Apple Just Smashed My Biggest Barrier to a Smarter Home With Its HomeView Reveal
Apple has just taken the wraps off a range of new smart home devices, from its HomeView smart display and a new Apple TV 4K box through to smart thermostats, doorbells and security cameras. While I’ve yet to even touch any of these new products, Apple got my attention with its focus on simplicity and ease of setup. That solves my biggest gripe with smart home tech so far.
I’ve had a handful of smart home products in my house over the past few years, including a Hive thermostat, a Google Nest video doorbell and a couple of Nest security cameras. They all do their individual jobs perfectly well, but there’s a lot of messing about involved to get them installed and syncing with my devices. For one, each platform requires its own app — Hive, Google Home and others I’ve had over the years, such as Ring.
For each device, I needed to set up an account and tediously add each individual item to the app and the associated account. With the Nest cameras, this involved scanning a QR code and manually adding it to my Wi-Fi network. When I recently changed my internet provider, I had to carefully reconfigure my new router in order to get all my devices to connect automatically without having to reset and re-add them. Some did, others not so much.
Apple is scoring a lot of points with me with its promise that “these new accessories are simple to set up, starting with one tap with [the] iPhone, and everything is managed through the Apple Home app — no separate app or account required.” It’s music to my ears.
Apple’s product setup, in my experience, is second to none. Adding a new pair of AirPods is just a matter of opening the case near your iPhone while pairing a new HomePod just means holding your phone nearby. Apple doesn’t seem to use Steve Jobs’ old line “it just works” anymore, but it should, because Apple’s stuff does just work.
Having everything together in the Apple Home app will also be a breath of fresh air for me. I find it annoying to switch between the Hive app for my thermostat and EV charger and the Google Home app for my doorbell and cameras. It was worse when I also had Philips Hue and Nanoleaf smart bulbs, all of which required their own app, too. The “Smart Home” folder on my phone felt uncomfortably cluttered.
Then there were the subscriptions to consider. Back in its early days, Nest cameras required a subscription per camera, not per household. I had about four cameras in my house and that was a lot to think about. It eventually changed how subscriptions were managed but it’s still the case that I need multiple accounts, each taking a small slice of money every month if I want to enjoy a variety of different smart home products.
Apple supports a wide range of smart home products from various companies, so new doorbells and cameras will just work through the Apple Home app. Apple’s cameras will also work with iCloud Plus to store video histories, which is great as I’m already an iCloud Plus subscriber, so I won’t need to manage multiple subscriptions for different services.
Sure, it’ll mean I’m even more entrenched in Apple’s ecosystem, and will continue to be tied to only ever having its products. I already have an Apple HomePod, Apple TV, iPad and MacBook and it’s why I have to use an iPhone as my daily-use phone in order to be able to connect to and use everything. As a photographer, I’d love to use Leica’s Leitzphone but switching to Android completely means unhooking from everything else I own. Adding these smart home products would only cement that fact for years to come.
But I don’t mind being in one ecosystem because everything plays together in a way that doesn’t leave me frustrated and wishing I’d never bothered in the first place. I want things to just work and I don’t want to have to continue managing multiple accounts, multiple apps and multiple subscriptions when I can just pull everything neatly together into one place.
That’s what Apple is promising with its new setup and I’m excited to see if it can deliver on that enticing prospect.
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