Aqara & SmartThings Massive Matter Updates, Ballie Launches, & More
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Welcome, everybody, to HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host, as always, Andrew O'Hara. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Joining me this week once more is Wesley Hilliard. How are you doing, man? Good. I just realized I forgot my glasses, but luckily I can still see without them.

I guess that's a good thing. Everyone listening to the podcast right now is like, I don't even recognize him. Everyone listening just thought something is off today. Yeah, totally different. That's what it is. New person here. Yeah, they're far away readers. Yeah, so my iPad is this close. I'll be okay. That works out. Without my contacts, I am basically blind. Oh, poor thing.

And I also, I just also look the same. So no one would even know until I walk into things. Oh, true. Yeah. Contacts kind of, yeah. It's not the anime thing where you take off the glasses and you're just pupils just become little dots. Yeah. It's correct. I am not a cartoon slash anime character. So it's more of just same. Yeah.

Well, we have a pretty stacked episode to get through today. So let's go ahead and kick things off. Samsung has a massive SmartThings update coming out. We've talked about everyone on the show, especially with their relation to Apple Home and All Things Matter. And that's what this update is. And I'm hoping that this pressure that Samsung is pushing on Apple...

is what helps them move things along. But there is a reason there are a lot of SmartThings users that are so steadfast in that. So SmartThings is now, I believe, almost fully supporting Matter 1.4, which came out in the fall, if everyone recalls.

So they are adding a ton of new Matter 1.4 device types, including water heaters, heat pumps, solar power devices. There are batteries like for your home and for solar cells, everything like that. Different mounted switches and dimmable load control devices, all sorts of things that were added in Matter 1.4.

Apple has just now added robotic vacuum cleaners, but here's Samsung with support for a ton of new device types. And it's just great to see that. It seems like Samsung has a team on just smart home, whereas Apple has one guy on smart home, Apple Journal, sports, and probably the news app too.

It's quite possible. I know we joke about that a lot, but it always does seem like Apple is just slow to these things. And of course, most of these things don't have device types yet, but it's always the game of which comes first, the device types and then the apps that support it. Is it the apps that support it first and then we get device types? For a while, we had things on the market that were MatterCertified that the apps didn't support. Yeah.

And then now we have app updates that are out there, ecosystem updates before we have products. And I think that's probably the better way to go. And I'm hoping we do see some of these things. I fret that we it won't be until, you know, CES 2026 at this point until we see any kind of movement on those categories. But we'll have to see after it just feels like Apple shouldn't be playing catch up all the time.

This gets back to a bigger discussion of should all of Apple's apps and services be tied to larger ecosystem updates? Should we have to wait for iOS 19, iOS 20 for every single major update to the ecosystem, especially for the Home app? I don't think, you know, that one probably should be pulled out of the operating system because, honestly, I don't see why it would be tied to the operating system in the first place. Yeah, it's a tough call. It is. I mean...

You know we've covered it so much on Apple Insider in general, but Apple's updates this year have been pretty massive, whether it's because they missed features that weren't delivered at first with iOS 18. But 18.2, 18.3 have been, 18.4 even, added quite a bit of new functionality and stuff that could easily be these home updates. I mean, technically we did get robotic vacuum cleaners, but Apple had announced it last June already.

Well, Akara is also doing a bunch of updates, but this is even more exciting. Now, before we get into this, Wes, I'm very aware on the show when we talk about certain brands very frequently. And I really like finding different brands and talking about different brands that we don't cover so much. And at one point, we'd even gotten some feedback. Hey, you talk about these three brands quite a bit.

What else is out there? And that is a fair question. But it is reasons like this update that we're going to get into of why companies like Acara

dominate so much of the show. I am not trying to give them a bunch of, you know, a large share of our show, but this is such a great update and you guys are going to see why. They're similar to Samsung in the fact that they're a wider ecosystem. They supply a lot of devices under their own umbrella, but they also connect to other ecosystems. So they act as supplier and hub, whereas Samsung

Apple, for example, is just the hub distributor. They're just doing a Matterhub, they're just doing Thread hubs, and then of course their home, Apple HomeKit hubs.

But they're not really making the devices themselves. Whereas Aqara makes many devices that fit almost every category. I think they don't have a light bulb, right? That's like pretty much the only thing. They have cameras. Oh, they do. Oh, of course. They have sensors. They even have a pet feeder. Like they have this whole ecosystem of devices. And now with this MatterUpdate, you can just...

go buy samsung smart things and a car and then just go nuts because now you have access to every single feasible smart home device on the market and apple's over here getting around a vacuum cleaner so that's that's why we talk about a car a lot they're just they do a lot so there's lots to talk about and in this update they directly fix many of apple shortcomings so

Aqara has added a ton of new device types similar to Samsung. They now have, there's over 40 new matter devices supported. There are robotic vacuum cleaners, dimmable plugs, smoke and CO alarms, air quality sensors,

leak, freeze, and rain sensors, fans and air purifiers, curtains and shades, air conditioners and heat pumps, water valves and pumps, pressure sensors, solar panels and battery storage, vehicle chargers, laundry washers and dryers, refrigerators, cooktops, range hoods and surfaces, ovens and stoves, water heaters, video players, and speakers.

Over 40 total new Matter device types are contained within those larger categories, which is pretty crazy. But here's what is really cool, Wes. They introduced something called Advanced Bridging, which is going to do a few things. The big one is it's going to bridge these Matter accessories that Apple Home does not support into Apple Home.

They may show up as technically a different like accessory or whatever, but they are basically putting all of these into Apple Home and making them usable for Apple Home users. So if Apple doesn't get around to doing it, you can use them by way of a car. You'll add them to a car and then they can be added in Apple Home. They're kind of a home bridge solution, just a little bit more official. Yeah. I mean, it's very much official because they're going – it is all –

Through matter, there's no hokey stuff to set up. Software, faking things. Yeah, these other systems require either you build your own home server on your Mac or you're doing these special software setups or buying a Raspberry Pi and tricking everything, whereas this one's kind of going through official channels. Now, they might be doing some weird stuff on the back end, but the user doesn't have to deal with that, and I think that's what's smart here.

for sure. The second thing that they are doing, and this is the one that I am even more excited about, Wes, it's called, it's still part of their advanced bridging, but they're doing things like syncing, quote, like signals. And these are taking the custom Aqara actions that Apple Home does not support and bringing them over.

And there's a lot of options here. So it could be like Wes used his fingerprint to unlock this door, do this action. It could be the camera recognized Andrew outside, turn on the TV, you know, whatever it happens to be. You throw up a peace sign. There's also custom gestures. Yes. Yeah.

That's really cool. They have a bunch of different gesture support for their cameras, like the G3 and the G5. So you could throw up whatever gestures they support, and then you can map that as a signal. So the way that it actually works is you do these things. You set up these signals, these triggers in a CARA, and they show up in Apple Home as occupancy sensors because an occupancy sensor is just like a –

on and off situation. So it just shows on. So you would set up a signal like Andrew waved at the camera and that sends off a certain command. So in Cara, I said, Andrew, the sensor, the gesture that goes over to the home app as an occupancy sensor with the same name. So it'll say like occupancy sensor, Andrew waved.

And then you can create any automations based on that. Run a scene, run, turn on a specific device, whatever you got to do. But you can do all of that based off of that signal happening. So you're going to just devise increasingly complex stances to do in front of the camera to control your lights. That'd be good for guests. They're going to get very long. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be very ceremonial and just trigger a scene afterwards. That'll work.

This is just so cool. This is so smart. This is exciting. This is a ton of work. I believe the same thing works for scenes as well that are more complex that you create in a Chara that will be able to sync over to Apple Home, which is very similar to how Nanoleaf does it for the multicolor stuff that you can create the scenes in Nanoleaf, and then those will sync over to the Home app. Right.

These updates are out now, I believe. So you can download or update your Hub M3 to get the new Matter devices. And I believe the Matter stuff is in there as well. But this is really cool. I mean, last week we just talked about some pretty major updates coming to that G5 Pro camera, which is really great. And now we have this whole situation going on. So...

It's big. It's pretty big for car users and I think really gives them a lot more value. And they recognize, again, that this is a stopgap solution until like Apple Home or Matter supports a lot of these different things. But it makes it work and it's very easy to do. So, like, let's go. I'm on board. Water pressure sensors.

They just have so much random stuff in here. Yeah, I don't know. This is cool. I think this is something that I would actually play with. I've been in the car app before, and it's pretty in-depth. There's a lot going on there, but I've never really set it up more than just to mess with the cameras that I have. But this looks like something I might try where I have...

a narwhal vacuum cleaner. I wonder if that will be able to integrate with the, a car system. Um, it's not matter. I don't think not yet, but maybe through, but through these third party, I guess it's just matter. Okay. Well, yeah, they bring in a lot of other ecosystems though. They work with like Zigbee and these other things. So it's just something I'll have to look into, but that's cool. I'm glad that they're exploring new options and,

I think what their goal is is to bring more people to Aqara outside of Apple because I'm guessing Aqara is probably pretty popular with Apple users. And they're trying to say, hey, we also work with literally everything else. So this is neat.

There are a lot of reasons that those of us that followed the show like Apple Home slash HomeKit, and I'd argue that privacy and security are tops on the list, which makes it a perfect segue to talk about our sponsor for the episode, ExpressVPN. Here's a question. How did you choose which ISP to use? The sad thing is most of us have very little choice.

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two cherry trees. There's like the smaller ones that I've got. And then there's a couple bigger ones that are apple trees, including a five in one apple tree. It has five different types of apples on one tree. Like they grafted the branches on there. There's like Fuji, Granny Smith. I want to say like Red Delicious or something. Maybe Pink Ladies on there, but they're the five different types of apples and they even have different colored leaves. So right now all the leaves are coming out and there's like red leaves as well as green ones.

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Well, ESR is updating their Qi 2 chargers. Always a good Qi 2 update. And this is really nice because they are updating it to Cryo Boost 2. If anyone is familiar with the ESR chargers, their stuff is known for having active cooling. And I just think that is the smartest thing for a wireless charger, especially in the car. So they have new Cryo Boost 2 chargers, which includes like their desktop chargers as well as their car charger. What is Cryo Boost 2?

improved airflow. They say it is a fully open duct system that increases the efficiency, reducing temperatures by about 5.5 degrees Celsius, ensuring safer and more stable charging. So a new duct system with improved airflow. Second one is reduced sound. I know some people didn't like that because there was a fan, there technically was sound. I

I always found it pretty quiet, but it's going even quieter. It's dropping from 30 decibels to 25. So if you're using this bedside, which I don't know why you'd care about active cooling bedside, but if you are, it is quieter now. And then it has a slimmer design. They say this is coming July 2025, but slimmer design. So it must be certain models...

but the fan's thickness has been reduced from 7mm to 4mm, resulting in a sleeker, more streamlined design. So this is pretty great. I mean, it's quieter, it is better performing, cools your phone down faster, improves the charging times for a Qi 2 charger.

I always like these. So this is great. So decibels are like a logarithmic logarithmic scale. So five points is a pretty big jump and, um, sound levels, especially for such a small device. If you're using this in your car, road noise will be louder than this. Regardless. Uh, you could be in a completely silent cabin and still not hear it driving. You'll heal. You'll hear your wheels on the road more than that. But, uh, this is cool. I mean, it makes sense when you're charging something, uh, wirelessly magsafe, uh,

um, cheat charging, whatever, you're always going to have heat losses. Uh, it doesn't matter how efficient the charger is. You will have heat losses and that heat has nowhere to go. It's going to transfer to the case. It's going to transfer to the battery and your CPU and temperature sensors in the phone and are going to detect that and cut back on charging as it gets hotter. So having active cooling means that you will never have to throttle your charging speed. And that's

While they're still charging at the same MagSafe limits, you know, 15, 25 watts, you're getting better, more efficient charging because you're never having to throttle your charging speed. So that's smart. Yep. And there can be some pretty drastic improvements in charging speed overall when your phone is not overheating. Again, especially in the car. You got maps and wireless car play and sun happening. Your phone can get hot. So active cooling, pretty useful. Yeah.

Then we've got Eve. Eve is updating their stuff. This is, we, no one cares about this on the, the Apple side of things, but Eve energy is getting updated on the Android side of stuff. They have support for energy monitoring via matter. So they're updating the Eve app. There's now like full Android support built with native Google home APIs and everything. They're,

using matter there's energy reporting that is being pulled into the eve energy app and they have gotten their official works with home assistant certification so for our massive amount of android eve users that are out there this is great news i wonder if there's this you know this is an interesting update i'm excited but it brings up another question

of energy, right? I wonder if there's any companies out there working on this and their smart batteries, right? We review these giant batteries that weigh like 130 pounds and like Anker and Bluity. I wonder if these companies are considering joining up in this because I don't know the MatterSpec, but I'm pretty sure it supports these kinds of systems.

to where you'd be able to see your battery level in, say, the home app. I don't know that Apple supports it specifically yet, but Matter does. So it's exciting. I'm hopeful that we see more of this. Eve Energy, of course, joining Matter helps in this. I feel like every time I go to the home widget section, I see more energy-specific widgets. So that at least is good news that they're actually developing that portion of the app.

That's true. And I will wonder when they switched to using the matter one and for Apple to pull in some of that data, because right now, like Eve does it using native home kit APIs and it could not do it on the Android side of things until matter added energy reporting, which it finally did, which was how they were able to update their app over there using native APIs now for energy monitoring. Um,

To circle back, Matter does support all of those things for batteries. That was added as part of that big Matter 1.4 update. I think it was 1.4 or 1.3, 1.4. Oh, shoot, Andrew. Well, either way, that was part of the one that included the heat pumps and the EV chargers and all that stuff for monitoring the home. We just haven't seen anything.

Yes, correct. And I did talk to a bunch at CES who did tell me, yes, it is coming. I don't know if any of those things were like public things, but I would say the big companies, yes, are planning on integrating matter. This is another one of those mildly frustrating situations like stovetops, right? You don't buy a $2,000, $3,000 battery storage system.

And then get told, oh, but the new one has Matter. You should upgrade. So I hate that it feels like this is going to be a purchasing decision in the future. Whereas, again, I don't think there's anything that necessarily says that Matter has to have a specific chip or a specific –

So, you know, going back and updating these devices would be great, especially for these larger appliance like devices. But I think a lot of companies just see dollar signs. So I guess we'll just have to see who does what and how. But hopefully maybe we'll get some backwards updates. But at the bare minimum, going forward, we'll see some systems actually take advantage of it. True story. So do you remember a Bollie?

from like CS and probably other things. Yeah, it was going to run Bixby, right? That's how old that is, by the way. It is this yellow volleyball-shaped doohickey that rolls around your house and answers questions, can project on the wall or the floor, and like do things. It is like your moving digital assistant. Well, yeah.

Samsung has been talking about this thing for years now. Apparently it is actually launching. They have confirmed it is coming out and they are integrating it with Google's Gemini AI. So it'll be able to interpret audio voice and visual data from its camera, as well as sensor data from the environment. And it can give you recommendations for health and wellbeing and it

This thing just looks so much fun. There's no pricing yet, but it's actually launching, Wes. It's your own little BB-8 robot. It's just space. I was thinking more of Flubber Weebo situation. Yeah, but Weebo flew, right? This isn't a drone. Just to be very specific. No, it's fun. I like these little robots. There's a lot of robots being developed by many companies. I'm sure we've seen several at CES.

I don't fully get the appeal because, all right, it looks cool in the commercials, but what you don't see is the part where you're sitting in a silent home and you have hardwood floors and then it starts rolling and you hear rolling around the houses. It's the treads are just eating into your hardwood floors.

I don't know. Cool. Honestly, it's a toy. I don't know how much utility it has. Do you remember the drone that shot in the air and followed you around? Was that Amazon? Like the ring protect one? That's the one, yeah. Like the security one? Yeah. So it's just some of these things just seem very like...

They should have stayed in the conception stage. I'm surprised that Bali will make it to market. I have no idea how much it's going to cost. For my house, it wouldn't make sense. It's a two-level home, and there's just not enough open space for an entire robot to exist. The vacuum cleaner is enough. If Bali was vacuuming, maybe I would check it out, but...

neat, I guess. This brings up the argument, Andrew, what do you think? Would you prefer to have a speaker in every room that you can talk to with sensors that gather data, like separate distinct products that you can upgrade individually? Or do you want to remove all that from your home and introduce this robot that does all of the things those sensors and cameras do and those speakers, but just one device that follows you around?

My biggest problem is I don't communicate with an assistant enough. Like, I use Apple Assistant quite a bit, but not nearly enough that I need something to follow me around and do things. Again, like you said, it's just fun. It's a toy. It looks like a toy. Like, call it in here to project something, you know, throw a workout on the ground so I can do a HIIT workout or something. Like...

All these random little things, but it's just more of like, it's really cool. It's a toy. If you're looking for a fun toy, I wonder if they still make it. Sphero made a BB-8 version. Yeah.

And you just put down on the ground. They're good ones. They got rid of all of us too bad. I have BBA and R2D2 on my shelf over here. The, that you can, I bet the app is discontinued though. So you probably can't even use them. I haven't, I haven't turned it on in a long time, but it used to be able to just roll around. I'm sure it'll still roll around if I turn it on, but yeah, the app communications dead. So too bad. Um, it's just, that's what it reminds me of. It reminds me of a toy and, um,

I guess there's a foreseeable future where these devices have more utility. Maybe they can water your plants. Maybe they'll go and connect to that humidifier, get water, and go water your plants for you, right? Like, it's just... We've talked about some silly stuff on here. They can let us know that little Timmy has fallen down the well. Yeah. They'll be like, hey, where's the cat? And it'll show you where the cat is. My Roborock already does that. Oh, well, then there you go. You're good to go.

Okay, so if anyone out there remembers the Flipper Zero, which is this incredibly popular little hacky tool situation thing, they are launching their second product, which looks very cool. This is called the Busy Bar, and it's basically like this smart productivity tool for... I'm going to go with like...

a more nerdier, geekier crowd because it looks definitely on the techie-ish side of things. Andrew, you would buy this. But it's really neat. Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like I fall into the nerdier, techier side of things. I need one right there that says...

So I'll paint you a little bit of a word picture on this guy, and of course will be the chapter art for you. So on the one side of it is just a large, old-school, pixelated-looking display. So just a bar. It can show the word busy or recording in large letters, as well as even a timer that gives you how long I'm staying focused and working right now and counting down.

So you can just smack the button on the top and it'll start doing that. Now there's two different sides to this. There's like that LED pixelated display and then there's a small e-ink looking display on the other side. So you could have it facing outwards like on your desk so other people can recognize that you're focusing and being, you know, working or turn around the other way, whichever you'd like to do. There's also on top, there's that big start pause button. There's a smaller dial and then there's like a little different mode button.

that you can look at just a little arm that twists around. This has to be the most rude piece of technology I have ever seen. Like, their preview here is just so funny of just someone walking up to this guy. Which one?

I'm showing it on the iPad. This person walks up to this guy and he just slaps the button on top and it says busy and he continues typing on his keyboard. And I'm just laughing. He wasn't even busy. For anyone who watched that, yeah, he's typing and his busy bar is empty and then somebody walks up. The man holds up his hand like stop. Slaps it. And then hits the start button.

And it counts down 20 minutes. That man clearly did not want to talk to whoever walked up to his desk. He was not busy until that person walked up and then he can be, Oh, Oh, look, you can see my timer counting down a much better demo. Had the man just been already in the middle of something in the time we're already counting down and then people could have given him a space, but then they would have never walked up in the first place and the demo would have been dumb, but it's still dumb anyway. Yeah.

Okay, so I really do like this. The utility of this that I enjoy is this is Apple Home compatible and I can attach it to my door and say I'm podcasting, right? Like that's really cool. Honestly, I would probably buy it just to do that.

And they have all these different integrations. So you could really set this up however you want. Do you want to just put it by your door and give people that recording sign, on-air sign that you could do? You could also use it for more of a Pomodoro timer just for yourself, not for other people to realize anything. But you just give yourself that countdown to keep you focused on a task for a set period of time before moving on to the next one.

They also, like, when you put it into that mode, it'll work with the busy app that will then, like, change your focus mode and, like, turn off notifications and things. So, like, when you are focused, your notifications stop as well. So, like, I love that integration. Like you said. Yeah.

Yep. That's cool. Live activity support there. And then like you said, it is Apple home by way of matter. So to work with anything under the matter umbrella. And as far as matter goes, it's basically you go into busy mode and you can set your scene. So for me or Wes, like we're going to go podcast. We hit a, we make sure that little knob is twisted into podcast mode, hit the start. Now we're on air. It goes ahead and sets the podcast scene, sets the background, turns on the key light.

turns off the AC or heat pump, whatever, and good to go. So you can tie all of those things into this. It's basically a matter button that you could do whatever with. This is clearly going to cost $8,000, right? Flipper Zero isn't that expensive. I'm joking. We have a price. It's $250. Not bad. Okay, there we go. For what it is, it's...

It's an LED that turns on. Okay, I get it. So that is expensive for that. But all of the little buttons and knobs and integrations, that's... The design and effort they put into this clearly brings that price up. And I think it justifies it. But...

Maybe if you were using it literally as a door for your office, maybe not justifiable unless you're just really that into the idea. But otherwise, yeah, this is cool. At least as a fun little concept. Pomodoro timer. Yeah, pretty good.

I think when anytime there's a, there's a thing that companies fall into this trap, whereas they make a product. And a lot of the times they go full like dev tinkering community and they just lean into that. And the product almost does nothing on its own until you start tinkering and using plugins from the community and things like that. Then there are other ones that are,

just ready to go customer friendly and they have very few like integrations and customization and tinker ability to it. And I think they have done a very good job of, this is a fifth up polished product. You can just play with this, use it, find a bunch of utility on its own. But if you want, you can also really get in there, customize it, use APIs and, and really build it out as much as you want. And I think doing that,

takes more money and time because you have to appeal to both markets at the same time and be fully built out in both of those ways. Yeah, this is really fun. I'm always happy to see more companies experiment in these spaces and care about what they're building and build something cool and unique. Like nobody's making this, like this is, this is awesome. Yep. And if you guys are interested, it's a link to the show notes.

Sonos now is making another change again. Again, I would say a good change. So Sonos is appointing Hugo Barra to its board. They are dropping one of its longest-timing board members and we're adding Barra. So Barra did a ton of things. He was an exec over at Google. He actually led the, I believe, part of the Android team and really grew it into like

the massive size that it is today. He then went over and was with Xiaomi and was with them for a few years doing stuff. And then he was at Meta where he served as the VP of the Oculus and virtual reality division. And he did things there.

Now he's doing some sort of AI startup, but he's also serving on the Sonos board. So, again, board seat, not direct person, but I feel like he's had a lot of leadership and seen a lot of good projects through. I am excited to see what he'll be able to do with a board seat. How do you feel about Sonos right now? Lowering prices, seeking... It seems like they're kind of in panic mode a little bit. Oh, I think that they are...

I wouldn't say panic mode. I feel like they're trying to get things back to stable, I guess. I think they had a lot of negative PR and user backlash over their app thing. Compared to other users, I think Sonos has a lot of very loyal users, and they were very hurt at how things played out. But I think they've been doing a ton better

of actual effort to correct things. Other companies probably would have just, like I said, we're fixing it and then just started, you know, rolling out updates and been pretty quiet on the whole situation. But they've been incredibly vocal doing these like every two week app updates. I talked about on the last week's episode, they have a public Trello board where you can literally see what they're working on, what feedback they're hearing, what the next updates are to the app. Like they're, they're publishing their, their app roadmap to make it better for everyone. And,

And then they are dropping prices on core products that have been out for a few years. Yeah, they're definitely trying. Which makes it more competitive. Yeah, I mean, I think...

It's terrible that they got in the situation in the first place, but I wonder if there is a path out of this beyond acquisition at this point. That's just my opinion. But we'll see. Do you think they'll maybe get bought by Amazon or something? This will turn into another Eero product where they're not going to stamp Amazon on the side of the box, but they're going to be the owners of the company kind of situation? Yeah.

I mean, I hope not, just because I do really like Sonos. I like them a lot, and I like their soundbars and portable speakers are fantastic. And I don't love how Amazon treats a lot of its acquisitions. Some fare better than the others. I actually think Eero has done remarkably well, as you said. I think others like Ring are fantastic.

So not the best example at this point. And they have not come through with promises. And so much of it seems about just funneling data into Amazon's ecosystem. So, you know, other ones like that I don't love. So I hope that they continue on their path. They are as a private company and can do well.

Okay, last one out. This is just a really small hands-on situation that I just think is kind of fun. So I wanted to show you, Wes, get your thoughts on it. Because there's tons of different things in this space. So in last week's episode, we talked about the Revis water bottle from Journey that added in Find My. This, it does not have Find My on its own, but is an AirTag cover that's pretty cool from UAG. So this is their Monarch...

from urban armor gear. And it is a carabiner that has an air tag holder in the center. It is super hefty and durable. So the whole thing is made out of aluminum. So it's got an all metal frame on the bottom is an additional key ring loop. Then there's like a big kind of chunky squarish piece in the center where your air tag is housed. And the top has the carabiner easy to go on and off, but it's also locking. It has this metal knurling, uh,

ring around it that you can tighten up to lock the carabiner into place. This is fully water and dust resistant, so you put your AirTag in there, it's going to be protected. The outside is polycarbonate, so basically plastic, which allows for the AirTag signal to come through unencumbered. I put my AirTag inside. I could also still hear it fine,

AirTag has never been the loudest tracker on the market, but it was still fine. I could still hear it through that. Then the last thing is it has a built-in bottle opener right there on the side. It's got a built-in bottle opener to open up your brewski. But yeah, this is pretty cool. You never realize how convenient it is to have a bottle opener until you don't have one and you're smashing it against the side of a counter trying to open your bottle.

Um, no, this is great. Uh, I wonder how far away we are from just getting a multi-tool, uh, because honestly that would be nice because it's already this big bulky thing. Just throw a knife in a thing on the side, you know?

I mean, at that point, I feel like you're almost talking about like the key smart because I think the new key smart does have find my built in and you can add your keys. You can add. I don't even know all the different parts they have, but they were like a modular multi tool situation. I don't want it to be keys. Like, I mean, literally just a Gerber. Like, I want a Gerber with an air tag in it. Let's do that.

See, at that point, yeah, you can just have a multi-tool with the Find My stuff built in. Which, again, KeySmart does that, but not to the whole multi-tool, like pliers and everything. KeySmart looks more like a traditional pocket knife, like a Victorinox that stuff pulls out of. And you could put in keys. You could put in all these different accessories that slide out. You could put in one of those combs. You can just swipe it open and just start combing your hair. Okay. It's not for a greaser or whatever they're called. Yeah.

Switchblade comb. Gotta love it. It is not that. But I do like the key smart ones. I guess it's close. But I do think it would be interesting to see someone like Leatherman make

a find my product like that. Cause it would make sense. Like, cause you leave these, those things around and you left it outside in the yard or wherever, and you can find it. Not even just the finding part of it. Like, okay. So P P Taka, P Kata. I always do that. I switched the K and the T it's one of the two I just said, um, they make an air tag holder that is technically a multi-tool, but it's this flimsy little thing that,

That has like a, the world's tiniest little screwdriver on the side of it. And it's, and it falls apart all the time. So poorly conceived, but do that just more rugged. Like this UAG one's really cool. I like that. It's, I know a lot of people that would buy it, right? I was in the military forever. I can tell you their cases are incredibly just ridiculously these super masculine metal pieces.

bits. I totally would have had one back in the day if I had known that they existed. Um, and this kind of reflects their, uh, building choices and they know their market. And I, this is cool. Like I always nice to have a good, a good attachable thing. Um, this is, uh,

Well made. So, yeah. $40 may be a little steep, but it's nice. That's my, that's I feel like the problem that I have with it is like I think the price is steep, but also this thing has been sold out like continuously. This came out at CES and it sold out so fast. I don't think they even did PR for it because it just was instantly out of stock. Get it. Get it by April 15th if you order within four hours. Look, I can order it.

Yeah, because they're available again now. Finally. I think they're expensive, but it's really cool. And I mean, if you're putting something on... I like the leather one that I have from Nomad, which is really nice. That's what I've had on my key ring. But I kind of like this better, being able to take off like that. I do like having a carabiner on my keys. I think it's handy. Yeah. So...

Maybe this is like ditched like the leather one and just put a carabiner in its place for carabiner and your tracker in one unit. So this is useful. I think a little expensive, but it's pretty darn useful. So cool. Thank you for joining us. It was another quite long episode. We had a lot of little things to get through today. No massive stories, but a lot of little things and updates to work our way through.

Yeah, I wasn't here for Home Hub last week, but I'm sure we'll be talking about more of that here soon. I'm excited for it. I have been postulating about the idea that it doesn't need to be delayed because the first model won't have Apple intelligence, but here's my theory, Andrew, just as we close.

They need to delay it not because Apple Intelligence is being delayed, but because they need people to like Siri again before they launch a new product that is based around that smart assistant. So that's my guess. It's really not even about the AI part of it. It's because it's not even going to be local to the device at launch. They can't launch another HomePod, especially now with everyone so upset about the assistant. We'll see. I mean, I don't know how...

Yes, there are plenty of people in that, but at the same time, how many people are mad? Like, my wife has no idea what is going on. Who's keeping track of it? It's just when the core audience isn't there, maybe it's harder to market it because we're part of the marketing department at Apple, I guess. We're the ones who go by it and say, hey, look how cool this is. But, no, you're right. It's maybe...

It's enough of a, what is it, Tempest in a teapot that we forget sometimes that people in the real world don't care. They don't know. They just say, hey, look, the Apple thing's out. I'm going to go buy it. But either way, release the thing. Come on. Don't delay it. I bet you have a warehouse full of them already. Just release it. Let's go.

Well, thank you again, Wes, for hanging out with us. If you guys want to see the video version of the podcast, you can go to youtube.com slash homekitinsider. You can give us a 5, 10, 100-star rating on your podcast player of choice. Otherwise, everything we've talked about is linked in the show notes. We'll catch you guys in the next episode. ♪