gen Apple TV homekit is not compatible with that um and I believe they stopped even issuing software updates for that one but you I still have one and I still get all the new channels on it I just don't get uh the software updates but that's uh it's interesting uh that they they Continue to update and support even the older Apple TV um it would seem that with no new hardware on the horizon they have no intention of abandoning people that have the current devices considering it seems to me that it also helps with their installed base right you've already got those out there in the world if you just enable the software on it then you can have a lot more people using it immediately right and it's you know it's what 70 bucks now 60 bucks whatever they're charging for the Apple TV so um yeah I it's a no-brainer purchase uh for a lot of people especially if they're excited about homekit it's just a matter of getting the devices in the hands of people and updating some of the hardware that's already out there to be homekit compatible like uh big one missing right now would be Philips Hue um a lot of people own Hue bulbs they're pretty great but no homekit support yet so presumably they need some sort of firmware update for their Hub and that kind of stuff to get it working so it'll be nice once these devices start to come in line there were a bunch announced this week uh some are shipping right now some are shipping next month I would guess next week at WWDC uh you're going to see a lot more homekit uh accessories shown off and hopefully companies like Phillips are going to make some announcements about when they're going to have support and some of the other established players uh nest and Nest May so yeah and whatever those are you got to think that they're going to you got to think that they're going to have uh some level of homekit support I would think theync and the other technology at Google iio doing their own thing yeah but Google is also strangely supportive of Apple's ecosystem I mean they releas a lot of apps first on iOS and stuff like that so I I think that they're cognizant of the fact that a lot of their users have Hardware the reason for that is because they make tons more money from iOS devices than they do from anything else and the balance is Shifting even away from the desktop to mobile devices and when the Lion Share of your Revenue now comes or search Revenue at least now comes from iOS devices you simply can't afford to ignore them it's not the same in the house or really anywhere else like you're never going to see Play support in a CHR gas for which is not going to happen I would guess considering Nest I think it debuted exclusively in Apple Store pre Google purchase yes I would guess that the majority yeah yeah I would guess that to this date the majority of people that own nest thermostats own iPhones I would say it's probably more than 50% of Nest th owners account that you can't just as far as I'm aware I may be wrong but I believe you can't just issue a firw update there's actually just like the mfi program I guess it's part of the mfi program there's an authentication ship required for there an actual piece of hardware for him um so does that mean Philips Hugh won't be able so Philips Hugh won't be able support new Hub like how's that gon to work they released an updated Hub right so all they left all of their other stuff intact and just replace the Hub it's I'm not certain I mean you need to have an off chip anyway but you get that from being a part of the mfi program to begin with and you know you're doing mfi Bluetooth or you're doing mfi Wi-Fi or if you're doing B you get both and you you have to update a firmware and make sure that your new firmware uses the lingos that are appropriate for homekit and I believe you also need an app update because you have to have your app specify that you're joining a home and joining a room and a Zone and all the things that homekit allows you to specify when you start grouping devices together right but none of these things we're talking about were mfi and first voice where the Hugh is not mfi it just happens to work well with Apple devices I think connects to your home ethernet you plug it you plug it an ethernet cable into the back of the Hub and then it has its own proprietary wireless standard that it uses to communicate with the bulbs so it actually works over work too but if they're putting the made for iPod iPhone iPad logo on their boxes then they are taking part in the mfi program and so it's a good question as to whether or not they have what's required to to take advantage of a home kit um can homekit just uh you know use Siri to send signals to an IP based thing like uh Philips hu because I mean I can log in any browser myl with you'll note that the homeit devices that were or based on the user information we got from the homekit devices that were released earlier this week uh there's a special homekit code that you have to use to register your device with homekit um so on the box with your the N digigit code yeah there's a little nine-digit code that you have to actually input to register it and I presume that that's all part of one coherent ecosystem so you can't add something to homekit that's not homekit um enabled that makes sense so there might have to be a new hub for Hue or something like that for this to work great so everybody gets to buy new hardware hope hope you hope you stocked up on your $75 light bu1 bucks um if you just want to buy the Hub this is this is worth bringing up so the three that announced right were Lutron Echo and Inson and echo's announcement said that you know uh L Lutron is out there in the market and available now and and you can buy it and it works um in on announced as you say the new Hub and Echo said we're going to be available in apple in July with the thermostat and they named it the same model right they said it's Echo B3 which is the existing product that's out there but hidden in an FAQ on their website it says that the homekit enabled ones will be available on this date so the current ones are not it's separate product and they're going to be treating them as updating that's not confusing at all same name the same price point and yeah it's it's a little bit of a just box looks the same that's exactly what Apple does yeah no I know it I know yeah but uh it's it's it's going to be interesting you know I didn't really plan on buying another $250 thermostat just to get homekit but um if that's what it comes down to I guess I just would like somebody to create a smart thermostat that works with split air conditioners the world half you're in luck I have there oh yes and it's it's called t or T it's another one of these got the notification about that there you go that's right they're a German company they've been selling in Europe for a long time now and they're just bringing their product to America and I don't know anything about their homekit compatibility at this time but they do handle your split air conditioning excellent you know I'm really excited about homekit I I don't know about anyone else but I've kind of wanted this for a while now I've had Nest I've had echoe the uh the non-home kit enabled version and controlling through a central interface even if that interface is Siri goes a long way for me there have been so many like really I've been after this for a long time too um there have been so many good attempts that came really really close But ultimately failed I mean I guess zigg is probably the best so far it has the widest support among manufacturers but even that doesn't give you the um the Simplicity of theoretically what you'll be able to do with a bunch of home kid well and zigby and zwave oh come on what about Android at home you did not say Android at home did you is that actually it's dead now Google iio 2012 man um you know zigby and zwave and or Z-Wave and uh know all the Technologies and well no X10 is dead don't even X10 me but but zigby and zwave are a part of homekit compatibility you you can address those devices as long as you've got a bridge that talks a be or zwave right and homekit right and that's in the whole spec for homekit that's that's also probably got to be in the spec for Google Brill because the nest has zigg built into it that's how they're talking to protect I think we actually broke that news that Bridges would be allowed just toting our own horn we also called it a year ago the Apple TV would be the H kid bridge by the way in case anybody cares indeed I care do you think so here's the thing we've got uh uh carplay and we've got Android uh Auto or whatever it's called Uh and you see most of the devices now are coming out supporting both platforms do you think that this fall or next year we're going to see Brillo slash homekit uh devices that work with both platforms how's how's this going to how's this going to play is the embedded OS isn't it it's the other one that's their homekit competitor uh yeah but Brillo can work with anything so in theory Brillo could work with homekit right so here's here's how this is there's there's those two competing pieces of the technology but there's also a seate group called All Join which is spelled alj y n and they're basically an open source group trying to get all of these things to all do both and and if you and if you look at Inson and Lutron and who they're partnering with you'll see the all jooin name there because they're trying to to be all things to all of these different people because no one knows which one's going to be the winner yet so the answer is yes yes you are going to see all of these things uh yeah so Brillo is there in beded OS it's it's there for whatever reason it's like a super lightweight Android yeah for whatever reason they feel it needs to exist it's a drop and replacement for R2 for whatever rtos You' usually use in your embedded microcontrollers weave is the other one weave is the weave protocol itself is the H kick competitor which which carplay units were you saying everyone is going Android auto and carplay because the truth is I've only seen one manufacturer that's doing both aftermarket no I've seen like all the new car announcements and stuff so basically the way that it works is uh with a lot of the embedded uh infotainment systems on the cars now that they're announcing I don't know if they're on the market you're talking about the OM shipping them yes right yeah so what you'll see is they have their own um stupid uh overlay operating system and then it treats carplay and Android auto as their own apps within their uh annoying operating system so basically you la you start up your car then you choose carplay and then it launches or you choose Android auto and it seems like a lot of them supporting both it chooses when you connect your phone right oh it auto launches you connect an iOS device well you connect an iPhone specifically you can't connect an iPad and carplay launches you connect an Android L or Android M device and Android auto launches yeah I've Just Seen videos of them where you got to like go on an interface and then tap on carplay and then it goes from their uh UI then to the carplay UI it's like an OS within an OS it's a nightmare you only manually select if you've gone back out because you're listening to an audio source that is not a part of carplay or Android audio if you're listening to the uh the radio so you go back out to the head units interface select your radio stations and then go back tapping to get back to car Player Android auto but when you connect it just jumps in the environment I mean I guess it's easy enough for these companies to just throw both in there and that's what they're doing so uh that way they you know well I mean if I was a car maker that's exactly what I would do because there's right I mean you're covering 90 myself to yeah you're covering 95% of uh smartphones out there on the market today right if you have carplay and Android auto sorry Windows Phone users I notably the only one which is hilarious by the way since Microsoft was first on this with sync I know for sync but um they're not in the current generation of Ford Sync though they were only in the first gen Ford Sync I think I think for ditch them um very recently just like last year um the only one that's not doing both is unsurprisingly Ferrari I can't imagine do do they know someone between Apple and and Ferrari edq yeah you know I've I've got the uh the Pioneer aftermarket unit right now that does uh carplay and Android auto and I actually need to get an Android device to to see what Android auto looks like compared but um but they are the only aftermarket that I can think of right now that does both uh the Alpine Pine unit is a really brilliant implementation of carplay they've got uh you you know how you go in you were saying that you've got the radios world and then you've got carpls interface yeah the Alpine unit those guys are smart they went through and for everything that's a part of their native interface they studiously copied ios8 as best they could so it doesn't feel like you're really transitioning and because they only do carplay you're basically doing settings or radio or backup camera basically and every part of those things looks like it was done by someone who loves Apple did Samsung make the operating system for that or um you know it's interesting because on the pioneer head units you can go and dig into settings and find an about page and they list all of the licenses and you can see that Pioneers using Android open source program to get the uh the source code run Android as the base of their car head unit and running carplay on top of it the Alpine unit doesn't show their licenses and I haven't bothered to try and find a way to disassemble it to see who on Earth is inside does does uh uh does carplay need a uh a operating system to exist within can we just get a head unit that's just carplay well that's that Alpine unit as best you're going to get well yeah but that's what I'm saying like that still has its own iOS ripoff layer or something and I mean anytime I mean like these companies aren't software companies right I mean if you ever had like a car interface or TV interface or anything where you're just like oh this is a great experience you know I mean these companies oh really what was it um LG webos Mercedes well yeah Mercedes their um infotainment stuff is amazing so but it's few and far between right these companies aren't software companies they don't specialize in user interface they don't specialize in having a good experience it's laggy it looks like crap uh you know you just deal with this stuff all the time just get rid of this this over layer it's like Android and and uh you know all these companies differentiate and put their own skin on top of it you know you got touch whz you've got uh HTC sents or whatever just cut this crap out it's justy yeah it's just it's just terrible anytime anytime there's a a layer on top of the intended experience it ruins it and so that's what I'm wondering can I can I just get a carplay unit that's just carplay no is that by Design or is that because these companies suck it's it's by Design Apple carplay runs on top of an OS whether it runs on top of blackberry cix or it runs on top of Android or it runs on top of something something to like go back to to have like a main menu or something I mean I guess if you need to like change the settings here the things right here you need settings right you when and whether settings are stupid like the clock which they can get from the iPhone or there something like balance and fader EQ right there's no app within carplay that can do that there's no app within carplay that can address the uh the radio you know some of them are amfm some of them are FM and HD radio and and apple doesn't know anything about that and really doesn't need to um the volume controls whether it's just up and down or up down in mute or the volumes for that and the volumes for nav voice and those things all of that volume control and volume control interface is not handled within carplay the Alpine makes it look really good like it fits like it should be like it like it was but the Pioneer one is a totally separate world so you're in carplay you're listening to something and you hit the volume control and you get weird quadrilateral Jagged shapes on top of your beautiful carplay interface with rounded rectangles not to mention um climate control and things like that it's worth pointing out that this is this exact conversation is why lots of people think that Apple's car project it's not a car but in car OS h this is one of the reasons that I like homekit so much I don't want to run you know eight million apps to control my devices just I don't want to deal with your user interface your app all that stuff just give me one easy way to do it and that's all I want and just having this overlay on top of it and I got to go back to your crappy OS and then go back to carplay I feel like that just cheapens the experience you you know Apple's doing the best they can because they got to deal with all these manufacturers and partners and stuff like that and that's kind of their compromised solution but you know if Apple was really going to make something that would work it's what you're saying there you know some sort of a car Os or something like that uh where manufacturers could just integrate Apple's operating system from top to bottom control everything in the car just to make it a much better experience because uh the experience uh with most uh integrated operating systems on these devices is terrible because they're not software companies and they don't know anything about user experience at all I think what you have here in the first generation of carplay is the the incar equivalent of the Motorola rocker right oh it's way better than that come on and then no I'm saying gener generationally speaking Yeah I see the analogy in a few years you'll end up with the iPhone equivalent of the carplay it was The Rocker right I didn't get that you you've got that correct it was The Rocker like E3 was the motor Rola name for that thing the one that the one that crashed on Steve Jobs on stage and he wanted to talk way more about the IP than he wanted to talk about that thing but uh you know Neil I got to get you on FaceTime one time and just show you the Alpine and show you the Pioneer and and you will vomit at the Pioneer and you will love I'm glad somebody's got it right because these experiences are just terrible you know these P Pioneer I know I just sullied their name they get a lot of other things right but I look at a company like Samsung and it's like okay Samsung has their share problems right uh in terms of how they do stuff but they make okay hardware and they develop a lot of software clearly how the hell can they make such crappy TV interfaces like have you ever used one of these Samsung Smart TVs and now they got cameras in them you can wave at them and stuff I mean does anybody use that stuff those integrated apps and all that I mean they're a nightmare you would rather deal with anything I know people yeah I know people that use the built-in Netflix app and built-in Amazon app on those things and and you know the thing they said what should I do and I said well you get a nice television great I bought a Samsung great now go buy yourself an Amazon Fire TV stick or anything anything is better you can get a chomecast anything is better but I have but I have all the built-in stuff and they use the built-in stuff and it crashes it lags it doesn't work my used to builtin stuff yeah my parents use this all the time a lot of people in our position really overestimate how much can they figure it out like you know how many times have you been to somebody's house and I mean it's 2015 now you go over to their house and they still have the picture stretched you know in like aspect ratio wrong or they'll have it like hooked up with non- highdef cables on a httv and they'll be like look at how great the picture looks it's like like what like have you looked at the picture so I mean I'm surprised that people like that can figure out these interfaces because I as a nerd loser can't figure out these interfaces half the time when I'm trying to mess around with them so you know for some of these people to get on there like if I if my parents got a smart TV and tried to get on there and figure out how to get on Netflix I mean gez it'd be they be calling me in about two seconds the the difference is that people are willing to spend some amount of time to learn like five basic actions right I spent a lot a large portion of my life helping people develop and optimize software for Enterprise and all of the nice uis don't work in the Enterprise because Enterprise people want something very quick that they can they don't care if there's 97 options on the screen at one time as long as they know the path through their application and it's exactly the same way in stuff for I mean for lack of a better term for normal consumers right people have no problem learning the five things they need to do to watch Netflix right and they'll deal with it they don't adding another box to them is a whole other layer of complexity that they don't want to care about so the the idea for for people like my parents of a TV with everything built in and I I plug it in and that's it I'm done is very do they do they use anything like voice input or motion input or they just using a controller with 8,000 buttons on it they're just using a controller with 8,000 buttons they would probably use voice input if I didn't force them to disable the microphone and the camera because it's a massive invasion of privacy I would I I mean I would I I would love to have some great voice input which is another reason why I'm so upset uh about this no Apple TV next week because I've ranted about it before but the voice control on the Xbox one is so bad like I I cannot believe that a major consumer electronics company could put out something that works so poorly uh on a $500 box that just sits there PL into the wall you know like it's got enough processing power to figure it out but it works so bad I just cannot believe that this is something that's shipping and it has not been updated since it's come out and yet I still use it because it's so convenient I put up with how crappy it is because of the convenience so if someone could actually make a good voice input method for uh controlling my TV and everything in the living room Apple then I would really love that and would buy that in a heartbeat if anyone's gonna do it I what about the uh Amazon Echo I don't have one myself yeah you got to hold the remote you know i' I lost the remote to my Apple TV years ago and I just use the remote app on my phone to control it and now on my Apple watch well which is awesome probably the best use I have for my Apple watch uh the remote app to control my Apple TV that thing's awesome uh yeah you remember when Apple used to ship laptops and and Mac minis with remotes yeah the little white plastic ones yeah the little plastic ones those are sending out the same IR signal that today's Apple TV expects so I've got six of those white ones you want to mail me one cuz I don't have one we just grab another no well the rumor is that right the new Apple TV is going to have a touchpad on it for its input method so that strikes me as insane balls I don't think that happens or it does me it does to me as well it also strikes me as insane balls because actually I also use the remote app because even though my Apple T remote is sitting six inches from my face right now I also use the remote app because I'm lazy and trying to navigate the Apple TV UI with the touchpad is an exercise and frustration like have you ever tried to get on in Netflix have you ever tried to go um to the related titles like when you're in a movie right you're in the movie The Specific movie screen and this the related titles along the bottom every at least eight or 10 times when I try to scroll down to the related titles I go I even do that on the end up in the next screen yeah even on the home screen right so you want you want to go over one and this is one of those one of those situations where having a physical remote with a click on it to just go over one is better than a touchcreen because you swipe to the left and even on my watch watch I'll swipe to the left and then the next thing I know it goes over four icons it's like no wait go back you know so yeah so I don't use the app because I want a real physical thing I if I have to unlock a phone launch an app and then pick which Apple TV I'm control it's just way too much just give me the dam mode now that said if I had an iPhone 6s with haptic feedback on my display like we click every time you go over that would be awesome would be really coolall game yeah that's a whole different ball game well but what if it what if it's integral part of the experience with an app store right so you got to think outside of the box of uh just just sitting well historically the first Apple TV cost 249 bucks and then they dropped it to 165 bucks and then they dropped it to19 and now now we have Apple TVs that were 99 and are now 69 so when you add in the cost of a touchcreen remote well I I I kind of alluded the price point I kind of alluded to it before right they're still supporting even second gen Apple TV even though they're not giving it software update still getting content on it right so who says that the $69 Apple TV is going to go anywhere they can introduce a $200 Apple TV and still have both devices available but if you want the App Store and you want to get apps to you know do new and interesting things with your TV like for example play games then perhaps a uh controller with a the touch panel on it becomes an integral part of the experience maybe that's uh maybe that's what they're going to do with it who knows I mean presumably right they're going to have they already have Bluetooth controller support for made for iPhone controllers presumably those same controllers are going to connect to a new Apple TV and you have a full-fledged game console and not only do you have a full-fledged game console but you have one that allows you to download apps to multiple devices and only buy once so now buy byy Nintendo 3DS buy byy uh you know PlayStation VA in addition to the game consoles that plug into your TV Apple's now entered itself into both of those markets and they're small markets but they'll wipe them out well no there's no Apple TV coming so I don't think so so is that your W when they pull when they pull the trigger on that hard I mean they got to get developers on board right they're going to show Steve J years ago made a comment about game consoles and how much they had sold or whatever and he he he was mentioning it during one of their presentations and he was remarking you know that the Xbox 360 or something had sold some amount of consoles and it was small it was nothing it was like potatoes right it was like you know oh they've ship 25 million consoles today 25 million consoles like are you kidding me you know Apple ships that many phones you know in no time so apple is looking for a much bigger market and that's why I say they could wipe out these markets the hardcore gamers are going to stick to their boxes their PCS you know the Xbox One whatever but that casual game Market that bought you know 200 million Wiis back in the day when that was a fat or something that's something where Apple could just come in and clean up right uh imagine crossplatform games where you can play it on your phone you can play it on your iPad you can play it on your Apple TV it syncs through iCloud all of your achievements are saved through Game Center the infrastructure is there they've got it there just to to knock it out of the park it's just a matter of pulling the trigger and they apparently aren't going to pull the trigger next week because for Apple it's not really about that market it's about the subscription TV that's my guess my guess is the reason that they decided to pull the hard were next week is because they're more interested in the ongoing revenue of the subscription subscription TV service that gaming um uh ecosystem you just described is exactly how it would work if you are all Microsoft right now no it isn't you can't play Xbox One games on your PC Mobile that's exactly how if you buy a copy you know I mean if you buy a copy of this is where Microsoft's so stupid right if you buy a copy of uh halo the Master Chief collection for your Xbox one you can play it on your Xbox one now meanwhile Microsoft has a voice controlled personal assistant called Cortana on the phones which is named after a halo character you know where Cortana is not it's not on the Xbox One the the very game console where you can play Halo games I mean the logic doesn't make any sense at Microsoft it's just like a bunch of different silos operating over there and and their game division is just it they don't care about it apparently I don't know why they do the things they do or how they operate but you're right it would make sense if you could just buy a game and play it on your PC or on your Xbox one right why wouldn't they do that that would that would be brilliant but you can't do it if you buy an Xbox One game you can only play it on your Xbox one right can there are some games those games together at the same time right so you can play if you have FIFA if you have guys guys guys so if you have FIFA right you can play FIFA but not on the Xbox One or FIFA on your is there a Windows tablet right now if there was you can play FIFA there and then go back to your Xbox and you're you're logged and you're logged into your on your phone right and then when you go back to your Xbox your progress for mobile is there on FIFA on Xbox at least yeah it's a different game but I'm saying the actual well it's always going to be a different game there's no I don't think it's always going to be a different game I mean if you look at some of the graphics that you have on the iPad right now on the iPhone right if you blow those up to TV quality games like real racing which can be played through AirPlay I don't think that Apple needs to put out a graphic Powerhouse console and the game can be you know equivalent experience running on the same base code play it on any screen size you want the only thing that's missing from this equation is the Mac there's no ability to buy an app for your iPhone uh or iPad and then be able to download it on your Mac and play the equivalent on there if if they that that's the one piece of it that's missing but right now all they would have to do is put an app store on Apple TV and give it crossplatform support with iPhone apps buy it once play it on all of them and have it sync and they would be ahead of Sony they'd be ahead of Microsoft already and they they would have just entered the market and already knocked both of them out of that out of that space all right guys I want to wind it up here because we're going to have an interview with special guest the CEO of inston who is one of the homekit partners coming up so thanks a lot and I'm so glad we had this uh this talk all about Apple TV and Microsoft uh Neil El Presidente where can we find you on the internet uh you can find me uh at Apple Insider obviously uh where I'm slaving away every day and I'm also on Twitter at this is Neil NE fantastic Shane El Presidente with the coup coming where can we find you um well you can find me at Apple Insider and apparently soon you can find me in NE position at Apple Insider fantastic well this concludes this portion of episode 19 stay tuned for just a moment and we'll be back with uh the CEO of Inson so at this point in the Apple Insider podcast I'm pleased to introduce Joe data who is the CEO of Inson a uh connected home home automation company Joe welcome uh thanks Victor thanks for having us so I I know the inst un name from having seen some of the products in places like smarthome.com and some of the home improvement stores can you tell me a little bit more about the history of the company and um you know how long you've been around and what are the kinds of things that you've historically done sure yeah insty on the product line and insty on the technology is uh the culmination of what is now 23 years of work we entered the industry in 1992 as a catalyst blogger of thirdparty products in '95 we were amongst the first e-commerce sites of of any industry to launch a store in uh about the same time we started developing our own products and in '97 acquired two small engineering firms to eventually launch our own brand uh line of products to to build products that the other manufacturers uh weren't building and uh as a cataloger and a in a in a direct marketing uh player in the space the customers were telling us certain things that they wanted and and if they weren't available we just decided that well we we'd make them then and in the late 90s we were out talking to the retailers and Builders and it became clear to us that the wireless technologies that were available that we could buy off the shelf and put into the products um they just weren't good enough and I I knew the reliability wasn't going to be there to to make a a sustainable uh effort at a broad Mass Market market so that's when we started working on the Inson technology which we launched in ' 05 and and now is in millions of homes uh and it's a uh very very different technology it's a mesh technology but it is a dual mesh technology so we have an RF mesh U like a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is RF neither of those are mesh mesh means repeating networks um and on top of that we layer in the electrical wires of the house and because the problems that exist on one layer don't exist on the other when those problems occur and they they do um the other physical layer works right around it and you end up with a really really really robust wireless connection between any devices all your devices right so so prehistory was there was this thing called X10 and X10 had problems am I saying it right that's right so far yep okay and that was about the time frame when retailers and and consumers and customers started asking you to do something about some of the problems that they were seeing out there yeah well to to be honest the the first problems were at the physical layer uh if you wanted to turn one of the old-fashioned switches on you press the bottom of the switch and if you wanted to turn it off you press the bottom of the switch and that's not how light switches work and so customers are saying we'd like one where you press the top of the switch for on and the bottom for off that seemed obvious we couldn't get any of the manufacturers to build it so we did um then the next layer was uh as we were reaching out to a broader Market they were telling us we'd like it to work and we we'd have to be here to support it when it didn't um and too too much of our revenues were from selling problem solving products kits Services Etc and um that just it it's it's a house of cards and people in the x10 world every device you added to your network weakened your network and we wanted something that was just the opposite your your your network should get stronger as you add nodes and so um given our background on the on the power line and the fact that there are mobile devices and battery power devices like sensors and things we we we knew we needed to reach into the uh RF space and boy uh it just was it it is really an unbelievable solution the the reliability is on the orders um on the order of a 100 times better having these two physical layers and uh so we uh we love it customers love it and uh we're having a lot of success with it yeah just so I understand um see if I'm saying this right when you have power line in in homes like we have in North America you have different phases of the fuse box or the breaker box and so you've got uh a device at one outlet and a device at another outlet but if they're not on the same circuit or not on the same phase they may not be able to talk to each other so that's one of the weaknesses of power line do I have that right well um technically it's a single phase that's been split but but you can think of it as you know hard to talk uh from one to the other it's not always that they can't talk from one to the other but um quite commonly uh a a single transmitter on one end of one phase can't talk to a single receiver on the other end of the other phase and you can think of this as being the same as putting your Wi-Fi router um you know up in in your office or spare bedroom and trying to talk to the washing machine in the basement it's a very good and especially if it's in a metal can like most washing machines are um very good chance that it won't reach it's simply out of range and so um the problems the there are real problems in power line there are real problems in RF they happen to be just different in the old world people would try to connect the two uh the the two sides of the phase or the two phases as you put it in the circuit panel which is not consumer friendly and and so in the r in in the inston world we simply use RF as the bridge between those phases or or locations on the power line that that have problems so the other big issue for the power line are switching power supplies so certain manufacturers of certain switching power supplies end up inadvertent ly injecting noise or attenuation onto the power line and and can create little sink holes of communication on the power line well that's fine RF will get us there likewise um when you put a a metal refrigerator door in in the way of something that c creates an RF Shadow and um or concrete stucco on your walls if you're trying to talk to a spa outside or uh metal around uh washing machine both both physical paradigms um are are challenging to get uh anything nearing Perfection out of uh repeating helps so mesh definitely helps so all else being equal we we believe mesh is supered to a star network configuration like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth um and then two meshes all the better right and the uh you know the instructions that you're passing turn on and off a light switch that signal gets sent from some command box an outlet a wall plate and then it repeats down across the uh the mesh changing from y from RF to to power line as needed yeah basically yep that's right so uh we use something called simoc casting it's a very very different approach we we can do it and most Engineers roll their eyes when we say that because if you're pushing a lot of data around simoc casting uh typically is not a good idea but we're just trying to turn an outlet on or off or send 72 degrees to to a thermostat or I'm wet from a leak sensor to very small amounts of data or sometimes obviously we're managing the databases inside these devices but in all cases it's relatively small amounts of data and so by kind of rearching how that data is uh formatted simoc casting allows us to send a message from the controller if you will and it can be a central controller it can be a switch a motion sensor whatever to one or more devices on the network and instead of routing the signal uh every device that hears it repeats it a given number and a specified number of times and so the signal uh there's no network configuration there's no network configurator there's no network memory that gets eaten up in all of this and so you can build the network as large as you want and the larger the better uh we have an embassy in Washington DC that uses Inson for all of their their whole campus irrigation lighting system uh uh Outdoors lighting system is all run on inston it's a big campus we have uh commercial industrial buildings of million square feet we have uh homes there's there's a massive uh home product in Colorado that has nearing 2,000 inston nodes in it so it just scales like uh like there's no tomorrow theoretically there's no limit to the number of instand devices you could have in a network and when you hit the on button or if you want to all off is a great example you hit all off all of the lights will um respond within what can be perceived as without a delay by the human brain and that we call it inston stands for instanton and so you mash a button everything in the network that is supposed to respond will respond in um you know tens or in worst case a couple hundred milliseconds which is faster than uh it it appears instant to us it's it's almost imperceptible 100 milliseconds is totally acceptable right right so that's that's pretty huge that that you've got this ability to create these huge installs and even with all the people using them all around the the campus as you say um the Network's not so chatty as to be swamped right so the other the other side of the equation is it's important to architect uh the chattiness and so um it I I think uh what what we're seeing in in the connected home space is that uh there's a lot of new stuff happening a lot of new products being developed and most of the engineers that come into this come from uh you know high-tech engineering jobs where they're used to pushing around a lot of data they have networks that act a certain way and do certain things and and in that Paradigm those uh best practices are are well documented and understood in our space what we have found over 20 years is is a very different approach is the ideal approach so you can put Wi-Fi into light bulbs and and Outlets but uh you they'll suffer from some certain list of of challenges and and you know cost complexity Etc um we're on the other end of the spectrum uh our our vision is uh Inson in billions of nodes this industry is very very Nation still and there's a lot of Runway ahead of us and a tech technology that costs significantly less and works significantly better well you know we still believe has a has an uh an excellent opportunity uh for some serious penetration and over the C last year we've been making announcements about our work with Microsoft uh Apple who we just released uh and one of the two first the only two launch Partners uh for homekit with Apple uh day before yesterday and and then a few weeks ago um we launched uh an all jooin product with uh our friends at Microsoft um and and oh by the way in in January we announced our work with Google and works with NES program and so we have 200 products that solve the vast majority of building automation small to mediumsized commercial uh all the way down to small Residential Building automation home automation connected living uh product or uh situations out there and and it takes a a long time to build up that arsenal of products and because we've been around uh so long we've done that and so if you want to control your water heater you need a 220 volt high capacity relay switch that you can commun communicate to and there's just not a lot of those out there most most of the new entrance in our space come out with a light bulb or a plug-in module or something like that and and that's great if all you're trying to do is change the color of the bulb in the lamp in the room you're in but uh once once you once you kind of get addicted to the uh to the uh convenience uh safety and fun of having these things connected you want to do more and then you better have all kinds of switches keypads Outlets modules inline modules fan controllers thermostats you know the list goes on and on yeah so backing up a step you you've talked about residential and Commercial so who is the person that that ought to buy an inston product who who is the target consumer for you uh the middle of our Bullseye is uh a homeowner and um and to to us it really means about that broad there are a few country so we're in over 70 countries so that's not all but you know if you're in Europe uh you know North America South America Australia we're we're we have distribution we have products that are developed for that market and um whether you want to install it yourself or have somebody install it we're in different and in most cases we or if it's bought at retail we don't know because a lot of the stuff that's bought at retail is installed by the consumer and a lot is handed to a contractor to have him install and so um that's our target market but our products find their way into some really fun places like embassies and 800,000 square foot printing facilities because it works and it's affordable it's reliable and um it it it's relatively simple um and I don't mean to kind of throw ourselves under the bus here but you know we're always trying to make it simpler and there's a lot of work to be done but uh I think given you know if you compare us to what else is out there um we're we're quite competitive yeah I I wouldn't say aiming at Simplicity is throwing yourselves under the bus at all people don't really realize just how hard work it is to make something simple yeah that's it it that is such a a good point um one of my favorite quotes from a a dear friend uh basically the inventor of the universal remote and I remember one day uh having lunch with him and he said you know Joe simple is hard and coming from a person that had had as much success uh as he had had that that had a lasting impression on me yeah and and when I think about universal remotes he's right simple is really hard it is it is yeah I've yet to find the perfect universal remote yeah and and they're still working on it um there there are now new players in that space working on it making making progress all along but uh it's difficult and I think that that's probably an excellent Paradigm comparison or uh if that's the right phrase but um you know they're trying to help you unify the control of let's say a TV a set toop box and a a stereo and we're trying to do that plus your light switches and your outlets and your sensors and you know so uh the it it in some ways it's even more challenging yeah now the Apple homekit experience kind of does that doesn't it I mean when we're controlling all these different things through Siri isn't that turning the iPhone and Siri into the remote control uh well uh in some ways yes but um one of the things that we've learned and many of the other players in the industry have learned is that um you have to be very careful about what really works and what you know what doesn't always work and so uh the the the homekit Paradigm or platform certainly brings unity and uh some kind of obvious consistency to how things uh will work or at least the things you can and can't do with uh the products that are out there um it's uh obviously it's just launching and so uh I think the future is very very exciting um and the present is exciting too don't get me wrong but um voice voice recognition um and and the way we humans communicate uh and the way the platform deals with it um I I I think people maybe the best way I can put this is I think most people will start by hitting a button on the phone to make something happen and then start experimenting with uh with Siri um and uh for a guest or even the the less technical uh people in the house it's very exciting to see it work but uh learning the discipline about what needs to be said to make it work sometimes is a great experience and sometime isn't I I've seen it go both ways right so um I I I'm a huge believer in you know kind of the the mobile device uh UI ux um and I'm very excited about the the the series side of it um but um I think uh time time will tell how quickly it'll move towards being in that great category and with apple it almost always ends up being great so you know I'm very very excited about it but uh wouldn't surprise me if a little bit of work uh stands between between here and there sure you know I I think about the difference between a good product and a good demo and uh you know the idea of picking up the phone and talking to Siri and having something happen seems like a great great thing and it might be a great demo but if you have to understand the the syntax that you have to use when you speak with Sheri maybe that's uh yeah and they're well on their way I think to nailing it um but uh but it it is not for the faint of heart and and when we think about things we think about differently so I think I'm probably making too much of the work that still needs to be done if you've got one or two devices it's probably going to be really great a wonderful experience right out of the box today um if you've got one of our ours or Lutron hubs you can probably go home and and you know get that light your lights to turn on and off but when you start uh building out networks uh and our customers do our average customer has dozens of communicating devices in their house um and that doesn't happen overnight but it happens over time um and as you start building out you know whole house different rooms different devices Etc then it becomes more challenging just like that universal remote that we're talking about on on on your nightstand or your coffee table um it it's it's non-trivial well but the alternative is I have to you know if I'm using my phone as the controller and I'm using an app a button within an app to control things I have to unlock lock the phone launch the app get to the right device press a button there yes there's no doubt that uh the the phone as an interface um is is awesome uh at certain times and and maybe less than awesome at others uh I think the the watch the smart watch really helps here it's it's you know all I got to do is uh point it towards me and I've I've I'm through the first two things that you know I don't have to take it out of my uh pocket and I don't have to wake it up and for the things that I do regularly I pop it on my favorite screen I'm I'm I'm in and out and um I'm I'm really excited about the watch as as an interface likewise when you're not at home and alerts are the most important part of what a connected home is about the water sensor triggers an alert and says you know your clothes washers of flooding right or or it's 4:00 and your latch key kid arrives home um you know for years those alerts came to me in my pocket and you know we're all busy and you don't you know I I see it at some point later well now I see it if if uh you know if they arrive home at 402 I see it at 402 because I get the haptic you know and a ding and I I crank my wrist and you know uh the front door open and front door closed okay 402 everything's good so I I'm excited uh the quick always uh always available control side as well as the uh super quick and easy alert side uh through the the watch is is really exciting cool let me ask I mean we talked a little bit about how you don't have a the best insight into how people are installing it whether people consumers buy it in retail and install it themselves H or contractors are buying it so do you have uh sort of a customer outreach program have you interviewed customers about what problem they were solving when they bought your product the first time we do and um we so uh if they buy it through our own sales channel uh they always receive a a follow-up survey and and every single one of those responses I I think forever um is and has been uh read and gets categorized and and communicated and process um where we increasingly now are going through Channel Partners you know like Walmart Target Costco Best Buy Home Depot Menards Etc um it's it's more difficult uh to do that we we're we could certainly be uh a little more uh aggressive if that's right term or sensitive uh and and and reach out more because our call center uh deals with the challenges you know every day and every week we're massing uh lots of data about what motivates them to call in and I can tell you that we've learned long ago that the problems uh and maybe this is what you're really getting at uh the problems that the uh our customers uh are looking to solve and and they they are such a broad uh scope or segment of the market that I I think I think that it is the connected home space and I've never SE data to suggest otherwise there everybody that's too strong people uh have different Lifestyles they have different family situations they have different values they have different physical structures they live in right some of us live in detached homes some of us live in small multi some of us live in large multi um that of course you can there's a lot to be learned and there are lots of groups that you know have real numbers but to really nail it you have to you have to have a product offering that that crosses uh all these borders and uh and and your user interfaces that can address them all and um I'm not saying we or anyone else are there yet but I'm I'm excited about what we and others are doing and and and these these uh platforms like homekit what makes them really exciting is you know it comes from the world world's one of the world's most uh respected Brands and so having that logo on the package I think gives the customer the confidence that hey this is going to work if I buy that box over there regardless of the color shape size cost brand retail store with a box over here they're going to work together and I think that's a really really important uh it it it's going to uh take a lot of the intimidation out of uh the technology of what we do out of the customer's mind yeah I agree that that confidence of knowing that I can get these multiple different things and they're all going to communicate and work together is uh is powerful not just from confidence standpoint of buying the thing but in in terms of of um you know the flexibility of of not being locked into the first thing you get and and knowing that multiple Brands um are are supported so I don't have to worry about whatever the brand is on the box I'm buying even if that company were to decide to get out of the race or or just become unavailable I I I'm I'm not um I'm not I'm not stuck with something that won't work any longer your your home didn't just become obsolete right exactly so let me ask you know what was it like to work with apple on this and and how did that relationship go uh it's been fantastic uh we we had not uh and it was wasn't for lack of trying but we hadn't until the last couple years we hadn't had a lot of interaction with the folks at Apple um uh we we have felt very well supported from uh from the leadership uh behind the homekit uh platform uh I think it's well known that Apple isn't always the most communicative uh company when it comes to B2B uh work but I can tell you that they're decisive and and supportive and uh so you know it not surprisingly there were changes in the the specification as time went along but you know that that's just absolutely part for the course and and and homekit wouldn't be as good as it is without it so um all in all it's been a really really great experience we we we feel like um it's just beginning you know now that it's really live uh you know now now instead of uh you know us marketers and US Engineers deciding what it should be now consumers will start weighing in and and and you know that that's where our heritage is and so I'm very very excited to be to be live within now yeah so you know one of the things I'm anticipating I'm I'm predicting and I could be going out on a limb here is that the availability of homekit increases the number of users that decide that they're going to buy a product like this this um I think almost exponentially I I I couldn't agree more uh the the if if I'm an outsider looking into this space and most people are um the fact that uh you know one of the greatest companies on Earth is in this space has invested in uh launching this it it just gives me a confidence that this this category is is for real and the fact that they say this stuff works together I know it'll work together so one of the things that's held me back personally as a consumer has been the initial cost and just simply knowing what to get as a first product what what do I get as a starter kit what do I do first and how much is it going to set me back so now that that we have these homekit compatible products what do you think the first thing that someone who doesn't have any of these things in the house has should should yet but does have an iPhone and does have say an Apple TV yeah so the the the two products that are shipping today that are homekit compatible are hubs from Inson and Lutron and uh and Lutron is a great company and and T I mean they're the leader in in remote lighting control um and so that's where people can begin and even if the first two products were out were um I don't know bark Stoppers I would tell you lighting control that's where most people start in the space it's very easy to understand it's totally um you know we all have Lighting in our house we all have light switches and we all enjoy Automation and remote control of it and once you've got it you almost can't imagine not having it and so the best place to start is either a plug in lamp um or a screw in remote control bulb uh I think the plug-in lamp is probably the the best and and the uh certainly the one that's been around the longest so a couple of plug-in dimmer modules and and a bridge and you're off and running and what happens is people start having you know really aha moments about uh devices that are in their house that they don't use because the control is uh just not convenient enough my mom had uh a china cabinet that had a beautiful lighting inside but the had a little cord switch on it that of course you couldn't even reach so those lights were never on I just plug it into a little module and and and now you can control it from your phone or Siri or tabletop remote or handheld remote or wire in remote right and that that's when it gets really fun is when you start seeing how this impacts your life in a in a positive way and you start adding uh more products and more types of products well now I'm a fan of the the connected thermostat I have the nest I have the Echo and I I like these things because my experience is is that I get kicked in the middle of the night saying it's too hot or it's too cold to go turn it down and instead of going downstairs to adjust the temperature I'm now using the phone as the controller for that now you you mentioned that inston is a part of the works with Nest program can you tell me a little bit about what kind of interactions that I would get from doing that well um so if you use our apps and and you use you know even if it's everything else in your house is instan you can install a s thermostat and and control it within our app Paradigm likewise um we will be working with nasta on their uh they've got several uh business efforts that because we have products that that no one else has and because our our our communication technology is Uber reliable um customers that join in uh ways to save uh monthly electricity costs by uh allowing the utility to turn off you know let's say your pool pump or your water heater uh during high high demand times um you know we'll be working with them to bring those products uh into consumer hands most of those will be uh non retail you know installed uh sold through the utility company kind of thing right right or or similar other trades as well um so we you know we're we're kind of working uh with them on both sides kind of on the retail side that uh you can you can use ncn stuff and Nest stuff in the same house same app UI and then uh on on the installed uh basis as well going forward this this brings me to a different question that I hadn't anticipated asking um so if I have nest and I have inston products the bridge and a a couple of lighting solutions can I control Nest through the inston app and if I can can I control the nest through homekit um great questions yes to the first question you can control the nest thermostat through the inston app Nest is uh as as so five companies announced products more or less at launch uh the ourselves and Lutron were the only products that were shipping at launch echoe is one of the other three MH um but Nest isn't one of the remaining two uh and so uh all I can tell you is that that they have not announced uh becoming uh homekit compatible doesn't mean that they won't be mhm I'm not asking you to speak for them I was just wondering if there was a way that I could control them because you work with them and you know sort of back door yeah so um there it today the answer is no okay it doesn't mean that that won't change because you know as as I mentioned we're just getting uh off the tarmac here um but today today we can't that's that's a fine answer I understand it completely okay you know I I am asking you you know what two days after the announcements been made so yeah it's a pretty exciting time um wow you know I I'm so glad that you've been able to take the time to spend with me on this and and talk about hom kid and talk about working with apple um what what would you like to leave our listener with what should our listener understand from from you about homid about inston and about where things are going and what what they should pay attention to well I I think uh just what's what's possible right it's really exciting that uh if it's in house you you can either control it today or in the near future and the tech Giants uh like apple are throwing their weight and you know and their uh abilities into the ring which I feel confident means that the user experiences starting two days ago but even more importantly two years from now are just going to get better and better and that's uh the this this last mile for us as a company is is is bringing together user experiences that uh wives and aunts and uncles and grandmothers enjoy every bit as much as uh the early adopter uh and and so I just that's you know people like apple that's what they do and so uh we're just really thrilled to be part of this very exciting launch and and uh and equally excited about where it's going to go from here because uh I'm just I'm I'm quite confident they they will work hard and smart to build an Ever uh more wonderful experience so it's really really exciting time well thank you so much for joining us uh this has been Joe data with the aider podcast I'm your host Victor marks and thank you for listening please uh leave a positive review on iTunes and tell your friends thanks Victoryou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 19 of our show where we discuss the latest news about Apple iPhone iPad mac and more we're recording on Thursday May 28th 2015 today we'll be talking about Matteo Prime sense uh there was an acquisition by Apple WWDC predictions Apple TV and homekit we have with us this week Apple Insider senior editor El Presidente Neil Hughes hey how's it going guys Shane Cole leader I thought I wanted I was going to be El Presidente well exercise your leadership dude fine hola Shane Cole L President E hello yeah that presidential coup is working out well for you and I'm your host Victor marks so let's start off Shane you were talking uh earlier you'd written this story about prime sense and a recent acquisition of a company called Mato yeah so Apple bought a company called Mato who is uh right at this moment one of the most well-known or maybe the most well-known augmented reality companies in the world from the software side their technology Powers every important AR application right now Ikea's virtual catalog that lets you hold your iPad up and see how your new couch will look in your living room room uh Ferrari's AR sales app as though the Ferraris themselves aren't cool enough Audi's owner manual which is an AR owners manual for one of their higher end cars those are all AO things and apple bought them for what is presumably a large amount of money we don't know exactly how much yet um but given that it's probably one of the most public Acquisitions from Apple in a long time um aside from beats because Thea is a well-known firm uh it's surely quite a bit um fits in pretty well with another odd acquisition they made a few years ago in Prime sense which is was and is rarely semiconductor company that made basically Hardware that lets computers see in three dimensions uh it lets computers see like we see and uh they're most wellknown most publicly known for making the first generation of connect sensors and anybody who's used an augmented reality app knows that the better your data is the data about space around you the better augment the reality works it's no good if you you know look through your phone at a street and your phone doesn't know how far down the street the business is trying to show you is uh early versions of yelp's AR stuff were kind of like that it didn't work very well uh so I think these two in the future we're going to see these two Acquisitions be really complimentary to each other so you know when Apple acquires a company in in the past they've acquired for for technology you know the um they acquired a keyboard company that became a the the the touch sensitive technology the uh the touch panel in the iPhone they've acquired the mapping company that became part of Apple Maps the other kind of Acquisitions that that they do and other companies will do is is for the talent and then they'll take the talent and apply them to some other technology um so my question is is do we think that this is going to come together as some sort of augmented realityy product or is this a talent acquisition where these people are really talented let's put them all together in the room and see what they can do to our existing stuff I think when you put you want to go I was yeah I was just GNA say I think when you put the two together if you took Prime sense in and of itself and the Matteo in and of itself I think you could say that they're both Aqua hires but if you put the two together I think it's fairly clear that they're trying to do something with some sort of advanced depth perceiving vision um whether that's actually a consumer facing product is a whole other question entirely though but I think it is and a lot of this ties into mapping I think as well you could see pretty easily where stuff like augmented reality would be helpful uh you're trying to find a storefront or something like that um and you know overlays and those sort of things uh there's been products out there that have done that kind of thing before but if we're integrated into a mapping solution I think that that would be pretty helpful and it it kind of reminds me a little bit too of of a patent that apple had years ago it was kind of a a a crowdsourced uh street view concept where basically people would take pictures and opt into a service where you know you could take pictures of storefronts and stuff like that and it would integrate into a mapping system so I think you could see some of that stuff start to tie into mapping as well the prime sense is interesting because that could be consumer facing but if you look at their technology that they've had in the past with uh Microsoft Xbox Connect and all that it really didn't work for fine controls you really had to do like broad motions for it to work which is why connect was kind of like a fad that never really stuck around so whatever technology Prime sense had Apple was definitely going to have to improve on on it um if they were going to do a consumer facing product because a lot of that stuff that they had put out in the past uh in their Partnerships with other companies was not really not the kind of stuff that I could see apple doing well there are many other applications for threedimensional um sensing other than things like connect U you mentioned maps and that's a really important one but where I see that going it's not so much street view although there's almost certainly some sort of 3D street view coming that's a virtual certainty but uh something more to do with interior maps and my question about the about bridging that Gap with augmented reality is are people really going to hold their phones up in front of them if I mean I guess if it works right so that's I think something that's held wide use of AR down is who wants to stand out in the middle of the street and hold their phone up in front of them turning around in a circle trying to find the thing they're looking for right you look like a tool right it's the same problem that we have with Google Glass and and you wouldn't wear cardboard or Oculus in the daily use well I think people look really stupid when they go out and public with an iPad and take hold it up and take pictures and yet plenty of people do that so I mean oh does it look weird that we're holding a phone up in front of our face well we're already doing that all day anyhow so I I don't know it does I think if it works if it's responsive and quick it it'll be it'll catch on you know I'm thinking of like what was the name of that one that was out years ago it was called like layer or something and it would show you points of interest yeah it I haven't used it in years so maybe it's awesome now but when it when I first tried out oh were they well it was laggy it didn't work it was it was kind of like a Neato Concept in you were just like oh look at what they did but uh it didn't really have a practical application I feel like if something was responsive and valuable especially for like indoor maps and stuff like that like if you've ever tried to navigate a big mall or something trying to get around those places is a nightmare and so Apple has been uh really um acquiring a number of indoor GPS and and location positioning companies for indoor type of stuff if you think about it like if you're getting directions on the road well you follow streets you know turn here the streets have names if you're inside at a mall or something there's no streets no names or anything like that so getting around can be kind of difficult on foot especially in some of these big shopping centers so I could see where location plus augmented reality uh kind of stuff would uh definitely have a benefit cool so we we're talking about what we're thinking this could become and I want to get on to WDC because as we know that the worldwide developer conference is coming up and and we don't really know what to expect we we have a little bit of an idea about what not to expect now but what are your thoughts about this upcoming event well I uh wrote a uh article yesterday kind of giving a summary of what we were expecting at WWDC and as luck would have it uh about an hour after I published that is uh which was this long thing on a new Apple TV and how we're expecting a new Apple TV uh that is when uh New York Times and recode came out with stories saying oh actually won't be an Apple TV next week so I look like a big fat idiot after running that story great timing on my part um so we will not be seeing an Apple TV next week but uh it's already a sure thing I mean Apple's already said basically that we're going to see iOS 9 we're going to see uh OS 10.11 um and presumably we're going to see a new subscription music service and then beyond that um probably not a lot developer Focus conference so it's going to be all about the software and it's going to be all about the next gen operating systems Shane what do you have to add I have exactly nothing to add um Everything Neil said is what I would have said at the same time well and we'll also see we'll also see the watch we'll see the watch uh more integration with iPhone and maybe Mac and iPad more seamless kind of you're just going to see that uh that's kind of Apple's direction for the last few years right more more integration between the their different platforms so it's kind of bluring the lines between OS 10 and iOS and now watch OS and they're going to have a preview of software that's going to allow apps to run natively on the watch so you don't get that stupid loading screen every time you try to launch a third party app which will be nice um so what do I want to see uh I want to see what I just said more integration between the platforms we've actually been running a series at Apple Insider on um uh things that Apple might int have introduced on the Apple watch that it would bring to to other platforms and devices which is something that the company's done for years right introduce new technology and then gradually bring it elsewhere and one of the things that I wrote about that I really want to see is uh notifications being uh more intelligent as they come into your devices so right now if you're wearing an Apple Watch and your phone is locked you get the notification on your watch but not on your phone but if I get an iMessage uh it'll ring on my Mac first but then it'll ring like two seconds later on my iPhone and you know it's one of those things where I feel like the devices now all talk to each other and they know you know which one is my primary screen um if I'm on my Mac then I probably shouldn't be getting notifications on my wrist and on my phone and all that I should probably just be getting them on my Mac and then when I walk away from my Mac I could get them on my wrist and then when my phone's unlocked I could get them on my phone you know that kind of stuff uh that's something I'd really like to see in the next gen versions of iOS and Os 10 just kind of uh smarter notifications if I cancel out notifications on my Mac they shouldn't be on my phone anymore uh vice versa that kind of stuff uh there's just little little nagging little things that still exist between the platforms where they don't communicate quite as well as they should well said well said you know I've been thinking about things well for one thing I would really like for system preferences sound to work well that's something that we've noticed here um what about you know you didn't mention in the uh the rumor about an apple television service you mentioned the Radio Service the music service but what about a subscription video service well all the reports have said that there's not going to be anything until this fall maybe later just because they're trying to deal with these idiot television companies and content owners that don't want to change and they're stuck in the rabit ear Dark Ages and you know God forbid Apple come along and do something that uh uh you know might shake things up and get people subscribing and and you know paying money directly to them and rather than to cable providers and stuff like that but no one wants to shake up the status quo so it's a long arduous process of trying to get these companies in line you saw HBO now offers HBO now Showtime announced this week that they're going to have a similar service which is actually going to be a little bit cheaper than HBO it's going to be $12 a month versus 15 for HBO um and that's a step in the right direction but I mean that adds up quick right if I'm subscribing to Hulu and sling TV and Showtime and HBO uh you know for all my over-the toop SL IP TV services I'm paying as much as I was for TV before with a cable provider so you know it's kind of this uh catch22 situation where as all these networks come out uh with their own services and they want to charge a premium for their Network it's it's not going to it's not going to be cost effective for a lot of consumers so there's a lot of uh wrangling that Apple needs to do to get it to a price point where it's going to be palatable for a lot of consumers and so with those negotiations still ongoing there's no expectation that we're going to see a service announced next week um and presumably they wouldn't want to announce such a service without the new Apple TV Hardware anyhow so it seems like because the service can't go because of the contracts and whatever is going on with the hardware we're not going to hear anything about the TV next week okay now it is a developers conference and we've talked about product and things that out of it we haven't really talked about you know what is it what's in it for app developers and one of the things that I've been thinking a little bit about and you can see if you agree or if I'm thinking all wrong is we're we're in the middle of a a sort of transitional State between where Objective C is the original designated preferred path for creating applications for iOS and mac and Swift was announced but Swift was was very early and very gational I'm I'm hoping that at this WWDC Swift becomes more mature that that it's easier to convert between the two that um you know that version control works with swift better especially when you're talking about a historic conversion from an Objective C app and that C++ compatibility comes into Swift well we should see Swift go 1.0 this next week which I think is the rumor anyway and Swift has actually been increasingly popular I mean impressively popular I'm not entirely sure what changes we're going to see it's likely that there going to be not transformational changes but certainly you know um impressive changes to bring the tool chain along because there are still some issues in the tool chain but uh yeah I mean Swift has already even in its early beta stages has already been really impressively adopted yeah and can you think of of any applications that you've seen that are a good example of what a swift app should be I don't know that anybody publicizes exactly what they're doing I mean some people use metal obviously and apple pushes metal in the App Store but as far as Objective C versus Swift I don't know that I've seen anyone any big developers anyway publicize that they're switching over okay well I I know that's sort of um sort of inside baseball but I I like the uh the idea of knowing what's going on with the technology and that that the technology is still advanc I would like to see uh I would like to see the NFC chip on the iPhone 6 and the Apple watch opened up to third party apps uh in a secure way so we could see things like uh location based uh stuff you know within your home uh maybe you know entry to buildings and stuff that have NFC capable readers compatibility maybe with some public transit systems that sort of stuff let's get that going we were just talking about that the other day actually about how that might be done by we I mean mear and I think it's my presumption and I'm probably completely wrong because I'm often stupid but I think that there won't be an NFC API in the way we currently conceive NFC apis I think what you'll actually see is the addition of host card emulation to iOS 9 or iOS 10 depending on when this comes and that will be how Apple does NFC um so explain for our listeners what Host Card means that's what I was about to do um Host Card host card emulation is really basically a way for the NFC transfer to fake what it's sending um in the iPhones case the way NFC is implemented is they've actually taken the secure element and put it in the NFC tool chain with host card emulation with the way of traditionally using payment and this is how Android pay works and Android wallet before it with host card emulation the secure element is off somewhere else um the data is stored you know either in the cloud or in some cases in the SIM card which is why Google had such a problem with Android or with Google Wallet because it needed carriers U carriers approval to use a secure within the SIM card um and then what happens is when you say I want to use my Visa card with this at this particular store the HC kicks in and it tells the NFC hey this is the data descent rather than the data being there already it pulls it from the remote secure element and broadcasts it up and in this way you can actually send essentially anything um anything that can be transf transmitted over NFC and be done with HC you don't need special Hardware or anything else um that's why but the problem the problem with HC and that's what Shane and I were talking about the other day is it requires some sort of a data connection in order for it to work because presumably it's hosted in the cloud or something like that so if you're looking at the Apple watch as something you'd like to be a little more independent of the iPhone um you wouldn't be able to for example uh use hce on the Apple watch if it wasn't paired to a phone so right now you can use the Apple watch to authorize a transaction even if the phone isn't there because it doesn't ire data connection to do that it already has the credit card information stored on the device itself that's why you have to reload your uh credit cards onto the watch to get it on its own secure element on there um so you could do NFC without the phone there and it'll work fine in the current implementation on the watch but if it were hce then you could not uh use like let's say you're going out for a jog and you need to bring your phone or something and then you came back and you wanted to get into a building or something like that if it was using host card emulation to in place of NFC for something like that I'm not super sure about in scenario is or how if and for how long you could cash data within a device itself um right maybe they could have a workaround something I have to imagine that that's that's available because even Google with the their Mantra of well actually it's Facebook's Mantra move fast and break stuff but it could be equally over to Google um even with that in mind I don't think there's a scenario in which they Envision releasing something as fundamental as payments that requires pervasive data I just I can't see them doing that agreed agreed so we're all in agreement um we we talked a little bit about there being no new Apple TV hardware and I kind of want to use the Apple TV existing Hardware to segue into talking about homekit and to do that is is you know the existing Apple TV that third generation unit we've had around for gosh forever now um gained some abilities in in one of the most recent updates where it will work as a homekit access point for for remote control from outside of your home is that a good way of summarizing it Neil any of the homekit integration on your phone uh and your away from your home there needs to be some sort of a device that acts as a hub for homekit within your home to control those devices and so the brain so to speak of it is your Apple TV uh this only works with the third generation Apple TV so if you have the original hockey puck uh second gen Apple TV homekit is not compatible with that um and I believe they stopped even issuing software updates for that one but you I still have one and I still get all the new channels on it I just don't get uh the software updates but that's uh it's interesting uh that they they Continue to update and support even the older Apple TV um it would seem that with no new hardware on the horizon they have no intention of abandoning people that have the current devices considering it seems to me that it also helps with their installed base right you've already got those out there in the world if you just enable the software on it then you can have a lot more people using it immediately right and it's you know it's what 70 bucks now 60 bucks whatever they're charging for the Apple TV so um yeah I it's a no-brainer purchase uh for a lot of people especially if they're excited about homekit it's just a matter of getting the devices in the hands of people and updating some of the hardware that's already out there to be homekit compatible like uh big one missing right now would be Philips Hue um a lot of people own Hue bulbs they're pretty great but no homekit support yet so presumably they need some sort of firmware update for their Hub and that kind of stuff to get it working so it'll be nice once these devices start to come in line there were a bunch announced this week uh some are shipping right now some are shipping next month I would guess next week at WWDC uh you're going to see a lot more homekit uh accessories shown off and hopefully companies like Phillips are going to make some announcements about when they're going to have support and some of the other established players uh nest and Nest May so yeah and whatever those are you got to think that they're going to you got to think that they're going to have uh some level of homekit support I would think theync and the other technology at Google iio doing their own thing yeah but Google is also strangely supportive of Apple's ecosystem I mean they releas a lot of apps first on iOS and stuff like that so I I think that they're cognizant of the fact that a lot of their users have Hardware the reason for that is because they make tons more money from iOS devices than they do from anything else and the balance is Shifting even away from the desktop to mobile devices and when the Lion Share of your Revenue now comes or search Revenue at least now comes from iOS devices you simply can't afford to ignore them it's not the same in the house or really anywhere else like you're never going to see Play support in a CHR gas for which is not going to happen I would guess considering Nest I think it debuted exclusively in Apple Store pre Google purchase yes I would guess that the majority yeah yeah I would guess that to this date the majority of people that own nest thermostats own iPhones I would say it's probably more than 50% of Nest th owners account that you can't just as far as I'm aware I may be wrong but I believe you can't just issue a firw update there's actually just like the mfi program I guess it's part of the mfi program there's an authentication ship required for there an actual piece of hardware for him um so does that mean Philips Hugh won't be able so Philips Hugh won't be able support new Hub like how's that gon to work they released an updated Hub right so all they left all of their other stuff intact and just replace the Hub it's I'm not certain I mean you need to have an off chip anyway but you get that from being a part of the mfi program to begin with and you know you're doing mfi Bluetooth or you're doing mfi Wi-Fi or if you're doing B you get both and you you have to update a firmware and make sure that your new firmware uses the lingos that are appropriate for homekit and I believe you also need an app update because you have to have your app specify that you're joining a home and joining a room and a Zone and all the things that homekit allows you to specify when you start grouping devices together right but none of these things we're talking about were mfi and first voice where the Hugh is not mfi it just happens to work well with Apple devices I think connects to your home ethernet you plug it you plug it an ethernet cable into the back of the Hub and then it has its own proprietary wireless standard that it uses to communicate with the bulbs so it actually works over work too but if they're putting the made for iPod iPhone iPad logo on their boxes then they are taking part in the mfi program and so it's a good question as to whether or not they have what's required to to take advantage of a home kit um can homekit just uh you know use Siri to send signals to an IP based thing like uh Philips hu because I mean I can log in any browser myl with you'll note that the homeit devices that were or based on the user information we got from the homekit devices that were released earlier this week uh there's a special homekit code that you have to use to register your device with homekit um so on the box with your the N digigit code yeah there's a little nine-digit code that you have to actually input to register it and I presume that that's all part of one coherent ecosystem so you can't add something to homekit that's not homekit um enabled that makes sense so there might have to be a new hub for Hue or something like that for this to work great so everybody gets to buy new hardware hope hope you hope you stocked up on your $75 light bu1 bucks um if you just want to buy the Hub this is this is worth bringing up so the three that announced right were Lutron Echo and Inson and echo's announcement said that you know uh L Lutron is out there in the market and available now and and you can buy it and it works um in on announced as you say the new Hub and Echo said we're going to be available in apple in July with the thermostat and they named it the same model right they said it's Echo B3 which is the existing product that's out there but hidden in an FAQ on their website it says that the homekit enabled ones will be available on this date so the current ones are not it's separate product and they're going to be treating them as updating that's not confusing at all same name the same price point and yeah it's it's a little bit of a just box looks the same that's exactly what Apple does yeah no I know it I know yeah but uh it's it's it's going to be interesting you know I didn't really plan on buying another $250 thermostat just to get homekit but um if that's what it comes down to I guess I just would like somebody to create a smart thermostat that works with split air conditioners the world half you're in luck I have there oh yes and it's it's called t or T it's another one of these got the notification about that there you go that's right they're a German company they've been selling in Europe for a long time now and they're just bringing their product to America and I don't know anything about their homekit compatibility at this time but they do handle your split air conditioning excellent you know I'm really excited about homekit I I don't know about anyone else but I've kind of wanted this for a while now I've had Nest I've had echoe the uh the non-home kit enabled version and controlling through a central interface even if that interface is Siri goes a long way for me there have been so many like really I've been after this for a long time too um there have been so many good attempts that came really really close But ultimately failed I mean I guess zigg is probably the best so far it has the widest support among manufacturers but even that doesn't give you the um the Simplicity of theoretically what you'll be able to do with a bunch of home kid well and zigby and zwave oh come on what about Android at home you did not say Android at home did you is that actually it's dead now Google iio 2012 man um you know zigby and zwave and or Z-Wave and uh know all the Technologies and well no X10 is dead don't even X10 me but but zigby and zwave are a part of homekit compatibility you you can address those devices as long as you've got a bridge that talks a be or zwave right and homekit right and that's in the whole spec for homekit that's that's also probably got to be in the spec for Google Brill because the nest has zigg built into it that's how they're talking to protect I think we actually broke that news that Bridges would be allowed just toting our own horn we also called it a year ago the Apple TV would be the H kid bridge by the way in case anybody cares indeed I care do you think so here's the thing we've got uh uh carplay and we've got Android uh Auto or whatever it's called Uh and you see most of the devices now are coming out supporting both platforms do you think that this fall or next year we're going to see Brillo slash homekit uh devices that work with both platforms how's how's this going to how's this going to play is the embedded OS isn't it it's the other one that's their homekit competitor uh yeah but Brillo can work with anything so in theory Brillo could work with homekit right so here's here's how this is there's there's those two competing pieces of the technology but there's also a seate group called All Join which is spelled alj y n and they're basically an open source group trying to get all of these things to all do both and and if you and if you look at Inson and Lutron and who they're partnering with you'll see the all jooin name there because they're trying to to be all things to all of these different people because no one knows which one's going to be the winner yet so the answer is yes yes you are going to see all of these things uh yeah so Brillo is there in beded OS it's it's there for whatever reason it's like a super lightweight Android yeah for whatever reason they feel it needs to exist it's a drop and replacement for R2 for whatever rtos You' usually use in your embedded microcontrollers weave is the other one weave is the weave protocol itself is the H kick competitor which which carplay units were you saying everyone is going Android auto and carplay because the truth is I've only seen one manufacturer that's doing both aftermarket no I've seen like all the new car announcements and stuff so basically the way that it works is uh with a lot of the embedded uh infotainment systems on the cars now that they're announcing I don't know if they're on the market you're talking about the OM shipping them yes right yeah so what you'll see is they have their own um stupid uh overlay operating system and then it treats carplay and Android auto as their own apps within their uh annoying operating system so basically you la you start up your car then you choose carplay and then it launches or you choose Android auto and it seems like a lot of them supporting both it chooses when you connect your phone right oh it auto launches you connect an iOS device well you connect an iPhone specifically you can't connect an iPad and carplay launches you connect an Android L or Android M device and Android auto launches yeah I've Just Seen videos of them where you got to like go on an interface and then tap on carplay and then it goes from their uh UI then to the carplay UI it's like an OS within an OS it's a nightmare you only manually select if you've gone back out because you're listening to an audio source that is not a part of carplay or Android audio if you're listening to the uh the radio so you go back out to the head units interface select your radio stations and then go back tapping to get back to car Player Android auto but when you connect it just jumps in the environment I mean I guess it's easy enough for these companies to just throw both in there and that's what they're doing so uh that way they you know well I mean if I was a car maker that's exactly what I would do because there's right I mean you're covering 90 myself to yeah you're covering 95% of uh smartphones out there on the market today right if you have carplay and Android auto sorry Windows Phone users I notably the only one which is hilarious by the way since Microsoft was first on this with sync I know for sync but um they're not in the current generation of Ford Sync though they were only in the first gen Ford Sync I think I think for ditch them um very recently just like last year um the only one that's not doing both is unsurprisingly Ferrari I can't imagine do do they know someone between Apple and and Ferrari edq yeah you know I've I've got the uh the Pioneer aftermarket unit right now that does uh carplay and Android auto and I actually need to get an Android device to to see what Android auto looks like compared but um but they are the only aftermarket that I can think of right now that does both uh the Alpine Pine unit is a really brilliant implementation of carplay they've got uh you you know how you go in you were saying that you've got the radios world and then you've got carpls interface yeah the Alpine unit those guys are smart they went through and for everything that's a part of their native interface they studiously copied ios8 as best they could so it doesn't feel like you're really transitioning and because they only do carplay you're basically doing settings or radio or backup camera basically and every part of those things looks like it was done by someone who loves Apple did Samsung make the operating system for that or um you know it's interesting because on the pioneer head units you can go and dig into settings and find an about page and they list all of the licenses and you can see that Pioneers using Android open source program to get the uh the source code run Android as the base of their car head unit and running carplay on top of it the Alpine unit doesn't show their licenses and I haven't bothered to try and find a way to disassemble it to see who on Earth is inside does does uh uh does carplay need a uh a operating system to exist within can we just get a head unit that's just carplay well that's that Alpine unit as best you're going to get well yeah but that's what I'm saying like that still has its own iOS ripoff layer or something and I mean anytime I mean like these companies aren't software companies right I mean if you ever had like a car interface or TV interface or anything where you're just like oh this is a great experience you know I mean these companies oh really what was it um LG webos Mercedes well yeah Mercedes their um infotainment stuff is amazing so but it's few and far between right these companies aren't software companies they don't specialize in user interface they don't specialize in having a good experience it's laggy it looks like crap uh you know you just deal with this stuff all the time just get rid of this this over layer it's like Android and and uh you know all these companies differentiate and put their own skin on top of it you know you got touch whz you've got uh HTC sents or whatever just cut this crap out it's justy yeah it's just it's just terrible anytime anytime there's a a layer on top of the intended experience it ruins it and so that's what I'm wondering can I can I just get a carplay unit that's just carplay no is that by Design or is that because these companies suck it's it's by Design Apple carplay runs on top of an OS whether it runs on top of blackberry cix or it runs on top of Android or it runs on top of something something to like go back to to have like a main menu or something I mean I guess if you need to like change the settings here the things right here you need settings right you when and whether settings are stupid like the clock which they can get from the iPhone or there something like balance and fader EQ right there's no app within carplay that can do that there's no app within carplay that can address the uh the radio you know some of them are amfm some of them are FM and HD radio and and apple doesn't know anything about that and really doesn't need to um the volume controls whether it's just up and down or up down in mute or the volumes for that and the volumes for nav voice and those things all of that volume control and volume control interface is not handled within carplay the Alpine makes it look really good like it fits like it should be like it like it was but the Pioneer one is a totally separate world so you're in carplay you're listening to something and you hit the volume control and you get weird quadrilateral Jagged shapes on top of your beautiful carplay interface with rounded rectangles not to mention um climate control and things like that it's worth pointing out that this is this exact conversation is why lots of people think that Apple's car project it's not a car but in car OS h this is one of the reasons that I like homekit so much I don't want to run you know eight million apps to control my devices just I don't want to deal with your user interface your app all that stuff just give me one easy way to do it and that's all I want and just having this overlay on top of it and I got to go back to your crappy OS and then go back to carplay I feel like that just cheapens the experience you you know Apple's doing the best they can because they got to deal with all these manufacturers and partners and stuff like that and that's kind of their compromised solution but you know if Apple was really going to make something that would work it's what you're saying there you know some sort of a car Os or something like that uh where manufacturers could just integrate Apple's operating system from top to bottom control everything in the car just to make it a much better experience because uh the experience uh with most uh integrated operating systems on these devices is terrible because they're not software companies and they don't know anything about user experience at all I think what you have here in the first generation of carplay is the the incar equivalent of the Motorola rocker right oh it's way better than that come on and then no I'm saying gener generationally speaking Yeah I see the analogy in a few years you'll end up with the iPhone equivalent of the carplay it was The Rocker right I didn't get that you you've got that correct it was The Rocker like E3 was the motor Rola name for that thing the one that the one that crashed on Steve Jobs on stage and he wanted to talk way more about the IP than he wanted to talk about that thing but uh you know Neil I got to get you on FaceTime one time and just show you the Alpine and show you the Pioneer and and you will vomit at the Pioneer and you will love I'm glad somebody's got it right because these experiences are just terrible you know these P Pioneer I know I just sullied their name they get a lot of other things right but I look at a company like Samsung and it's like okay Samsung has their share problems right uh in terms of how they do stuff but they make okay hardware and they develop a lot of software clearly how the hell can they make such crappy TV interfaces like have you ever used one of these Samsung Smart TVs and now they got cameras in them you can wave at them and stuff I mean does anybody use that stuff those integrated apps and all that I mean they're a nightmare you would rather deal with anything I know people yeah I know people that use the built-in Netflix app and built-in Amazon app on those things and and you know the thing they said what should I do and I said well you get a nice television great I bought a Samsung great now go buy yourself an Amazon Fire TV stick or anything anything is better you can get a chomecast anything is better but I have but I have all the built-in stuff and they use the built-in stuff and it crashes it lags it doesn't work my used to builtin stuff yeah my parents use this all the time a lot of people in our position really overestimate how much can they figure it out like you know how many times have you been to somebody's house and I mean it's 2015 now you go over to their house and they still have the picture stretched you know in like aspect ratio wrong or they'll have it like hooked up with non- highdef cables on a httv and they'll be like look at how great the picture looks it's like like what like have you looked at the picture so I mean I'm surprised that people like that can figure out these interfaces because I as a nerd loser can't figure out these interfaces half the time when I'm trying to mess around with them so you know for some of these people to get on there like if I if my parents got a smart TV and tried to get on there and figure out how to get on Netflix I mean gez it'd be they be calling me in about two seconds the the difference is that people are willing to spend some amount of time to learn like five basic actions right I spent a lot a large portion of my life helping people develop and optimize software for Enterprise and all of the nice uis don't work in the Enterprise because Enterprise people want something very quick that they can they don't care if there's 97 options on the screen at one time as long as they know the path through their application and it's exactly the same way in stuff for I mean for lack of a better term for normal consumers right people have no problem learning the five things they need to do to watch Netflix right and they'll deal with it they don't adding another box to them is a whole other layer of complexity that they don't want to care about so the the idea for for people like my parents of a TV with everything built in and I I plug it in and that's it I'm done is very do they do they use anything like voice input or motion input or they just using a controller with 8,000 buttons on it they're just using a controller with 8,000 buttons they would probably use voice input if I didn't force them to disable the microphone and the camera because it's a massive invasion of privacy I would I I mean I would I I would love to have some great voice input which is another reason why I'm so upset uh about this no Apple TV next week because I've ranted about it before but the voice control on the Xbox one is so bad like I I cannot believe that a major consumer electronics company could put out something that works so poorly uh on a $500 box that just sits there PL into the wall you know like it's got enough processing power to figure it out but it works so bad I just cannot believe that this is something that's shipping and it has not been updated since it's come out and yet I still use it because it's so convenient I put up with how crappy it is because of the convenience so if someone could actually make a good voice input method for uh controlling my TV and everything in the living room Apple then I would really love that and would buy that in a heartbeat if anyone's gonna do it I what about the uh Amazon Echo I don't have one myself yeah you got to hold the remote you know i' I lost the remote to my Apple TV years ago and I just use the remote app on my phone to control it and now on my Apple watch well which is awesome probably the best use I have for my Apple watch uh the remote app to control my Apple TV that thing's awesome uh yeah you remember when Apple used to ship laptops and and Mac minis with remotes yeah the little white plastic ones yeah the little plastic ones those are sending out the same IR signal that today's Apple TV expects so I've got six of those white ones you want to mail me one cuz I don't have one we just grab another no well the rumor is that right the new Apple TV is going to have a touchpad on it for its input method so that strikes me as insane balls I don't think that happens or it does me it does to me as well it also strikes me as insane balls because actually I also use the remote app because even though my Apple T remote is sitting six inches from my face right now I also use the remote app because I'm lazy and trying to navigate the Apple TV UI with the touchpad is an exercise and frustration like have you ever tried to get on in Netflix have you ever tried to go um to the related titles like when you're in a movie right you're in the movie The Specific movie screen and this the related titles along the bottom every at least eight or 10 times when I try to scroll down to the related titles I go I even do that on the end up in the next screen yeah even on the home screen right so you want you want to go over one and this is one of those one of those situations where having a physical remote with a click on it to just go over one is better than a touchcreen because you swipe to the left and even on my watch watch I'll swipe to the left and then the next thing I know it goes over four icons it's like no wait go back you know so yeah so I don't use the app because I want a real physical thing I if I have to unlock a phone launch an app and then pick which Apple TV I'm control it's just way too much just give me the dam mode now that said if I had an iPhone 6s with haptic feedback on my display like we click every time you go over that would be awesome would be really coolall game yeah that's a whole different ball game well but what if it what if it's integral part of the experience with an app store right so you got to think outside of the box of uh just just sitting well historically the first Apple TV cost 249 bucks and then they dropped it to 165 bucks and then they dropped it to19 and now now we have Apple TVs that were 99 and are now 69 so when you add in the cost of a touchcreen remote well I I I kind of alluded the price point I kind of alluded to it before right they're still supporting even second gen Apple TV even though they're not giving it software update still getting content on it right so who says that the $69 Apple TV is going to go anywhere they can introduce a $200 Apple TV and still have both devices available but if you want the App Store and you want to get apps to you know do new and interesting things with your TV like for example play games then perhaps a uh controller with a the touch panel on it becomes an integral part of the experience maybe that's uh maybe that's what they're going to do with it who knows I mean presumably right they're going to have they already have Bluetooth controller support for made for iPhone controllers presumably those same controllers are going to connect to a new Apple TV and you have a full-fledged game console and not only do you have a full-fledged game console but you have one that allows you to download apps to multiple devices and only buy once so now buy byy Nintendo 3DS buy byy uh you know PlayStation VA in addition to the game consoles that plug into your TV Apple's now entered itself into both of those markets and they're small markets but they'll wipe them out well no there's no Apple TV coming so I don't think so so is that your W when they pull when they pull the trigger on that hard I mean they got to get developers on board right they're going to show Steve J years ago made a comment about game consoles and how much they had sold or whatever and he he he was mentioning it during one of their presentations and he was remarking you know that the Xbox 360 or something had sold some amount of consoles and it was small it was nothing it was like potatoes right it was like you know oh they've ship 25 million consoles today 25 million consoles like are you kidding me you know Apple ships that many phones you know in no time so apple is looking for a much bigger market and that's why I say they could wipe out these markets the hardcore gamers are going to stick to their boxes their PCS you know the Xbox One whatever but that casual game Market that bought you know 200 million Wiis back in the day when that was a fat or something that's something where Apple could just come in and clean up right uh imagine crossplatform games where you can play it on your phone you can play it on your iPad you can play it on your Apple TV it syncs through iCloud all of your achievements are saved through Game Center the infrastructure is there they've got it there just to to knock it out of the park it's just a matter of pulling the trigger and they apparently aren't going to pull the trigger next week because for Apple it's not really about that market it's about the subscription TV that's my guess my guess is the reason that they decided to pull the hard were next week is because they're more interested in the ongoing revenue of the subscription subscription TV service that gaming um uh ecosystem you just described is exactly how it would work if you are all Microsoft right now no it isn't you can't play Xbox One games on your PC Mobile that's exactly how if you buy a copy you know I mean if you buy a copy of this is where Microsoft's so stupid right if you buy a copy of uh halo the Master Chief collection for your Xbox one you can play it on your Xbox one now meanwhile Microsoft has a voice controlled personal assistant called Cortana on the phones which is named after a halo character you know where Cortana is not it's not on the Xbox One the the very game console where you can play Halo games I mean the logic doesn't make any sense at Microsoft it's just like a bunch of different silos operating over there and and their game division is just it they don't care about it apparently I don't know why they do the things they do or how they operate but you're right it would make sense if you could just buy a game and play it on your PC or on your Xbox one right why wouldn't they do that that would that would be brilliant but you can't do it if you buy an Xbox One game you can only play it on your Xbox one right can there are some games those games together at the same time right so you can play if you have FIFA if you have guys guys guys so if you have FIFA right you can play FIFA but not on the Xbox One or FIFA on your is there a Windows tablet right now if there was you can play FIFA there and then go back to your Xbox and you're you're logged and you're logged into your on your phone right and then when you go back to your Xbox your progress for mobile is there on FIFA on Xbox at least yeah it's a different game but I'm saying the actual well it's always going to be a different game there's no I don't think it's always going to be a different game I mean if you look at some of the graphics that you have on the iPad right now on the iPhone right if you blow those up to TV quality games like real racing which can be played through AirPlay I don't think that Apple needs to put out a graphic Powerhouse console and the game can be you know equivalent experience running on the same base code play it on any screen size you want the only thing that's missing from this equation is the Mac there's no ability to buy an app for your iPhone uh or iPad and then be able to download it on your Mac and play the equivalent on there if if they that that's the one piece of it that's missing but right now all they would have to do is put an app store on Apple TV and give it crossplatform support with iPhone apps buy it once play it on all of them and have it sync and they would be ahead of Sony they'd be ahead of Microsoft already and they they would have just entered the market and already knocked both of them out of that out of that space all right guys I want to wind it up here because we're going to have an interview with special guest the CEO of inston who is one of the homekit partners coming up so thanks a lot and I'm so glad we had this uh this talk all about Apple TV and Microsoft uh Neil El Presidente where can we find you on the internet uh you can find me uh at Apple Insider obviously uh where I'm slaving away every day and I'm also on Twitter at this is Neil NE fantastic Shane El Presidente with the coup coming where can we find you um well you can find me at Apple Insider and apparently soon you can find me in NE position at Apple Insider fantastic well this concludes this portion of episode 19 stay tuned for just a moment and we'll be back with uh the CEO of Inson so at this point in the Apple Insider podcast I'm pleased to introduce Joe data who is the CEO of Inson a uh connected home home automation company Joe welcome uh thanks Victor thanks for having us so I I know the inst un name from having seen some of the products in places like smarthome.com and some of the home improvement stores can you tell me a little bit more about the history of the company and um you know how long you've been around and what are the kinds of things that you've historically done sure yeah insty on the product line and insty on the technology is uh the culmination of what is now 23 years of work we entered the industry in 1992 as a catalyst blogger of thirdparty products in '95 we were amongst the first e-commerce sites of of any industry to launch a store in uh about the same time we started developing our own products and in '97 acquired two small engineering firms to eventually launch our own brand uh line of products to to build products that the other manufacturers uh weren't building and uh as a cataloger and a in a in a direct marketing uh player in the space the customers were telling us certain things that they wanted and and if they weren't available we just decided that well we we'd make them then and in the late 90s we were out talking to the retailers and Builders and it became clear to us that the wireless technologies that were available that we could buy off the shelf and put into the products um they just weren't good enough and I I knew the reliability wasn't going to be there to to make a a sustainable uh effort at a broad Mass Market market so that's when we started working on the Inson technology which we launched in ' 05 and and now is in millions of homes uh and it's a uh very very different technology it's a mesh technology but it is a dual mesh technology so we have an RF mesh U like a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is RF neither of those are mesh mesh means repeating networks um and on top of that we layer in the electrical wires of the house and because the problems that exist on one layer don't exist on the other when those problems occur and they they do um the other physical layer works right around it and you end up with a really really really robust wireless connection between any devices all your devices right so so prehistory was there was this thing called X10 and X10 had problems am I saying it right that's right so far yep okay and that was about the time frame when retailers and and consumers and customers started asking you to do something about some of the problems that they were seeing out there yeah well to to be honest the the first problems were at the physical layer uh if you wanted to turn one of the old-fashioned switches on you press the bottom of the switch and if you wanted to turn it off you press the bottom of the switch and that's not how light switches work and so customers are saying we'd like one where you press the top of the switch for on and the bottom for off that seemed obvious we couldn't get any of the manufacturers to build it so we did um then the next layer was uh as we were reaching out to a broader Market they were telling us we'd like it to work and we we'd have to be here to support it when it didn't um and too too much of our revenues were from selling problem solving products kits Services Etc and um that just it it's it's a house of cards and people in the x10 world every device you added to your network weakened your network and we wanted something that was just the opposite your your your network should get stronger as you add nodes and so um given our background on the on the power line and the fact that there are mobile devices and battery power devices like sensors and things we we we knew we needed to reach into the uh RF space and boy uh it just was it it is really an unbelievable solution the the reliability is on the orders um on the order of a 100 times better having these two physical layers and uh so we uh we love it customers love it and uh we're having a lot of success with it yeah just so I understand um see if I'm saying this right when you have power line in in homes like we have in North America you have different phases of the fuse box or the breaker box and so you've got uh a device at one outlet and a device at another outlet but if they're not on the same circuit or not on the same phase they may not be able to talk to each other so that's one of the weaknesses of power line do I have that right well um technically it's a single phase that's been split but but you can think of it as you know hard to talk uh from one to the other it's not always that they can't talk from one to the other but um quite commonly uh a a single transmitter on one end of one phase can't talk to a single receiver on the other end of the other phase and you can think of this as being the same as putting your Wi-Fi router um you know up in in your office or spare bedroom and trying to talk to the washing machine in the basement it's a very good and especially if it's in a metal can like most washing machines are um very good chance that it won't reach it's simply out of range and so um the problems the there are real problems in power line there are real problems in RF they happen to be just different in the old world people would try to connect the two uh the the two sides of the phase or the two phases as you put it in the circuit panel which is not consumer friendly and and so in the r in in the inston world we simply use RF as the bridge between those phases or or locations on the power line that that have problems so the other big issue for the power line are switching power supplies so certain manufacturers of certain switching power supplies end up inadvertent ly injecting noise or attenuation onto the power line and and can create little sink holes of communication on the power line well that's fine RF will get us there likewise um when you put a a metal refrigerator door in in the way of something that c creates an RF Shadow and um or concrete stucco on your walls if you're trying to talk to a spa outside or uh metal around uh washing machine both both physical paradigms um are are challenging to get uh anything nearing Perfection out of uh repeating helps so mesh definitely helps so all else being equal we we believe mesh is supered to a star network configuration like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth um and then two meshes all the better right and the uh you know the instructions that you're passing turn on and off a light switch that signal gets sent from some command box an outlet a wall plate and then it repeats down across the uh the mesh changing from y from RF to to power line as needed yeah basically yep that's right so uh we use something called simoc casting it's a very very different approach we we can do it and most Engineers roll their eyes when we say that because if you're pushing a lot of data around simoc casting uh typically is not a good idea but we're just trying to turn an outlet on or off or send 72 degrees to to a thermostat or I'm wet from a leak sensor to very small amounts of data or sometimes obviously we're managing the databases inside these devices but in all cases it's relatively small amounts of data and so by kind of rearching how that data is uh formatted simoc casting allows us to send a message from the controller if you will and it can be a central controller it can be a switch a motion sensor whatever to one or more devices on the network and instead of routing the signal uh every device that hears it repeats it a given number and a specified number of times and so the signal uh there's no network configuration there's no network configurator there's no network memory that gets eaten up in all of this and so you can build the network as large as you want and the larger the better uh we have an embassy in Washington DC that uses Inson for all of their their whole campus irrigation lighting system uh uh Outdoors lighting system is all run on inston it's a big campus we have uh commercial industrial buildings of million square feet we have uh homes there's there's a massive uh home product in Colorado that has nearing 2,000 inston nodes in it so it just scales like uh like there's no tomorrow theoretically there's no limit to the number of instand devices you could have in a network and when you hit the on button or if you want to all off is a great example you hit all off all of the lights will um respond within what can be perceived as without a delay by the human brain and that we call it inston stands for instanton and so you mash a button everything in the network that is supposed to respond will respond in um you know tens or in worst case a couple hundred milliseconds which is faster than uh it it appears instant to us it's it's almost imperceptible 100 milliseconds is totally acceptable right right so that's that's pretty huge that that you've got this ability to create these huge installs and even with all the people using them all around the the campus as you say um the Network's not so chatty as to be swamped right so the other the other side of the equation is it's important to architect uh the chattiness and so um it I I think uh what what we're seeing in in the connected home space is that uh there's a lot of new stuff happening a lot of new products being developed and most of the engineers that come into this come from uh you know high-tech engineering jobs where they're used to pushing around a lot of data they have networks that act a certain way and do certain things and and in that Paradigm those uh best practices are are well documented and understood in our space what we have found over 20 years is is a very different approach is the ideal approach so you can put Wi-Fi into light bulbs and and Outlets but uh you they'll suffer from some certain list of of challenges and and you know cost complexity Etc um we're on the other end of the spectrum uh our our vision is uh Inson in billions of nodes this industry is very very Nation still and there's a lot of Runway ahead of us and a tech technology that costs significantly less and works significantly better well you know we still believe has a has an uh an excellent opportunity uh for some serious penetration and over the C last year we've been making announcements about our work with Microsoft uh Apple who we just released uh and one of the two first the only two launch Partners uh for homekit with Apple uh day before yesterday and and then a few weeks ago um we launched uh an all jooin product with uh our friends at Microsoft um and and oh by the way in in January we announced our work with Google and works with NES program and so we have 200 products that solve the vast majority of building automation small to mediumsized commercial uh all the way down to small Residential Building automation home automation connected living uh product or uh situations out there and and it takes a a long time to build up that arsenal of products and because we've been around uh so long we've done that and so if you want to control your water heater you need a 220 volt high capacity relay switch that you can commun communicate to and there's just not a lot of those out there most most of the new entrance in our space come out with a light bulb or a plug-in module or something like that and and that's great if all you're trying to do is change the color of the bulb in the lamp in the room you're in but uh once once you once you kind of get addicted to the uh to the uh convenience uh safety and fun of having these things connected you want to do more and then you better have all kinds of switches keypads Outlets modules inline modules fan controllers thermostats you know the list goes on and on yeah so backing up a step you you've talked about residential and Commercial so who is the person that that ought to buy an inston product who who is the target consumer for you uh the middle of our Bullseye is uh a homeowner and um and to to us it really means about that broad there are a few country so we're in over 70 countries so that's not all but you know if you're in Europe uh you know North America South America Australia we're we're we have distribution we have products that are developed for that market and um whether you want to install it yourself or have somebody install it we're in different and in most cases we or if it's bought at retail we don't know because a lot of the stuff that's bought at retail is installed by the consumer and a lot is handed to a contractor to have him install and so um that's our target market but our products find their way into some really fun places like embassies and 800,000 square foot printing facilities because it works and it's affordable it's reliable and um it it it's relatively simple um and I don't mean to kind of throw ourselves under the bus here but you know we're always trying to make it simpler and there's a lot of work to be done but uh I think given you know if you compare us to what else is out there um we're we're quite competitive yeah I I wouldn't say aiming at Simplicity is throwing yourselves under the bus at all people don't really realize just how hard work it is to make something simple yeah that's it it that is such a a good point um one of my favorite quotes from a a dear friend uh basically the inventor of the universal remote and I remember one day uh having lunch with him and he said you know Joe simple is hard and coming from a person that had had as much success uh as he had had that that had a lasting impression on me yeah and and when I think about universal remotes he's right simple is really hard it is it is yeah I've yet to find the perfect universal remote yeah and and they're still working on it um there there are now new players in that space working on it making making progress all along but uh it's difficult and I think that that's probably an excellent Paradigm comparison or uh if that's the right phrase but um you know they're trying to help you unify the control of let's say a TV a set toop box and a a stereo and we're trying to do that plus your light switches and your outlets and your sensors and you know so uh the it it in some ways it's even more challenging yeah now the Apple homekit experience kind of does that doesn't it I mean when we're controlling all these different things through Siri isn't that turning the iPhone and Siri into the remote control uh well uh in some ways yes but um one of the things that we've learned and many of the other players in the industry have learned is that um you have to be very careful about what really works and what you know what doesn't always work and so uh the the the homekit Paradigm or platform certainly brings unity and uh some kind of obvious consistency to how things uh will work or at least the things you can and can't do with uh the products that are out there um it's uh obviously it's just launching and so uh I think the future is very very exciting um and the present is exciting too don't get me wrong but um voice voice recognition um and and the way we humans communicate uh and the way the platform deals with it um I I I think people maybe the best way I can put this is I think most people will start by hitting a button on the phone to make something happen and then start experimenting with uh with Siri um and uh for a guest or even the the less technical uh people in the house it's very exciting to see it work but uh learning the discipline about what needs to be said to make it work sometimes is a great experience and sometime isn't I I've seen it go both ways right so um I I I'm a huge believer in you know kind of the the mobile device uh UI ux um and I'm very excited about the the the series side of it um but um I think uh time time will tell how quickly it'll move towards being in that great category and with apple it almost always ends up being great so you know I'm very very excited about it but uh wouldn't surprise me if a little bit of work uh stands between between here and there sure you know I I think about the difference between a good product and a good demo and uh you know the idea of picking up the phone and talking to Siri and having something happen seems like a great great thing and it might be a great demo but if you have to understand the the syntax that you have to use when you speak with Sheri maybe that's uh yeah and they're well on their way I think to nailing it um but uh but it it is not for the faint of heart and and when we think about things we think about differently so I think I'm probably making too much of the work that still needs to be done if you've got one or two devices it's probably going to be really great a wonderful experience right out of the box today um if you've got one of our ours or Lutron hubs you can probably go home and and you know get that light your lights to turn on and off but when you start uh building out networks uh and our customers do our average customer has dozens of communicating devices in their house um and that doesn't happen overnight but it happens over time um and as you start building out you know whole house different rooms different devices Etc then it becomes more challenging just like that universal remote that we're talking about on on on your nightstand or your coffee table um it it's it's non-trivial well but the alternative is I have to you know if I'm using my phone as the controller and I'm using an app a button within an app to control things I have to unlock lock the phone launch the app get to the right device press a button there yes there's no doubt that uh the the phone as an interface um is is awesome uh at certain times and and maybe less than awesome at others uh I think the the watch the smart watch really helps here it's it's you know all I got to do is uh point it towards me and I've I've I'm through the first two things that you know I don't have to take it out of my uh pocket and I don't have to wake it up and for the things that I do regularly I pop it on my favorite screen I'm I'm I'm in and out and um I'm I'm really excited about the watch as as an interface likewise when you're not at home and alerts are the most important part of what a connected home is about the water sensor triggers an alert and says you know your clothes washers of flooding right or or it's 4:00 and your latch key kid arrives home um you know for years those alerts came to me in my pocket and you know we're all busy and you don't you know I I see it at some point later well now I see it if if uh you know if they arrive home at 402 I see it at 402 because I get the haptic you know and a ding and I I crank my wrist and you know uh the front door open and front door closed okay 402 everything's good so I I'm excited uh the quick always uh always available control side as well as the uh super quick and easy alert side uh through the the watch is is really exciting cool let me ask I mean we talked a little bit about how you don't have a the best insight into how people are installing it whether people consumers buy it in retail and install it themselves H or contractors are buying it so do you have uh sort of a customer outreach program have you interviewed customers about what problem they were solving when they bought your product the first time we do and um we so uh if they buy it through our own sales channel uh they always receive a a follow-up survey and and every single one of those responses I I think forever um is and has been uh read and gets categorized and and communicated and process um where we increasingly now are going through Channel Partners you know like Walmart Target Costco Best Buy Home Depot Menards Etc um it's it's more difficult uh to do that we we're we could certainly be uh a little more uh aggressive if that's right term or sensitive uh and and and reach out more because our call center uh deals with the challenges you know every day and every week we're massing uh lots of data about what motivates them to call in and I can tell you that we've learned long ago that the problems uh and maybe this is what you're really getting at uh the problems that the uh our customers uh are looking to solve and and they they are such a broad uh scope or segment of the market that I I think I think that it is the connected home space and I've never SE data to suggest otherwise there everybody that's too strong people uh have different Lifestyles they have different family situations they have different values they have different physical structures they live in right some of us live in detached homes some of us live in small multi some of us live in large multi um that of course you can there's a lot to be learned and there are lots of groups that you know have real numbers but to really nail it you have to you have to have a product offering that that crosses uh all these borders and uh and and your user interfaces that can address them all and um I'm not saying we or anyone else are there yet but I'm I'm excited about what we and others are doing and and and these these uh platforms like homekit what makes them really exciting is you know it comes from the world world's one of the world's most uh respected Brands and so having that logo on the package I think gives the customer the confidence that hey this is going to work if I buy that box over there regardless of the color shape size cost brand retail store with a box over here they're going to work together and I think that's a really really important uh it it it's going to uh take a lot of the intimidation out of uh the technology of what we do out of the customer's mind yeah I agree that that confidence of knowing that I can get these multiple different things and they're all going to communicate and work together is uh is powerful not just from confidence standpoint of buying the thing but in in terms of of um you know the flexibility of of not being locked into the first thing you get and and knowing that multiple Brands um are are supported so I don't have to worry about whatever the brand is on the box I'm buying even if that company were to decide to get out of the race or or just become unavailable I I I'm I'm not um I'm not I'm not stuck with something that won't work any longer your your home didn't just become obsolete right exactly so let me ask you know what was it like to work with apple on this and and how did that relationship go uh it's been fantastic uh we we had not uh and it was wasn't for lack of trying but we hadn't until the last couple years we hadn't had a lot of interaction with the folks at Apple um uh we we have felt very well supported from uh from the leadership uh behind the homekit uh platform uh I think it's well known that Apple isn't always the most communicative uh company when it comes to B2B uh work but I can tell you that they're decisive and and supportive and uh so you know it not surprisingly there were changes in the the specification as time went along but you know that that's just absolutely part for the course and and and homekit wouldn't be as good as it is without it so um all in all it's been a really really great experience we we we feel like um it's just beginning you know now that it's really live uh you know now now instead of uh you know us marketers and US Engineers deciding what it should be now consumers will start weighing in and and and you know that that's where our heritage is and so I'm very very excited to be to be live within now yeah so you know one of the things I'm anticipating I'm I'm predicting and I could be going out on a limb here is that the availability of homekit increases the number of users that decide that they're going to buy a product like this this um I think almost exponentially I I I couldn't agree more uh the the if if I'm an outsider looking into this space and most people are um the fact that uh you know one of the greatest companies on Earth is in this space has invested in uh launching this it it just gives me a confidence that this this category is is for real and the fact that they say this stuff works together I know it'll work together so one of the things that's held me back personally as a consumer has been the initial cost and just simply knowing what to get as a first product what what do I get as a starter kit what do I do first and how much is it going to set me back so now that that we have these homekit compatible products what do you think the first thing that someone who doesn't have any of these things in the house has should should yet but does have an iPhone and does have say an Apple TV yeah so the the the two products that are shipping today that are homekit compatible are hubs from Inson and Lutron and uh and Lutron is a great company and and T I mean they're the leader in in remote lighting control um and so that's where people can begin and even if the first two products were out were um I don't know bark Stoppers I would tell you lighting control that's where most people start in the space it's very easy to understand it's totally um you know we all have Lighting in our house we all have light switches and we all enjoy Automation and remote control of it and once you've got it you almost can't imagine not having it and so the best place to start is either a plug in lamp um or a screw in remote control bulb uh I think the plug-in lamp is probably the the best and and the uh certainly the one that's been around the longest so a couple of plug-in dimmer modules and and a bridge and you're off and running and what happens is people start having you know really aha moments about uh devices that are in their house that they don't use because the control is uh just not convenient enough my mom had uh a china cabinet that had a beautiful lighting inside but the had a little cord switch on it that of course you couldn't even reach so those lights were never on I just plug it into a little module and and and now you can control it from your phone or Siri or tabletop remote or handheld remote or wire in remote right and that that's when it gets really fun is when you start seeing how this impacts your life in a in a positive way and you start adding uh more products and more types of products well now I'm a fan of the the connected thermostat I have the nest I have the Echo and I I like these things because my experience is is that I get kicked in the middle of the night saying it's too hot or it's too cold to go turn it down and instead of going downstairs to adjust the temperature I'm now using the phone as the controller for that now you you mentioned that inston is a part of the works with Nest program can you tell me a little bit about what kind of interactions that I would get from doing that well um so if you use our apps and and you use you know even if it's everything else in your house is instan you can install a s thermostat and and control it within our app Paradigm likewise um we will be working with nasta on their uh they've got several uh business efforts that because we have products that that no one else has and because our our our communication technology is Uber reliable um customers that join in uh ways to save uh monthly electricity costs by uh allowing the utility to turn off you know let's say your pool pump or your water heater uh during high high demand times um you know we'll be working with them to bring those products uh into consumer hands most of those will be uh non retail you know installed uh sold through the utility company kind of thing right right or or similar other trades as well um so we you know we're we're kind of working uh with them on both sides kind of on the retail side that uh you can you can use ncn stuff and Nest stuff in the same house same app UI and then uh on on the installed uh basis as well going forward this this brings me to a different question that I hadn't anticipated asking um so if I have nest and I have inston products the bridge and a a couple of lighting solutions can I control Nest through the inston app and if I can can I control the nest through homekit um great questions yes to the first question you can control the nest thermostat through the inston app Nest is uh as as so five companies announced products more or less at launch uh the ourselves and Lutron were the only products that were shipping at launch echoe is one of the other three MH um but Nest isn't one of the remaining two uh and so uh all I can tell you is that that they have not announced uh becoming uh homekit compatible doesn't mean that they won't be mhm I'm not asking you to speak for them I was just wondering if there was a way that I could control them because you work with them and you know sort of back door yeah so um there it today the answer is no okay it doesn't mean that that won't change because you know as as I mentioned we're just getting uh off the tarmac here um but today today we can't that's that's a fine answer I understand it completely okay you know I I am asking you you know what two days after the announcements been made so yeah it's a pretty exciting time um wow you know I I'm so glad that you've been able to take the time to spend with me on this and and talk about hom kid and talk about working with apple um what what would you like to leave our listener with what should our listener understand from from you about homid about inston and about where things are going and what what they should pay attention to well I I think uh just what's what's possible right it's really exciting that uh if it's in house you you can either control it today or in the near future and the tech Giants uh like apple are throwing their weight and you know and their uh abilities into the ring which I feel confident means that the user experiences starting two days ago but even more importantly two years from now are just going to get better and better and that's uh the this this last mile for us as a company is is is bringing together user experiences that uh wives and aunts and uncles and grandmothers enjoy every bit as much as uh the early adopter uh and and so I just that's you know people like apple that's what they do and so uh we're just really thrilled to be part of this very exciting launch and and uh and equally excited about where it's going to go from here because uh I'm just I'm I'm quite confident they they will work hard and smart to build an Ever uh more wonderful experience so it's really really exciting time well thank you so much for joining us uh this has been Joe data with the aider podcast I'm your host Victor marks and thank you for listening please uh leave a positive review on iTunes and tell your friends thanks Victoryou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 19 of our show where we discuss the latest news about Apple iPhone iPad mac and more we're recording on Thursday May 28th 2015 today we'll be talking about Matteo Prime sense uh there was an acquisition by Apple WWDC predictions Apple TV and homekit we have with us this week Apple Insider senior editor El Presidente Neil Hughes hey how's it going guys Shane Cole leader I thought I wanted I was going to be El Presidente well exercise your leadership dude fine hola Shane Cole L President E hello yeah that presidential coup is working out well for you and I'm your host Victor marks so let's start off Shane you were talking uh earlier you'd written this story about prime sense and a recent acquisition of a company called Mato yeah so Apple bought a company called Mato who is uh right at this moment one of the most well-known or maybe the most well-known augmented reality companies in the world from the software side their technology Powers every important AR application right now Ikea's virtual catalog that lets you hold your iPad up and see how your new couch will look in your living room room uh Ferrari's AR sales app as though the Ferraris themselves aren't cool enough Audi's owner manual which is an AR owners manual for one of their higher end cars those are all AO things and apple bought them for what is presumably a large amount of money we don't know exactly how much yet um but given that it's probably one of the most public Acquisitions from Apple in a long time um aside from beats because Thea is a well-known firm uh it's surely quite a bit um fits in pretty well with another odd acquisition they made a few years ago in Prime sense which is was and is rarely semiconductor company that made basically Hardware that lets computers see in three dimensions uh it lets computers see like we see and uh they're most wellknown most publicly known for making the first generation of connect sensors and anybody who's used an augmented reality app knows that the better your data is the data about space around you the better augment the reality works it's no good if you you know look through your phone at a street and your phone doesn't know how far down the street the business is trying to show you is uh early versions of yelp's AR stuff were kind of like that it didn't work very well uh so I think these two in the future we're going to see these two Acquisitions be really complimentary to each other so you know when Apple acquires a company in in the past they've acquired for for technology you know the um they acquired a keyboard company that became a the the the touch sensitive technology the uh the touch panel in the iPhone they've acquired the mapping company that became part of Apple Maps the other kind of Acquisitions that that they do and other companies will do is is for the talent and then they'll take the talent and apply them to some other technology um so my question is is do we think that this is going to come together as some sort of augmented realityy product or is this a talent acquisition where these people are really talented let's put them all together in the room and see what they can do to our existing stuff I think when you put you want to go I was yeah I was just GNA say I think when you put the two together if you took Prime sense in and of itself and the Matteo in and of itself I think you could say that they're both Aqua hires but if you put the two together I think it's fairly clear that they're trying to do something with some sort of advanced depth perceiving vision um whether that's actually a consumer facing product is a whole other question entirely though but I think it is and a lot of this ties into mapping I think as well you could see pretty easily where stuff like augmented reality would be helpful uh you're trying to find a storefront or something like that um and you know overlays and those sort of things uh there's been products out there that have done that kind of thing before but if we're integrated into a mapping solution I think that that would be pretty helpful and it it kind of reminds me a little bit too of of a patent that apple had years ago it was kind of a a a crowdsourced uh street view concept where basically people would take pictures and opt into a service where you know you could take pictures of storefronts and stuff like that and it would integrate into a mapping system so I think you could see some of that stuff start to tie into mapping as well the prime sense is interesting because that could be consumer facing but if you look at their technology that they've had in the past with uh Microsoft Xbox Connect and all that it really didn't work for fine controls you really had to do like broad motions for it to work which is why connect was kind of like a fad that never really stuck around so whatever technology Prime sense had Apple was definitely going to have to improve on on it um if they were going to do a consumer facing product because a lot of that stuff that they had put out in the past uh in their Partnerships with other companies was not really not the kind of stuff that I could see apple doing well there are many other applications for threedimensional um sensing other than things like connect U you mentioned maps and that's a really important one but where I see that going it's not so much street view although there's almost certainly some sort of 3D street view coming that's a virtual certainty but uh something more to do with interior maps and my question about the about bridging that Gap with augmented reality is are people really going to hold their phones up in front of them if I mean I guess if it works right so that's I think something that's held wide use of AR down is who wants to stand out in the middle of the street and hold their phone up in front of them turning around in a circle trying to find the thing they're looking for right you look like a tool right it's the same problem that we have with Google Glass and and you wouldn't wear cardboard or Oculus in the daily use well I think people look really stupid when they go out and public with an iPad and take hold it up and take pictures and yet plenty of people do that so I mean oh does it look weird that we're holding a phone up in front of our face well we're already doing that all day anyhow so I I don't know it does I think if it works if it's responsive and quick it it'll be it'll catch on you know I'm thinking of like what was the name of that one that was out years ago it was called like layer or something and it would show you points of interest yeah it I haven't used it in years so maybe it's awesome now but when it when I first tried out oh were they well it was laggy it didn't work it was it was kind of like a Neato Concept in you were just like oh look at what they did but uh it didn't really have a practical application I feel like if something was responsive and valuable especially for like indoor maps and stuff like that like if you've ever tried to navigate a big mall or something trying to get around those places is a nightmare and so Apple has been uh really um acquiring a number of indoor GPS and and location positioning companies for indoor type of stuff if you think about it like if you're getting directions on the road well you follow streets you know turn here the streets have names if you're inside at a mall or something there's no streets no names or anything like that so getting around can be kind of difficult on foot especially in some of these big shopping centers so I could see where location plus augmented reality uh kind of stuff would uh definitely have a benefit cool so we we're talking about what we're thinking this could become and I want to get on to WDC because as we know that the worldwide developer conference is coming up and and we don't really know what to expect we we have a little bit of an idea about what not to expect now but what are your thoughts about this upcoming event well I uh wrote a uh article yesterday kind of giving a summary of what we were expecting at WWDC and as luck would have it uh about an hour after I published that is uh which was this long thing on a new Apple TV and how we're expecting a new Apple TV uh that is when uh New York Times and recode came out with stories saying oh actually won't be an Apple TV next week so I look like a big fat idiot after running that story great timing on my part um so we will not be seeing an Apple TV next week but uh it's already a sure thing I mean Apple's already said basically that we're going to see iOS 9 we're going to see uh OS 10.11 um and presumably we're going to see a new subscription music service and then beyond that um probably not a lot developer Focus conference so it's going to be all about the software and it's going to be all about the next gen operating systems Shane what do you have to add I have exactly nothing to add um Everything Neil said is what I would have said at the same time well and we'll also see we'll also see the watch we'll see the watch uh more integration with iPhone and maybe Mac and iPad more seamless kind of you're just going to see that uh that's kind of Apple's direction for the last few years right more more integration between the their different platforms so it's kind of bluring the lines between OS 10 and iOS and now watch OS and they're going to have a preview of software that's going to allow apps to run natively on the watch so you don't get that stupid loading screen every time you try to launch a third party app which will be nice um so what do I want to see uh I want to see what I just said more integration between the platforms we've actually been running a series at Apple Insider on um uh things that Apple might int have introduced on the Apple watch that it would bring to to other platforms and devices which is something that the company's done for years right introduce new technology and then gradually bring it elsewhere and one of the things that I wrote about that I really want to see is uh notifications being uh more intelligent as they come into your devices so right now if you're wearing an Apple Watch and your phone is locked you get the notification on your watch but not on your phone but if I get an iMessage uh it'll ring on my Mac first but then it'll ring like two seconds later on my iPhone and you know it's one of those things where I feel like the devices now all talk to each other and they know you know which one is my primary screen um if I'm on my Mac then I probably shouldn't be getting notifications on my wrist and on my phone and all that I should probably just be getting them on my Mac and then when I walk away from my Mac I could get them on my wrist and then when my phone's unlocked I could get them on my phone you know that kind of stuff uh that's something I'd really like to see in the next gen versions of iOS and Os 10 just kind of uh smarter notifications if I cancel out notifications on my Mac they shouldn't be on my phone anymore uh vice versa that kind of stuff uh there's just little little nagging little things that still exist between the platforms where they don't communicate quite as well as they should well said well said you know I've been thinking about things well for one thing I would really like for system preferences sound to work well that's something that we've noticed here um what about you know you didn't mention in the uh the rumor about an apple television service you mentioned the Radio Service the music service but what about a subscription video service well all the reports have said that there's not going to be anything until this fall maybe later just because they're trying to deal with these idiot television companies and content owners that don't want to change and they're stuck in the rabit ear Dark Ages and you know God forbid Apple come along and do something that uh uh you know might shake things up and get people subscribing and and you know paying money directly to them and rather than to cable providers and stuff like that but no one wants to shake up the status quo so it's a long arduous process of trying to get these companies in line you saw HBO now offers HBO now Showtime announced this week that they're going to have a similar service which is actually going to be a little bit cheaper than HBO it's going to be $12 a month versus 15 for HBO um and that's a step in the right direction but I mean that adds up quick right if I'm subscribing to Hulu and sling TV and Showtime and HBO uh you know for all my over-the toop SL IP TV services I'm paying as much as I was for TV before with a cable provider so you know it's kind of this uh catch22 situation where as all these networks come out uh with their own services and they want to charge a premium for their Network it's it's not going to it's not going to be cost effective for a lot of consumers so there's a lot of uh wrangling that Apple needs to do to get it to a price point where it's going to be palatable for a lot of consumers and so with those negotiations still ongoing there's no expectation that we're going to see a service announced next week um and presumably they wouldn't want to announce such a service without the new Apple TV Hardware anyhow so it seems like because the service can't go because of the contracts and whatever is going on with the hardware we're not going to hear anything about the TV next week okay now it is a developers conference and we've talked about product and things that out of it we haven't really talked about you know what is it what's in it for app developers and one of the things that I've been thinking a little bit about and you can see if you agree or if I'm thinking all wrong is we're we're in the middle of a a sort of transitional State between where Objective C is the original designated preferred path for creating applications for iOS and mac and Swift was announced but Swift was was very early and very gational I'm I'm hoping that at this WWDC Swift becomes more mature that that it's easier to convert between the two that um you know that version control works with swift better especially when you're talking about a historic conversion from an Objective C app and that C++ compatibility comes into Swift well we should see Swift go 1.0 this next week which I think is the rumor anyway and Swift has actually been increasingly popular I mean impressively popular I'm not entirely sure what changes we're going to see it's likely that there going to be not transformational changes but certainly you know um impressive changes to bring the tool chain along because there are still some issues in the tool chain but uh yeah I mean Swift has already even in its early beta stages has already been really impressively adopted yeah and can you think of of any applications that you've seen that are a good example of what a swift app should be I don't know that anybody publicizes exactly what they're doing I mean some people use metal obviously and apple pushes metal in the App Store but as far as Objective C versus Swift I don't know that I've seen anyone any big developers anyway publicize that they're switching over okay well I I know that's sort of um sort of inside baseball but I I like the uh the idea of knowing what's going on with the technology and that that the technology is still advanc I would like to see uh I would like to see the NFC chip on the iPhone 6 and the Apple watch opened up to third party apps uh in a secure way so we could see things like uh location based uh stuff you know within your home uh maybe you know entry to buildings and stuff that have NFC capable readers compatibility maybe with some public transit systems that sort of stuff let's get that going we were just talking about that the other day actually about how that might be done by we I mean mear and I think it's my presumption and I'm probably completely wrong because I'm often stupid but I think that there won't be an NFC API in the way we currently conceive NFC apis I think what you'll actually see is the addition of host card emulation to iOS 9 or iOS 10 depending on when this comes and that will be how Apple does NFC um so explain for our listeners what Host Card means that's what I was about to do um Host Card host card emulation is really basically a way for the NFC transfer to fake what it's sending um in the iPhones case the way NFC is implemented is they've actually taken the secure element and put it in the NFC tool chain with host card emulation with the way of traditionally using payment and this is how Android pay works and Android wallet before it with host card emulation the secure element is off somewhere else um the data is stored you know either in the cloud or in some cases in the SIM card which is why Google had such a problem with Android or with Google Wallet because it needed carriers U carriers approval to use a secure within the SIM card um and then what happens is when you say I want to use my Visa card with this at this particular store the HC kicks in and it tells the NFC hey this is the data descent rather than the data being there already it pulls it from the remote secure element and broadcasts it up and in this way you can actually send essentially anything um anything that can be transf transmitted over NFC and be done with HC you don't need special Hardware or anything else um that's why but the problem the problem with HC and that's what Shane and I were talking about the other day is it requires some sort of a data connection in order for it to work because presumably it's hosted in the cloud or something like that so if you're looking at the Apple watch as something you'd like to be a little more independent of the iPhone um you wouldn't be able to for example uh use hce on the Apple watch if it wasn't paired to a phone so right now you can use the Apple watch to authorize a transaction even if the phone isn't there because it doesn't ire data connection to do that it already has the credit card information stored on the device itself that's why you have to reload your uh credit cards onto the watch to get it on its own secure element on there um so you could do NFC without the phone there and it'll work fine in the current implementation on the watch but if it were hce then you could not uh use like let's say you're going out for a jog and you need to bring your phone or something and then you came back and you wanted to get into a building or something like that if it was using host card emulation to in place of NFC for something like that I'm not super sure about in scenario is or how if and for how long you could cash data within a device itself um right maybe they could have a workaround something I have to imagine that that's that's available because even Google with the their Mantra of well actually it's Facebook's Mantra move fast and break stuff but it could be equally over to Google um even with that in mind I don't think there's a scenario in which they Envision releasing something as fundamental as payments that requires pervasive data I just I can't see them doing that agreed agreed so we're all in agreement um we we talked a little bit about there being no new Apple TV hardware and I kind of want to use the Apple TV existing Hardware to segue into talking about homekit and to do that is is you know the existing Apple TV that third generation unit we've had around for gosh forever now um gained some abilities in in one of the most recent updates where it will work as a homekit access point for for remote control from outside of your home is that a good way of summarizing it Neil any of the homekit integration on your phone uh and your away from your home there needs to be some sort of a device that acts as a hub for homekit within your home to control those devices and so the brain so to speak of it is your Apple TV uh this only works with the third generation Apple TV so if you have the original hockey puck uh second gen Apple TV homekit is not compatible with that um and I believe they stopped even issuing software updates for that one but you I still have one and I still get all the new channels on it I just don't get uh the software updates but that's uh it's interesting uh that they they Continue to update and support even the older Apple TV um it would seem that with no new hardware on the horizon they have no intention of abandoning people that have the current devices considering it seems to me that it also helps with their installed base right you've already got those out there in the world if you just enable the software on it then you can have a lot more people using it immediately right and it's you know it's what 70 bucks now 60 bucks whatever they're charging for the Apple TV so um yeah I it's a no-brainer purchase uh for a lot of people especially if they're excited about homekit it's just a matter of getting the devices in the hands of people and updating some of the hardware that's already out there to be homekit compatible like uh big one missing right now would be Philips Hue um a lot of people own Hue bulbs they're pretty great but no homekit support yet so presumably they need some sort of firmware update for their Hub and that kind of stuff to get it working so it'll be nice once these devices start to come in line there were a bunch announced this week uh some are shipping right now some are shipping next month I would guess next week at WWDC uh you're going to see a lot more homekit uh accessories shown off and hopefully companies like Phillips are going to make some announcements about when they're going to have support and some of the other established players uh nest and Nest May so yeah and whatever those are you got to think that they're going to you got to think that they're going to have uh some level of homekit support I would think theync and the other technology at Google iio doing their own thing yeah but Google is also strangely supportive of Apple's ecosystem I mean they releas a lot of apps first on iOS and stuff like that so I I think that they're cognizant of the fact that a lot of their users have Hardware the reason for that is because they make tons more money from iOS devices than they do from anything else and the balance is Shifting even away from the desktop to mobile devices and when the Lion Share of your Revenue now comes or search Revenue at least now comes from iOS devices you simply can't afford to ignore them it's not the same in the house or really anywhere else like you're never going to see Play support in a CHR gas for which is not going to happen I would guess considering Nest I think it debuted exclusively in Apple Store pre Google purchase yes I would guess that the majority yeah yeah I would guess that to this date the majority of people that own nest thermostats own iPhones I would say it's probably more than 50% of Nest th owners account that you can't just as far as I'm aware I may be wrong but I believe you can't just issue a firw update there's actually just like the mfi program I guess it's part of the mfi program there's an authentication ship required for there an actual piece of hardware for him um so does that mean Philips Hugh won't be able so Philips Hugh won't be able support new Hub like how's that gon to work they released an updated Hub right so all they left all of their other stuff intact and just replace the Hub it's I'm not certain I mean you need to have an off chip anyway but you get that from being a part of the mfi program to begin with and you know you're doing mfi Bluetooth or you're doing mfi Wi-Fi or if you're doing B you get both and you you have to update a firmware and make sure that your new firmware uses the lingos that are appropriate for homekit and I believe you also need an app update because you have to have your app specify that you're joining a home and joining a room and a Zone and all the things that homekit allows you to specify when you start grouping devices together right but none of these things we're talking about were mfi and first voice where the Hugh is not mfi it just happens to work well with Apple devices I think connects to your home ethernet you plug it you plug it an ethernet cable into the back of the Hub and then it has its own proprietary wireless standard that it uses to communicate with the bulbs so it actually works over work too but if they're putting the made for iPod iPhone iPad logo on their boxes then they are taking part in the mfi program and so it's a good question as to whether or not they have what's required to to take advantage of a home kit um can homekit just uh you know use Siri to send signals to an IP based thing like uh Philips hu because I mean I can log in any browser myl with you'll note that the homeit devices that were or based on the user information we got from the homekit devices that were released earlier this week uh there's a special homekit code that you have to use to register your device with homekit um so on the box with your the N digigit code yeah there's a little nine-digit code that you have to actually input to register it and I presume that that's all part of one coherent ecosystem so you can't add something to homekit that's not homekit um enabled that makes sense so there might have to be a new hub for Hue or something like that for this to work great so everybody gets to buy new hardware hope hope you hope you stocked up on your $75 light bu1 bucks um if you just want to buy the Hub this is this is worth bringing up so the three that announced right were Lutron Echo and Inson and echo's announcement said that you know uh L Lutron is out there in the market and available now and and you can buy it and it works um in on announced as you say the new Hub and Echo said we're going to be available in apple in July with the thermostat and they named it the same model right they said it's Echo B3 which is the existing product that's out there but hidden in an FAQ on their website it says that the homekit enabled ones will be available on this date so the current ones are not it's separate product and they're going to be treating them as updating that's not confusing at all same name the same price point and yeah it's it's a little bit of a just box looks the same that's exactly what Apple does yeah no I know it I know yeah but uh it's it's it's going to be interesting you know I didn't really plan on buying another $250 thermostat just to get homekit but um if that's what it comes down to I guess I just would like somebody to create a smart thermostat that works with split air conditioners the world half you're in luck I have there oh yes and it's it's called t or T it's another one of these got the notification about that there you go that's right they're a German company they've been selling in Europe for a long time now and they're just bringing their product to America and I don't know anything about their homekit compatibility at this time but they do handle your split air conditioning excellent you know I'm really excited about homekit I I don't know about anyone else but I've kind of wanted this for a while now I've had Nest I've had echoe the uh the non-home kit enabled version and controlling through a central interface even if that interface is Siri goes a long way for me there have been so many like really I've been after this for a long time too um there have been so many good attempts that came really really close But ultimately failed I mean I guess zigg is probably the best so far it has the widest support among manufacturers but even that doesn't give you the um the Simplicity of theoretically what you'll be able to do with a bunch of home kid well and zigby and zwave oh come on what about Android at home you did not say Android at home did you is that actually it's dead now Google iio 2012 man um you know zigby and zwave and or Z-Wave and uh know all the Technologies and well no X10 is dead don't even X10 me but but zigby and zwave are a part of homekit compatibility you you can address those devices as long as you've got a bridge that talks a be or zwave right and homekit right and that's in the whole spec for homekit that's that's also probably got to be in the spec for Google Brill because the nest has zigg built into it that's how they're talking to protect I think we actually broke that news that Bridges would be allowed just toting our own horn we also called it a year ago the Apple TV would be the H kid bridge by the way in case anybody cares indeed I care do you think so here's the thing we've got uh uh carplay and we've got Android uh Auto or whatever it's called Uh and you see most of the devices now are coming out supporting both platforms do you think that this fall or next year we're going to see Brillo slash homekit uh devices that work with both platforms how's how's this going to how's this going to play is the embedded OS isn't it it's the other one that's their homekit competitor uh yeah but Brillo can work with anything so in theory Brillo could work with homekit right so here's here's how this is there's there's those two competing pieces of the technology but there's also a seate group called All Join which is spelled alj y n and they're basically an open source group trying to get all of these things to all do both and and if you and if you look at Inson and Lutron and who they're partnering with you'll see the all jooin name there because they're trying to to be all things to all of these different people because no one knows which one's going to be the winner yet so the answer is yes yes you are going to see all of these things uh yeah so Brillo is there in beded OS it's it's there for whatever reason it's like a super lightweight Android yeah for whatever reason they feel it needs to exist it's a drop and replacement for R2 for whatever rtos You' usually use in your embedded microcontrollers weave is the other one weave is the weave protocol itself is the H kick competitor which which carplay units were you saying everyone is going Android auto and carplay because the truth is I've only seen one manufacturer that's doing both aftermarket no I've seen like all the new car announcements and stuff so basically the way that it works is uh with a lot of the embedded uh infotainment systems on the cars now that they're announcing I don't know if they're on the market you're talking about the OM shipping them yes right yeah so what you'll see is they have their own um stupid uh overlay operating system and then it treats carplay and Android auto as their own apps within their uh annoying operating system so basically you la you start up your car then you choose carplay and then it launches or you choose Android auto and it seems like a lot of them supporting both it chooses when you connect your phone right oh it auto launches you connect an iOS device well you connect an iPhone specifically you can't connect an iPad and carplay launches you connect an Android L or Android M device and Android auto launches yeah I've Just Seen videos of them where you got to like go on an interface and then tap on carplay and then it goes from their uh UI then to the carplay UI it's like an OS within an OS it's a nightmare you only manually select if you've gone back out because you're listening to an audio source that is not a part of carplay or Android audio if you're listening to the uh the radio so you go back out to the head units interface select your radio stations and then go back tapping to get back to car Player Android auto but when you connect it just jumps in the environment I mean I guess it's easy enough for these companies to just throw both in there and that's what they're doing so uh that way they you know well I mean if I was a car maker that's exactly what I would do because there's right I mean you're covering 90 myself to yeah you're covering 95% of uh smartphones out there on the market today right if you have carplay and Android auto sorry Windows Phone users I notably the only one which is hilarious by the way since Microsoft was first on this with sync I know for sync but um they're not in the current generation of Ford Sync though they were only in the first gen Ford Sync I think I think for ditch them um very recently just like last year um the only one that's not doing both is unsurprisingly Ferrari I can't imagine do do they know someone between Apple and and Ferrari edq yeah you know I've I've got the uh the Pioneer aftermarket unit right now that does uh carplay and Android auto and I actually need to get an Android device to to see what Android auto looks like compared but um but they are the only aftermarket that I can think of right now that does both uh the Alpine Pine unit is a really brilliant implementation of carplay they've got uh you you know how you go in you were saying that you've got the radios world and then you've got carpls interface yeah the Alpine unit those guys are smart they went through and for everything that's a part of their native interface they studiously copied ios8 as best they could so it doesn't feel like you're really transitioning and because they only do carplay you're basically doing settings or radio or backup camera basically and every part of those things looks like it was done by someone who loves Apple did Samsung make the operating system for that or um you know it's interesting because on the pioneer head units you can go and dig into settings and find an about page and they list all of the licenses and you can see that Pioneers using Android open source program to get the uh the source code run Android as the base of their car head unit and running carplay on top of it the Alpine unit doesn't show their licenses and I haven't bothered to try and find a way to disassemble it to see who on Earth is inside does does uh uh does carplay need a uh a operating system to exist within can we just get a head unit that's just carplay well that's that Alpine unit as best you're going to get well yeah but that's what I'm saying like that still has its own iOS ripoff layer or something and I mean anytime I mean like these companies aren't software companies right I mean if you ever had like a car interface or TV interface or anything where you're just like oh this is a great experience you know I mean these companies oh really what was it um LG webos Mercedes well yeah Mercedes their um infotainment stuff is amazing so but it's few and far between right these companies aren't software companies they don't specialize in user interface they don't specialize in having a good experience it's laggy it looks like crap uh you know you just deal with this stuff all the time just get rid of this this over layer it's like Android and and uh you know all these companies differentiate and put their own skin on top of it you know you got touch whz you've got uh HTC sents or whatever just cut this crap out it's justy yeah it's just it's just terrible anytime anytime there's a a layer on top of the intended experience it ruins it and so that's what I'm wondering can I can I just get a carplay unit that's just carplay no is that by Design or is that because these companies suck it's it's by Design Apple carplay runs on top of an OS whether it runs on top of blackberry cix or it runs on top of Android or it runs on top of something something to like go back to to have like a main menu or something I mean I guess if you need to like change the settings here the things right here you need settings right you when and whether settings are stupid like the clock which they can get from the iPhone or there something like balance and fader EQ right there's no app within carplay that can do that there's no app within carplay that can address the uh the radio you know some of them are amfm some of them are FM and HD radio and and apple doesn't know anything about that and really doesn't need to um the volume controls whether it's just up and down or up down in mute or the volumes for that and the volumes for nav voice and those things all of that volume control and volume control interface is not handled within carplay the Alpine makes it look really good like it fits like it should be like it like it was but the Pioneer one is a totally separate world so you're in carplay you're listening to something and you hit the volume control and you get weird quadrilateral Jagged shapes on top of your beautiful carplay interface with rounded rectangles not to mention um climate control and things like that it's worth pointing out that this is this exact conversation is why lots of people think that Apple's car project it's not a car but in car OS h this is one of the reasons that I like homekit so much I don't want to run you know eight million apps to control my devices just I don't want to deal with your user interface your app all that stuff just give me one easy way to do it and that's all I want and just having this overlay on top of it and I got to go back to your crappy OS and then go back to carplay I feel like that just cheapens the experience you you know Apple's doing the best they can because they got to deal with all these manufacturers and partners and stuff like that and that's kind of their compromised solution but you know if Apple was really going to make something that would work it's what you're saying there you know some sort of a car Os or something like that uh where manufacturers could just integrate Apple's operating system from top to bottom control everything in the car just to make it a much better experience because uh the experience uh with most uh integrated operating systems on these devices is terrible because they're not software companies and they don't know anything about user experience at all I think what you have here in the first generation of carplay is the the incar equivalent of the Motorola rocker right oh it's way better than that come on and then no I'm saying gener generationally speaking Yeah I see the analogy in a few years you'll end up with the iPhone equivalent of the carplay it was The Rocker right I didn't get that you you've got that correct it was The Rocker like E3 was the motor Rola name for that thing the one that the one that crashed on Steve Jobs on stage and he wanted to talk way more about the IP than he wanted to talk about that thing but uh you know Neil I got to get you on FaceTime one time and just show you the Alpine and show you the Pioneer and and you will vomit at the Pioneer and you will love I'm glad somebody's got it right because these experiences are just terrible you know these P Pioneer I know I just sullied their name they get a lot of other things right but I look at a company like Samsung and it's like okay Samsung has their share problems right uh in terms of how they do stuff but they make okay hardware and they develop a lot of software clearly how the hell can they make such crappy TV interfaces like have you ever used one of these Samsung Smart TVs and now they got cameras in them you can wave at them and stuff I mean does anybody use that stuff those integrated apps and all that I mean they're a nightmare you would rather deal with anything I know people yeah I know people that use the built-in Netflix app and built-in Amazon app on those things and and you know the thing they said what should I do and I said well you get a nice television great I bought a Samsung great now go buy yourself an Amazon Fire TV stick or anything anything is better you can get a chomecast anything is better but I have but I have all the built-in stuff and they use the built-in stuff and it crashes it lags it doesn't work my used to builtin stuff yeah my parents use this all the time a lot of people in our position really overestimate how much can they figure it out like you know how many times have you been to somebody's house and I mean it's 2015 now you go over to their house and they still have the picture stretched you know in like aspect ratio wrong or they'll have it like hooked up with non- highdef cables on a httv and they'll be like look at how great the picture looks it's like like what like have you looked at the picture so I mean I'm surprised that people like that can figure out these interfaces because I as a nerd loser can't figure out these interfaces half the time when I'm trying to mess around with them so you know for some of these people to get on there like if I if my parents got a smart TV and tried to get on there and figure out how to get on Netflix I mean gez it'd be they be calling me in about two seconds the the difference is that people are willing to spend some amount of time to learn like five basic actions right I spent a lot a large portion of my life helping people develop and optimize software for Enterprise and all of the nice uis don't work in the Enterprise because Enterprise people want something very quick that they can they don't care if there's 97 options on the screen at one time as long as they know the path through their application and it's exactly the same way in stuff for I mean for lack of a better term for normal consumers right people have no problem learning the five things they need to do to watch Netflix right and they'll deal with it they don't adding another box to them is a whole other layer of complexity that they don't want to care about so the the idea for for people like my parents of a TV with everything built in and I I plug it in and that's it I'm done is very do they do they use anything like voice input or motion input or they just using a controller with 8,000 buttons on it they're just using a controller with 8,000 buttons they would probably use voice input if I didn't force them to disable the microphone and the camera because it's a massive invasion of privacy I would I I mean I would I I would love to have some great voice input which is another reason why I'm so upset uh about this no Apple TV next week because I've ranted about it before but the voice control on the Xbox one is so bad like I I cannot believe that a major consumer electronics company could put out something that works so poorly uh on a $500 box that just sits there PL into the wall you know like it's got enough processing power to figure it out but it works so bad I just cannot believe that this is something that's shipping and it has not been updated since it's come out and yet I still use it because it's so convenient I put up with how crappy it is because of the convenience so if someone could actually make a good voice input method for uh controlling my TV and everything in the living room Apple then I would really love that and would buy that in a heartbeat if anyone's gonna do it I what about the uh Amazon Echo I don't have one myself yeah you got to hold the remote you know i' I lost the remote to my Apple TV years ago and I just use the remote app on my phone to control it and now on my Apple watch well which is awesome probably the best use I have for my Apple watch uh the remote app to control my Apple TV that thing's awesome uh yeah you remember when Apple used to ship laptops and and Mac minis with remotes yeah the little white plastic ones yeah the little plastic ones those are sending out the same IR signal that today's Apple TV expects so I've got six of those white ones you want to mail me one cuz I don't have one we just grab another no well the rumor is that right the new Apple TV is going to have a touchpad on it for its input method so that strikes me as insane balls I don't think that happens or it does me it does to me as well it also strikes me as insane balls because actually I also use the remote app because even though my Apple T remote is sitting six inches from my face right now I also use the remote app because I'm lazy and trying to navigate the Apple TV UI with the touchpad is an exercise and frustration like have you ever tried to get on in Netflix have you ever tried to go um to the related titles like when you're in a movie right you're in the movie The Specific movie screen and this the related titles along the bottom every at least eight or 10 times when I try to scroll down to the related titles I go I even do that on the end up in the next screen yeah even on the home screen right so you want you want to go over one and this is one of those one of those situations where having a physical remote with a click on it to just go over one is better than a touchcreen because you swipe to the left and even on my watch watch I'll swipe to the left and then the next thing I know it goes over four icons it's like no wait go back you know so yeah so I don't use the app because I want a real physical thing I if I have to unlock a phone launch an app and then pick which Apple TV I'm control it's just way too much just give me the dam mode now that said if I had an iPhone 6s with haptic feedback on my display like we click every time you go over that would be awesome would be really coolall game yeah that's a whole different ball game well but what if it what if it's integral part of the experience with an app store right so you got to think outside of the box of uh just just sitting well historically the first Apple TV cost 249 bucks and then they dropped it to 165 bucks and then they dropped it to19 and now now we have Apple TVs that were 99 and are now 69 so when you add in the cost of a touchcreen remote well I I I kind of alluded the price point I kind of alluded to it before right they're still supporting even second gen Apple TV even though they're not giving it software update still getting content on it right so who says that the $69 Apple TV is going to go anywhere they can introduce a $200 Apple TV and still have both devices available but if you want the App Store and you want to get apps to you know do new and interesting things with your TV like for example play games then perhaps a uh controller with a the touch panel on it becomes an integral part of the experience maybe that's uh maybe that's what they're going to do with it who knows I mean presumably right they're going to have they already have Bluetooth controller support for made for iPhone controllers presumably those same controllers are going to connect to a new Apple TV and you have a full-fledged game console and not only do you have a full-fledged game console but you have one that allows you to download apps to multiple devices and only buy once so now buy byy Nintendo 3DS buy byy uh you know PlayStation VA in addition to the game consoles that plug into your TV Apple's now entered itself into both of those markets and they're small markets but they'll wipe them out well no there's no Apple TV coming so I don't think so so is that your W when they pull when they pull the trigger on that hard I mean they got to get developers on board right they're going to show Steve J years ago made a comment about game consoles and how much they had sold or whatever and he he he was mentioning it during one of their presentations and he was remarking you know that the Xbox 360 or something had sold some amount of consoles and it was small it was nothing it was like potatoes right it was like you know oh they've ship 25 million consoles today 25 million consoles like are you kidding me you know Apple ships that many phones you know in no time so apple is looking for a much bigger market and that's why I say they could wipe out these markets the hardcore gamers are going to stick to their boxes their PCS you know the Xbox One whatever but that casual game Market that bought you know 200 million Wiis back in the day when that was a fat or something that's something where Apple could just come in and clean up right uh imagine crossplatform games where you can play it on your phone you can play it on your iPad you can play it on your Apple TV it syncs through iCloud all of your achievements are saved through Game Center the infrastructure is there they've got it there just to to knock it out of the park it's just a matter of pulling the trigger and they apparently aren't going to pull the trigger next week because for Apple it's not really about that market it's about the subscription TV that's my guess my guess is the reason that they decided to pull the hard were next week is because they're more interested in the ongoing revenue of the subscription subscription TV service that gaming um uh ecosystem you just described is exactly how it would work if you are all Microsoft right now no it isn't you can't play Xbox One games on your PC Mobile that's exactly how if you buy a copy you know I mean if you buy a copy of this is where Microsoft's so stupid right if you buy a copy of uh halo the Master Chief collection for your Xbox one you can play it on your Xbox one now meanwhile Microsoft has a voice controlled personal assistant called Cortana on the phones which is named after a halo character you know where Cortana is not it's not on the Xbox One the the very game console where you can play Halo games I mean the logic doesn't make any sense at Microsoft it's just like a bunch of different silos operating over there and and their game division is just it they don't care about it apparently I don't know why they do the things they do or how they operate but you're right it would make sense if you could just buy a game and play it on your PC or on your Xbox one right why wouldn't they do that that would that would be brilliant but you can't do it if you buy an Xbox One game you can only play it on your Xbox one right can there are some games those games together at the same time right so you can play if you have FIFA if you have guys guys guys so if you have FIFA right you can play FIFA but not on the Xbox One or FIFA on your is there a Windows tablet right now if there was you can play FIFA there and then go back to your Xbox and you're you're logged and you're logged into your on your phone right and then when you go back to your Xbox your progress for mobile is there on FIFA on Xbox at least yeah it's a different game but I'm saying the actual well it's always going to be a different game there's no I don't think it's always going to be a different game I mean if you look at some of the graphics that you have on the iPad right now on the iPhone right if you blow those up to TV quality games like real racing which can be played through AirPlay I don't think that Apple needs to put out a graphic Powerhouse console and the game can be you know equivalent experience running on the same base code play it on any screen size you want the only thing that's missing from this equation is the Mac there's no ability to buy an app for your iPhone uh or iPad and then be able to download it on your Mac and play the equivalent on there if if they that that's the one piece of it that's missing but right now all they would have to do is put an app store on Apple TV and give it crossplatform support with iPhone apps buy it once play it on all of them and have it sync and they would be ahead of Sony they'd be ahead of Microsoft already and they they would have just entered the market and already knocked both of them out of that out of that space all right guys I want to wind it up here because we're going to have an interview with special guest the CEO of inston who is one of the homekit partners coming up so thanks a lot and I'm so glad we had this uh this talk all about Apple TV and Microsoft uh Neil El Presidente where can we find you on the internet uh you can find me uh at Apple Insider obviously uh where I'm slaving away every day and I'm also on Twitter at this is Neil NE fantastic Shane El Presidente with the coup coming where can we find you um well you can find me at Apple Insider and apparently soon you can find me in NE position at Apple Insider fantastic well this concludes this portion of episode 19 stay tuned for just a moment and we'll be back with uh the CEO of Inson so at this point in the Apple Insider podcast I'm pleased to introduce Joe data who is the CEO of Inson a uh connected home home automation company Joe welcome uh thanks Victor thanks for having us so I I know the inst un name from having seen some of the products in places like smarthome.com and some of the home improvement stores can you tell me a little bit more about the history of the company and um you know how long you've been around and what are the kinds of things that you've historically done sure yeah insty on the product line and insty on the technology is uh the culmination of what is now 23 years of work we entered the industry in 1992 as a catalyst blogger of thirdparty products in '95 we were amongst the first e-commerce sites of of any industry to launch a store in uh about the same time we started developing our own products and in '97 acquired two small engineering firms to eventually launch our own brand uh line of products to to build products that the other manufacturers uh weren't building and uh as a cataloger and a in a in a direct marketing uh player in the space the customers were telling us certain things that they wanted and and if they weren't available we just decided that well we we'd make them then and in the late 90s we were out talking to the retailers and Builders and it became clear to us that the wireless technologies that were available that we could buy off the shelf and put into the products um they just weren't good enough and I I knew the reliability wasn't going to be there to to make a a sustainable uh effort at a broad Mass Market market so that's when we started working on the Inson technology which we launched in ' 05 and and now is in millions of homes uh and it's a uh very very different technology it's a mesh technology but it is a dual mesh technology so we have an RF mesh U like a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is RF neither of those are mesh mesh means repeating networks um and on top of that we layer in the electrical wires of the house and because the problems that exist on one layer don't exist on the other when those problems occur and they they do um the other physical layer works right around it and you end up with a really really really robust wireless connection between any devices all your devices right so so prehistory was there was this thing called X10 and X10 had problems am I saying it right that's right so far yep okay and that was about the time frame when retailers and and consumers and customers started asking you to do something about some of the problems that they were seeing out there yeah well to to be honest the the first problems were at the physical layer uh if you wanted to turn one of the old-fashioned switches on you press the bottom of the switch and if you wanted to turn it off you press the bottom of the switch and that's not how light switches work and so customers are saying we'd like one where you press the top of the switch for on and the bottom for off that seemed obvious we couldn't get any of the manufacturers to build it so we did um then the next layer was uh as we were reaching out to a broader Market they were telling us we'd like it to work and we we'd have to be here to support it when it didn't um and too too much of our revenues were from selling problem solving products kits Services Etc and um that just it it's it's a house of cards and people in the x10 world every device you added to your network weakened your network and we wanted something that was just the opposite your your your network should get stronger as you add nodes and so um given our background on the on the power line and the fact that there are mobile devices and battery power devices like sensors and things we we we knew we needed to reach into the uh RF space and boy uh it just was it it is really an unbelievable solution the the reliability is on the orders um on the order of a 100 times better having these two physical layers and uh so we uh we love it customers love it and uh we're having a lot of success with it yeah just so I understand um see if I'm saying this right when you have power line in in homes like we have in North America you have different phases of the fuse box or the breaker box and so you've got uh a device at one outlet and a device at another outlet but if they're not on the same circuit or not on the same phase they may not be able to talk to each other so that's one of the weaknesses of power line do I have that right well um technically it's a single phase that's been split but but you can think of it as you know hard to talk uh from one to the other it's not always that they can't talk from one to the other but um quite commonly uh a a single transmitter on one end of one phase can't talk to a single receiver on the other end of the other phase and you can think of this as being the same as putting your Wi-Fi router um you know up in in your office or spare bedroom and trying to talk to the washing machine in the basement it's a very good and especially if it's in a metal can like most washing machines are um very good chance that it won't reach it's simply out of range and so um the problems the there are real problems in power line there are real problems in RF they happen to be just different in the old world people would try to connect the two uh the the two sides of the phase or the two phases as you put it in the circuit panel which is not consumer friendly and and so in the r in in the inston world we simply use RF as the bridge between those phases or or locations on the power line that that have problems so the other big issue for the power line are switching power supplies so certain manufacturers of certain switching power supplies end up inadvertent ly injecting noise or attenuation onto the power line and and can create little sink holes of communication on the power line well that's fine RF will get us there likewise um when you put a a metal refrigerator door in in the way of something that c creates an RF Shadow and um or concrete stucco on your walls if you're trying to talk to a spa outside or uh metal around uh washing machine both both physical paradigms um are are challenging to get uh anything nearing Perfection out of uh repeating helps so mesh definitely helps so all else being equal we we believe mesh is supered to a star network configuration like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth um and then two meshes all the better right and the uh you know the instructions that you're passing turn on and off a light switch that signal gets sent from some command box an outlet a wall plate and then it repeats down across the uh the mesh changing from y from RF to to power line as needed yeah basically yep that's right so uh we use something called simoc casting it's a very very different approach we we can do it and most Engineers roll their eyes when we say that because if you're pushing a lot of data around simoc casting uh typically is not a good idea but we're just trying to turn an outlet on or off or send 72 degrees to to a thermostat or I'm wet from a leak sensor to very small amounts of data or sometimes obviously we're managing the databases inside these devices but in all cases it's relatively small amounts of data and so by kind of rearching how that data is uh formatted simoc casting allows us to send a message from the controller if you will and it can be a central controller it can be a switch a motion sensor whatever to one or more devices on the network and instead of routing the signal uh every device that hears it repeats it a given number and a specified number of times and so the signal uh there's no network configuration there's no network configurator there's no network memory that gets eaten up in all of this and so you can build the network as large as you want and the larger the better uh we have an embassy in Washington DC that uses Inson for all of their their whole campus irrigation lighting system uh uh Outdoors lighting system is all run on inston it's a big campus we have uh commercial industrial buildings of million square feet we have uh homes there's there's a massive uh home product in Colorado that has nearing 2,000 inston nodes in it so it just scales like uh like there's no tomorrow theoretically there's no limit to the number of instand devices you could have in a network and when you hit the on button or if you want to all off is a great example you hit all off all of the lights will um respond within what can be perceived as without a delay by the human brain and that we call it inston stands for instanton and so you mash a button everything in the network that is supposed to respond will respond in um you know tens or in worst case a couple hundred milliseconds which is faster than uh it it appears instant to us it's it's almost imperceptible 100 milliseconds is totally acceptable right right so that's that's pretty huge that that you've got this ability to create these huge installs and even with all the people using them all around the the campus as you say um the Network's not so chatty as to be swamped right so the other the other side of the equation is it's important to architect uh the chattiness and so um it I I think uh what what we're seeing in in the connected home space is that uh there's a lot of new stuff happening a lot of new products being developed and most of the engineers that come into this come from uh you know high-tech engineering jobs where they're used to pushing around a lot of data they have networks that act a certain way and do certain things and and in that Paradigm those uh best practices are are well documented and understood in our space what we have found over 20 years is is a very different approach is the ideal approach so you can put Wi-Fi into light bulbs and and Outlets but uh you they'll suffer from some certain list of of challenges and and you know cost complexity Etc um we're on the other end of the spectrum uh our our vision is uh Inson in billions of nodes this industry is very very Nation still and there's a lot of Runway ahead of us and a tech technology that costs significantly less and works significantly better well you know we still believe has a has an uh an excellent opportunity uh for some serious penetration and over the C last year we've been making announcements about our work with Microsoft uh Apple who we just released uh and one of the two first the only two launch Partners uh for homekit with Apple uh day before yesterday and and then a few weeks ago um we launched uh an all jooin product with uh our friends at Microsoft um and and oh by the way in in January we announced our work with Google and works with NES program and so we have 200 products that solve the vast majority of building automation small to mediumsized commercial uh all the way down to small Residential Building automation home automation connected living uh product or uh situations out there and and it takes a a long time to build up that arsenal of products and because we've been around uh so long we've done that and so if you want to control your water heater you need a 220 volt high capacity relay switch that you can commun communicate to and there's just not a lot of those out there most most of the new entrance in our space come out with a light bulb or a plug-in module or something like that and and that's great if all you're trying to do is change the color of the bulb in the lamp in the room you're in but uh once once you once you kind of get addicted to the uh to the uh convenience uh safety and fun of having these things connected you want to do more and then you better have all kinds of switches keypads Outlets modules inline modules fan controllers thermostats you know the list goes on and on yeah so backing up a step you you've talked about residential and Commercial so who is the person that that ought to buy an inston product who who is the target consumer for you uh the middle of our Bullseye is uh a homeowner and um and to to us it really means about that broad there are a few country so we're in over 70 countries so that's not all but you know if you're in Europe uh you know North America South America Australia we're we're we have distribution we have products that are developed for that market and um whether you want to install it yourself or have somebody install it we're in different and in most cases we or if it's bought at retail we don't know because a lot of the stuff that's bought at retail is installed by the consumer and a lot is handed to a contractor to have him install and so um that's our target market but our products find their way into some really fun places like embassies and 800,000 square foot printing facilities because it works and it's affordable it's reliable and um it it it's relatively simple um and I don't mean to kind of throw ourselves under the bus here but you know we're always trying to make it simpler and there's a lot of work to be done but uh I think given you know if you compare us to what else is out there um we're we're quite competitive yeah I I wouldn't say aiming at Simplicity is throwing yourselves under the bus at all people don't really realize just how hard work it is to make something simple yeah that's it it that is such a a good point um one of my favorite quotes from a a dear friend uh basically the inventor of the universal remote and I remember one day uh having lunch with him and he said you know Joe simple is hard and coming from a person that had had as much success uh as he had had that that had a lasting impression on me yeah and and when I think about universal remotes he's right simple is really hard it is it is yeah I've yet to find the perfect universal remote yeah and and they're still working on it um there there are now new players in that space working on it making making progress all along but uh it's difficult and I think that that's probably an excellent Paradigm comparison or uh if that's the right phrase but um you know they're trying to help you unify the control of let's say a TV a set toop box and a a stereo and we're trying to do that plus your light switches and your outlets and your sensors and you know so uh the it it in some ways it's even more challenging yeah now the Apple homekit experience kind of does that doesn't it I mean when we're controlling all these different things through Siri isn't that turning the iPhone and Siri into the remote control uh well uh in some ways yes but um one of the things that we've learned and many of the other players in the industry have learned is that um you have to be very careful about what really works and what you know what doesn't always work and so uh the the the homekit Paradigm or platform certainly brings unity and uh some kind of obvious consistency to how things uh will work or at least the things you can and can't do with uh the products that are out there um it's uh obviously it's just launching and so uh I think the future is very very exciting um and the present is exciting too don't get me wrong but um voice voice recognition um and and the way we humans communicate uh and the way the platform deals with it um I I I think people maybe the best way I can put this is I think most people will start by hitting a button on the phone to make something happen and then start experimenting with uh with Siri um and uh for a guest or even the the less technical uh people in the house it's very exciting to see it work but uh learning the discipline about what needs to be said to make it work sometimes is a great experience and sometime isn't I I've seen it go both ways right so um I I I'm a huge believer in you know kind of the the mobile device uh UI ux um and I'm very excited about the the the series side of it um but um I think uh time time will tell how quickly it'll move towards being in that great category and with apple it almost always ends up being great so you know I'm very very excited about it but uh wouldn't surprise me if a little bit of work uh stands between between here and there sure you know I I think about the difference between a good product and a good demo and uh you know the idea of picking up the phone and talking to Siri and having something happen seems like a great great thing and it might be a great demo but if you have to understand the the syntax that you have to use when you speak with Sheri maybe that's uh yeah and they're well on their way I think to nailing it um but uh but it it is not for the faint of heart and and when we think about things we think about differently so I think I'm probably making too much of the work that still needs to be done if you've got one or two devices it's probably going to be really great a wonderful experience right out of the box today um if you've got one of our ours or Lutron hubs you can probably go home and and you know get that light your lights to turn on and off but when you start uh building out networks uh and our customers do our average customer has dozens of communicating devices in their house um and that doesn't happen overnight but it happens over time um and as you start building out you know whole house different rooms different devices Etc then it becomes more challenging just like that universal remote that we're talking about on on on your nightstand or your coffee table um it it's it's non-trivial well but the alternative is I have to you know if I'm using my phone as the controller and I'm using an app a button within an app to control things I have to unlock lock the phone launch the app get to the right device press a button there yes there's no doubt that uh the the phone as an interface um is is awesome uh at certain times and and maybe less than awesome at others uh I think the the watch the smart watch really helps here it's it's you know all I got to do is uh point it towards me and I've I've I'm through the first two things that you know I don't have to take it out of my uh pocket and I don't have to wake it up and for the things that I do regularly I pop it on my favorite screen I'm I'm I'm in and out and um I'm I'm really excited about the watch as as an interface likewise when you're not at home and alerts are the most important part of what a connected home is about the water sensor triggers an alert and says you know your clothes washers of flooding right or or it's 4:00 and your latch key kid arrives home um you know for years those alerts came to me in my pocket and you know we're all busy and you don't you know I I see it at some point later well now I see it if if uh you know if they arrive home at 402 I see it at 402 because I get the haptic you know and a ding and I I crank my wrist and you know uh the front door open and front door closed okay 402 everything's good so I I'm excited uh the quick always uh always available control side as well as the uh super quick and easy alert side uh through the the watch is is really exciting cool let me ask I mean we talked a little bit about how you don't have a the best insight into how people are installing it whether people consumers buy it in retail and install it themselves H or contractors are buying it so do you have uh sort of a customer outreach program have you interviewed customers about what problem they were solving when they bought your product the first time we do and um we so uh if they buy it through our own sales channel uh they always receive a a follow-up survey and and every single one of those responses I I think forever um is and has been uh read and gets categorized and and communicated and process um where we increasingly now are going through Channel Partners you know like Walmart Target Costco Best Buy Home Depot Menards Etc um it's it's more difficult uh to do that we we're we could certainly be uh a little more uh aggressive if that's right term or sensitive uh and and and reach out more because our call center uh deals with the challenges you know every day and every week we're massing uh lots of data about what motivates them to call in and I can tell you that we've learned long ago that the problems uh and maybe this is what you're really getting at uh the problems that the uh our customers uh are looking to solve and and they they are such a broad uh scope or segment of the market that I I think I think that it is the connected home space and I've never SE data to suggest otherwise there everybody that's too strong people uh have different Lifestyles they have different family situations they have different values they have different physical structures they live in right some of us live in detached homes some of us live in small multi some of us live in large multi um that of course you can there's a lot to be learned and there are lots of groups that you know have real numbers but to really nail it you have to you have to have a product offering that that crosses uh all these borders and uh and and your user interfaces that can address them all and um I'm not saying we or anyone else are there yet but I'm I'm excited about what we and others are doing and and and these these uh platforms like homekit what makes them really exciting is you know it comes from the world world's one of the world's most uh respected Brands and so having that logo on the package I think gives the customer the confidence that hey this is going to work if I buy that box over there regardless of the color shape size cost brand retail store with a box over here they're going to work together and I think that's a really really important uh it it it's going to uh take a lot of the intimidation out of uh the technology of what we do out of the customer's mind yeah I agree that that confidence of knowing that I can get these multiple different things and they're all going to communicate and work together is uh is powerful not just from confidence standpoint of buying the thing but in in terms of of um you know the flexibility of of not being locked into the first thing you get and and knowing that multiple Brands um are are supported so I don't have to worry about whatever the brand is on the box I'm buying even if that company were to decide to get out of the race or or just become unavailable I I I'm I'm not um I'm not I'm not stuck with something that won't work any longer your your home didn't just become obsolete right exactly so let me ask you know what was it like to work with apple on this and and how did that relationship go uh it's been fantastic uh we we had not uh and it was wasn't for lack of trying but we hadn't until the last couple years we hadn't had a lot of interaction with the folks at Apple um uh we we have felt very well supported from uh from the leadership uh behind the homekit uh platform uh I think it's well known that Apple isn't always the most communicative uh company when it comes to B2B uh work but I can tell you that they're decisive and and supportive and uh so you know it not surprisingly there were changes in the the specification as time went along but you know that that's just absolutely part for the course and and and homekit wouldn't be as good as it is without it so um all in all it's been a really really great experience we we we feel like um it's just beginning you know now that it's really live uh you know now now instead of uh you know us marketers and US Engineers deciding what it should be now consumers will start weighing in and and and you know that that's where our heritage is and so I'm very very excited to be to be live within now yeah so you know one of the things I'm anticipating I'm I'm predicting and I could be going out on a limb here is that the availability of homekit increases the number of users that decide that they're going to buy a product like this this um I think almost exponentially I I I couldn't agree more uh the the if if I'm an outsider looking into this space and most people are um the fact that uh you know one of the greatest companies on Earth is in this space has invested in uh launching this it it just gives me a confidence that this this category is is for real and the fact that they say this stuff works together I know it'll work together so one of the things that's held me back personally as a consumer has been the initial cost and just simply knowing what to get as a first product what what do I get as a starter kit what do I do first and how much is it going to set me back so now that that we have these homekit compatible products what do you think the first thing that someone who doesn't have any of these things in the house has should should yet but does have an iPhone and does have say an Apple TV yeah so the the the two products that are shipping today that are homekit compatible are hubs from Inson and Lutron and uh and Lutron is a great company and and T I mean they're the leader in in remote lighting control um and so that's where people can begin and even if the first two products were out were um I don't know bark Stoppers I would tell you lighting control that's where most people start in the space it's very easy to understand it's totally um you know we all have Lighting in our house we all have light switches and we all enjoy Automation and remote control of it and once you've got it you almost can't imagine not having it and so the best place to start is either a plug in lamp um or a screw in remote control bulb uh I think the plug-in lamp is probably the the best and and the uh certainly the one that's been around the longest so a couple of plug-in dimmer modules and and a bridge and you're off and running and what happens is people start having you know really aha moments about uh devices that are in their house that they don't use because the control is uh just not convenient enough my mom had uh a china cabinet that had a beautiful lighting inside but the had a little cord switch on it that of course you couldn't even reach so those lights were never on I just plug it into a little module and and and now you can control it from your phone or Siri or tabletop remote or handheld remote or wire in remote right and that that's when it gets really fun is when you start seeing how this impacts your life in a in a positive way and you start adding uh more products and more types of products well now I'm a fan of the the connected thermostat I have the nest I have the Echo and I I like these things because my experience is is that I get kicked in the middle of the night saying it's too hot or it's too cold to go turn it down and instead of going downstairs to adjust the temperature I'm now using the phone as the controller for that now you you mentioned that inston is a part of the works with Nest program can you tell me a little bit about what kind of interactions that I would get from doing that well um so if you use our apps and and you use you know even if it's everything else in your house is instan you can install a s thermostat and and control it within our app Paradigm likewise um we will be working with nasta on their uh they've got several uh business efforts that because we have products that that no one else has and because our our our communication technology is Uber reliable um customers that join in uh ways to save uh monthly electricity costs by uh allowing the utility to turn off you know let's say your pool pump or your water heater uh during high high demand times um you know we'll be working with them to bring those products uh into consumer hands most of those will be uh non retail you know installed uh sold through the utility company kind of thing right right or or similar other trades as well um so we you know we're we're kind of working uh with them on both sides kind of on the retail side that uh you can you can use ncn stuff and Nest stuff in the same house same app UI and then uh on on the installed uh basis as well going forward this this brings me to a different question that I hadn't anticipated asking um so if I have nest and I have inston products the bridge and a a couple of lighting solutions can I control Nest through the inston app and if I can can I control the nest through homekit um great questions yes to the first question you can control the nest thermostat through the inston app Nest is uh as as so five companies announced products more or less at launch uh the ourselves and Lutron were the only products that were shipping at launch echoe is one of the other three MH um but Nest isn't one of the remaining two uh and so uh all I can tell you is that that they have not announced uh becoming uh homekit compatible doesn't mean that they won't be mhm I'm not asking you to speak for them I was just wondering if there was a way that I could control them because you work with them and you know sort of back door yeah so um there it today the answer is no okay it doesn't mean that that won't change because you know as as I mentioned we're just getting uh off the tarmac here um but today today we can't that's that's a fine answer I understand it completely okay you know I I am asking you you know what two days after the announcements been made so yeah it's a pretty exciting time um wow you know I I'm so glad that you've been able to take the time to spend with me on this and and talk about hom kid and talk about working with apple um what what would you like to leave our listener with what should our listener understand from from you about homid about inston and about where things are going and what what they should pay attention to well I I think uh just what's what's possible right it's really exciting that uh if it's in house you you can either control it today or in the near future and the tech Giants uh like apple are throwing their weight and you know and their uh abilities into the ring which I feel confident means that the user experiences starting two days ago but even more importantly two years from now are just going to get better and better and that's uh the this this last mile for us as a company is is is bringing together user experiences that uh wives and aunts and uncles and grandmothers enjoy every bit as much as uh the early adopter uh and and so I just that's you know people like apple that's what they do and so uh we're just really thrilled to be part of this very exciting launch and and uh and equally excited about where it's going to go from here because uh I'm just I'm I'm quite confident they they will work hard and smart to build an Ever uh more wonderful experience so it's really really exciting time well thank you so much for joining us uh this has been Joe data with the aider podcast I'm your host Victor marks and thank you for listening please uh leave a positive review on iTunes and tell your friends thanks Victor\n"