Foldables make sense for Apple to explore because even if it's ~5% likely to be able to be productized, the return is measured in the tens of billions.
Smart speakers were comparatively cheap and are probably profitable, so even if they're not a huge market they made sense.
AR/VR remains to be seen. Meta's still learning how to build hardware and operating systems and still learning how to sell actual products, so they're probably not the right ones to test concept risk when they already have so much execution risk. They also don't have the leverage or insertion point that Apple does if e.g. AR/VR turns into an alternative to computers & iPhones instead of an alternative to consoles. It may also be that Vision Pro is just a prelude to AR that ship in ~2035 but lays so much groundwork that nobody stands a chance at competing by the time the tech is ready, letting Apple secure the next trillion dollar product.
Cars were expensive and cancelled, that's the one that required Apple to stretch the most in terms of both brand and execution.
In your Google example, remember they invented transformers and yet did nothing with them. Any failure in Google's robotics efforts are likely due to Google having an absolutely horrible record of shipping and standing behind products. I wouldn't trust a Google robot because I wouldn't trust a Google product.
While Apple can do this, it isn't their typical mode of operation. For instance, they tend to accuhire companies specifically around getting an execution-oriented team for particular product areas, like developer tools (TestFlight) or weather (Dark Sky) or assistants (Siri).
This does mean building compelling product demos can determine how long a feature-under development can get extended.
> Foldables make sense for Apple to explore because even if it's ~5% likely to be able to be productized, the return is measured in the tens of billions.
Foldables make sense for Apple to explore also because even if foldable phones are a bad idea (and I kinda suspect they are), they make tons of other devices in different form factors which may have an entirely different set of trade-offs for flexible/foldable displays.
They can but do they? For all their flightiness on products, the company that actually does this is Google. They've poured money into very long term, questionable return projects at a rate Apple doesn't seem willing to do
Spatial Computing/iVision is, for example, a claim in vr. It gives them some exposure to the market, some ability to extend & integrate their existing application/computing ecosystem into this medium. Ditto for all the other pieces; they're all integrative. Smart speakers work with airplay. iWatch works with iPhone works with iOS. The close integration lets them rebuff innovation in any other field: no one small can come along and build the next VR headset or the best watch to compete with Apple in any of these sectors, because no one can integrate like Apple. No one else has all the products. You have to have complete over the horizon horizontal control to keep your intense market power, and Apple is invested above all in there never being a chink in that armor, in making sure they can completely dictate the shape of all products by producing & owning all the products themselves. This is Apple.
Hence, Apple has to dabble everywhere. It maintains the most, it prevents real competition from forming, and it earns them a couple % revenue here and there to boot.
Expressing an entirely different brand of cynicism, I'd also ask: where else could Apple look to expand into? None of these sectors has been a runaway success. But it's not like Apple's missing the boat on some massive new tech that a huge new Total Addressable Market. It's been absent from Crypto and AI but generally it's just expanding wherever there's any opportunity, and why not when you have the cash & when any sector could become huge?
Apple is uniquely situated (cash surplus, deep tech + manufacturing expertise, consumer product + marketing expertise) to take on such multi-year product-oriented R&D. Even if one out of N (serious) attempts pays off, the scale of success will justify the amortized ROI.
Edit: someone below said laundry folding robot. I'd see that as useful.
I want a bot that can do laundry (load washer, load dryer, fold, put away), do the dishes (rinse, put in dishwasher, put clean dishes away, wash pots & pans), vacuum floors, dust, clean up messes, empty garbage bins, take out the trash, mow my lawn, trim bushes, clean tables, mop floors, make meals, cleans toilets and sinks and bathrooms.
Currently myself and my wife split these duties, and kids help a bit. But it's still a ton of work for us. I would love to offload all that and more to a robot.
Of course, these are very hard problems to take on -- much harder than a "smart" light switch -- but the market is absolutely there.
There are already products for infants that will prep baby food. It’s harder to do something more complicated than that. Meal kit type meals that take grocery store ingredients as an input would likely do well with the well to do 30+ crowd that is in the middle of having kids and home remodels and is upset at how much delivery restaurant food they eat.
I’m definitely not projecting ;).
I think there’s likely a market for just the iBabyFood maker let along coming closer to an automated chef that’s “smarter” than buying a meal kit.
My experience with smart vacuums is that the more “AI” they add to them the worse they get. I’ve switched brands a few times and have always preferred the dumber models. I’m sure old iPhone tech and some computer vision know how would make a “Roomba killer” possible but I don’t know how many people are going to by the Beats by Dre Vacuum. Maybe a lot?
As things become more solarized a cross “platform” energy management system would be useful. Load controllers exist but often they’re tied to solar batteries or EVSEs. In my case I could avoid the cost of a panel update if there was a good system for load control that also wouldn’t upset my family. I.e. if they need to handle a transfer switch they will not be happy. More like, “if I’m running the jacuzzi and it’s winter, gate the AC but not the heat pump. If it’s summer gate the heat pump Aux heat but not the heat pump itself”
Most load controllers are focused on making a generator or battery run critical loads and don’t really work for larger more electrified homes on 200A panels.
Well, there's always the all-in-one washer/dryer combo which also does auto-foldi...
>Edit: someone below said laundry folding robot. I'd see that as useful.
I mean there is the automated chef kitchen machine the size of a large fridge which cooks dozens of meals which all intersect with the unit-prepared ingredients. Essentially a compact home version of what you'll all soon be seeing at fast food joints all over.
I myself am flipping out about Flippy™!
But from a business perspective it seems unlikely to be successful. Apple could "easily" sell a luxury car and TVs and print many billions of dollars right away. They wouldn't need unproven tech -- they could just use their design skills along with vertical integration to have very nice products that people would want to buy. Apple should eschew some of Silicon Valley's obsessions, like self-driving cars, which most people do not care about at all, and instead focus on their strengths.
Apple is WAY different internally. For all its dreariness and corpo atmosphere (not allowed to talk to each other, teams siloed and laser focused on shipping a specific product) they have much clearer vision of what will sell and what not, usual company missteps (AR glasses) notwithstanding.
Why does every store have self opening doors, but no houses do? I think it's because paying ~$500/year to get it running again when it breaks feels like a waste to almost any home owner. The same with other random innovations, like a car stacker to push your car into the garage roof when not in use so you can use the garage (the hydraulics would break), fans and pumps to move heat in or out of the house or water around the garden, they're a pain because they break, it's only worth it if you're running a commercial operation.
So homes end up with the absolute minimum number of things that could break. Calling out trades for the few things people must have requires smart people who are physically able, that have their ticket in a protected industry (in many countries). But a robot could have the same knowledge and physicality - at a fixed yearly cost.
If that were to happen, homes would transform as all sorts of things that require very occasional maintenance would start to appear. If something breaks even a very weak robot could diagnose it, find the parts online, have them delivered and probably install them.
This is easy to answer: I don't want a door that opens by itself (except in my dreams) because it's potentially dangerous, might open when I don't want (and let my cat out) and it's likely an energy sieve.
The juice isn't worth the squeeze - even not counting maintenance.
Um, what? AC and sprinklers? Those are common in homes.
Hey Google, can you turn off the baby bedroom light?
I'm sorry, I don't know that device.
So the only thing these devices are used for these days in my household are setting alarms and turning lights on/off. In the next home, probably won't even bother.
There also aren't that many areas where automation could possibly accomplish much. I think, the main directions are:
* Optimize energy usage (the same thermostat thing). It doesn't really amount to much. It could be useful in industrial setting, but for households it just doesn't save that much money, even if it works well.
* Cleaning. Making roombas deal with furniture or large objects left on the floor seems like mission impossible without a significant change in approach. Similarly for surfaces that are above the floor (desk, shelves etc.) Cleaning the exterior could be its own an quite an interesting thing though. Stuff like removing dead foliage from the roof for instance, or repainting the walls.
* Cooking. This could be potentially interesting, but will probably require a complete redesign of the tools used for cooking today to be reasonably priced. Eg. there would be no need for knives with handles for humans, because it's easier to make a slicing / chopping machine that has a very different configuration. Stoves and ovens would need to have some way of moving pots in and out automatically. Also, they'd probably have to be connected to the fridge and other kitchen storage... Which, in the end, means that it's not going to be an incremental upgrade. It will be also probably difficult to make the automated system coexist with human cooks...
I normally recommend people start their home automation journey with smart bulbs, ideally in their bedroom so they can speak their lights off and on while in bed, but long-term, switches are the best.
Exactly this.
I've had so many "aw fuck it I'll do it myself" moments with tech.
I no longer use any smart home devices. It was a passing fad as far as my experience goes.
Seemed cool, didn't really change my life.
That’s why Google is slowly getting out of it and shifting their focus from Nest. That’s why Apple never did much beyond a few speakers, and it’s why Amazon is right at home in that business (but even they’re getting out of the money-losing voice assistant aspect).
Robotics… seem like a miss to me. Very few tasks at home are as simple as vacuuming, but maybe I just lack the creativity and vision. Apple surely has some great tech left over from the car R&D so who knows. Apple is unfortunately not great at a “communal” perspective when making things.
I think a big issue no one talks about will be robot storage/garages. It’s already an issue for Roomba and anything bigger will be a no-go for many households. That is probably apples best chance - make it pleasant to look at and a status symbol.
SwitchBot is working on something I haven't seen elsewhere yet: Making robot vacuums double as mops is becoming common, and and a few have modifications to hook into the water/waste lines so you don't have to refill it, but SwitchBot made that as part of its primary design because they got the idea to use the robot to ferry water around other places: it can automatically refill their humidifier and empty their dehumidifier.
I could imagine further enhancements for watering plants, or maybe if it's a success a future one that cleans rugs may become feasible.
Even vacuuming was pretty hard. Most vacuum robots were a disappointment until maybe 2 or 3 years.
Yes, you can do all of these things manually, but are you good at keeping a flawless schedule? It may not matter if you forget to turn on the coffee maker but it matters a lot if you forget to feed the fish. And you won't always be available to handle these things every single day, unless you work from home and follow an extremely rigid schedule.
How much time does it save you having your coffee maker or before you go to get coffee?
If apple can refrain from sending the data to icloud or any other servers, then I would be very interested.
Or are these devices just so common, unremarkable, and ubiquitous now that you just aren’t noticing them anymore? I can’t think of any of my friends and family who don’t at least have some smart speakers and smart lighting devices in their home.
Smart door locks that you can open with your phone, and smart door bells and security cameras that you can monitor remotely are becoming pretty common too.
But a smart coffee maker? A smart clock? A smart dishwasher? All this garbage ended up being gimmicks and it ran out of steam so quickly.
I hope the things that are useful continue to get support as the big players abandon smart home expansion.
This is the answer.
HomeAssistant is fantastic and has unified everything of mine into a single platform. Control mostly happens through Google and Apple/Homekit devices (other than hardware switches), and everything works pretty seamlessly.
The only smart appliances I got are Philips hue lights which are nice but well, after the initial discovery, I use them as classical light bulbs 99% of the time. I’ve found zero useful automation (not saying they don’t exists) and I can’t see why I would control lighting from my phone (at least not enough to justify spending hundreds into smart bulbs and smart switches).
Ultimately, I’m not against smart home but since each home is unique, by definition, those objects are only useful if the user is willing to invest enough time to tailor the configuration to be useful in his own unique house.
Oh I thought about ranting about my experience with Sonos speakers which are really nice speakers with great audio quality for the money and size and everything you’d want except the "smart" part you are forced to use with their terrible (and closed) software.
Also, something to Clean my dishes (Load in the dishwasher, turn it on, and put it away).
Doing my laundry - load, wash and fold. Mow the lawn.
A one time purchase price of 20k would be acceptable. $20-30k per year is ridiculous. For that price you can hire a person to come and clean your toilet for 5 hours a day, every single day.
The mowing itself (and trimming) takes 5% of his time, or even less.
Funny how people enjoy automating the part that you easily could do yourself without a massive time impact.
The security camera, door lock, and thermostat space has room for improvement. The annual subscription model for cameras combined with their privacy gaps opens a space for Apple. My car unlocks when I walk up to it. Shouldn't my house do the same?
Kitchen appliances have gone done in quality to the point that they are replaced every few years when the linear motors fail. I don't know if there is enough margin for Apple but knowing what food is cycling through the kitchen would be another interesting health input.
3D printer, laser cutter, replicator machine that manufactures physical goods in your house.
Automatic pool/hot tub system that keeps chemical levels balanced and orders supplies as needed.
Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home.
But Google actually got rid of theirs because they can't be used with recycled water/greywater, since it isn't clean enough.
> Urban gardening pods that allow anyone to grow healthy food at home.
Pretty much anything involving urban gardening is a fake hippie pastoralist idea. Centralization and professionalization is good.
Apple has a condo in Cupertino?
It would not surprise me at all if Apple had a similar facility for themselves, especially for internal demos, user testing, and sanity checks.
- cooking
- cleaning
- taking care of kids
You can be sure that a ton of people are working on those.
I've been using this and it's great but has its limitations: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6HBY1Q
They need some actual management talent, evidently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJEwrSSFe9s
Here's what I used:
Raspberry Pi Model 4 B
Raspberry Pi CPU
Raspberry Pi CPU heatsink (w/self-adhesive)
Raspberry Pi manual
Raspberry Pi A/C adapter
Raspberry Pi case
ConBee II Zigbee USB gateway
USB ADATA Micro SD card reader
USB cable
Micro SD card (for operating system and Home Assistant)
Ethernet cable (probably not needed because the Pi 4 has onboard WiFi)
Thermostats: https://www.sinopetech.com/en/products/thermostat/I haven't tried running a local text-to-speech engine backed by an LLM to control Home Assistant (HA). Maybe someone is working on this already?
TTS: https://github.com/SYSTRAN/faster-whisper
LLM: https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile/releases
LLM: https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/Nous-Hermes-2-Mixtral-8x7B-D...
HA: https://www.home-assistant.io/
It would take some tweaking to get the voice commands working correctly.