Jony Ive + OpenAI in the Smart Home, SwitchBot Hub 3, & Thorbolt X1
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. You've got me, your host as always, Andrew O'Hara, and I am stoked as always to have Dan Turk back, PR extraordinaire, to chat all things smart home. And we're really getting into the weeds on some of this open AI stuff, right Dan, especially as it pertains to smart home and everything. That's been the news all week this week. I mean, it's

It's been everywhere. So thank you for joining, I guess, first off. Thank you, as always, for hanging out today. I'm excited to be back. This is becoming a regular thing. It's good. It's good. I'm happy. I do have to warn you, Dan, this is not like SNL. You do not get a Five Timers Club jacket anywhere.

you know, for being on the show. We don't got it in the budget. You're not getting a velvet coat. This might be something coming back. I'm going to find a way for one of my clients to sponsor at this point. Well, five timers jacket start, start out. Then I can start pitching other people, other clients or prospects and be like, Hey, if you see me on home, get inside or start sending me some gear to review.

Who knows? Oh my god, you're going to be kitted out like a dang NASCAR car. Like, you're just going to have, like, an Eve tattoo on your forehead and, like, some robot vacuums on your shoulders. I don't even know, but... Okay. Juices are flowing. I'm liking this. Okay, let's get into this. I love how you as the guest are taking sponsorships for my pod... Like, you are the one taking in sponsorships for this podcast. Like...

I'm going to start doing this. This is not just a joke. I am full on starting to do this for the next episode. Okay. Let's get into the news, right? Everything that's happened this week. Not a ton of huge things, but I would say...

Two of these are pretty huge updates. So we're starting off with SwitchBot. SwitchBot has two new products to chat about. The first one is their SmartLock, and SmartLocks are really getting interesting. Companies, I feel like, are now being forced to really innovate as we're getting into kind of like this spot where it's like, okay, everyone's got a SmartLock now. How are we going to differentiate? And...

the next thing that everyone's moving into is, is biometrics. So we have the switch bot lock ultra vision combo. So this is a retrofit door lock. So deadbolt style door lock for like your front door using facial recognition, as well as other means of entry. So,

The vision part of this uses 30,000 infrared points to create a high res millimeter level facial recognition map that it uses for authentication. And that is stored locally. That is all using AES 128, like bank level encryption, they call it. But all that is being stored locally. It's supposed to be a very high false recognition rate. So less than 0.0001%. So very small false recognition rate on that.

And they even say it works in low light because just like Face ID, they're using infrared light. So if anyone remembers how like Face ID works, there's a tiny projector in there, projects all those dots on your face, creates a 3D map of your face, and then compares that every time you unlock your phone. Essentially the same thing that they are doing here, projecting 30,000 dots on your face,

scanning them, creating the maps, doing it locally, and allowing you access to your home, which then also works like in any lighting condition because you can't even see the little lights that they're projecting on you.

It also has like auto unlock using the app. There's NFC cards. You can tap those on there similar to home key, but this does not support home key. Um, they have a fingerprint recognition thing on there. There's the app control voice commands, all of those things. I think they're boasting like 13 or 18 methods of entry, but a little questionable math on how we get to that. But overall, this is the part that I think is crazy. Price is not bad. $249.99.

for what seems to be a fairly solid facial recognition lock. Yeah, that's really good. That's a really good price, especially if you break it down by price per access method. That's not bad. 13, 14 access methods, that's what. Yeah, the PPAM. The PPAM is very low. Exactly, the PPAM. If they're not doing that already on their marketing materials, they should start. I'm excited for...

Okay, not to bring this to one of my clients, but Ecovacs has on their robot vacuums, they use that like infrared stuff for navigation. And if at nighttime, my D-Bot is roaming around the house using that infrared stuff and my night vision cameras are picking it up, you see the

The infrared lasers, like it's like a bank heist and they're trying to drop down from the ceiling and steal the gem or whatever. So I'm really pumped for seeing the 30,000 dots or whatever on your face on your night vision front door doorbell camera or whatever. That'll be a really cool, yeah, marketing material as well. Yeah, that's a cool idea. I like that. I remember, I don't know if you remember this. There was that, it still is around. They're still doing things. But LIFX, they actually had like a home kit controlled smart bulb

that also had infrared light in it as like a secondary. And the point was it would increase the vision for your security cameras by putting out this invisible infrared light. And like, this is so smart. I mean, you got like so many cameras use like infrared light, like, you know, the Eve cams do a car. I like a ton of other have these cameras,

infrared lights to see at nighttime. And then this can extend that if you had these throughout your home. So I get similar, but just being able for the cameras to pick that up. That's pretty cool. I think that'd be cool.

Okay, so the second product they have, though, is also really neat. I want this one because it looks pretty dope. This is their Hub 3. I think we talked about this being rumored on the podcast a while ago. Basically a matter-enabled hub. It has IR built into it. There is a really, I love physical controls. And there's something about a good dial that I get real jazzed about. And this has what they call a dial master feature.

So it's a rotary controller that you can use to, you know, scroll up and scroll down to adjust things like volume, sound, shades, everything like that. Now, I'm really interested in how that actually transfers over to something like HomeKit. Like, obviously, there's no...

like scrolling kind of like command. So like, I wonder if they're like, if you pause for like a half a second, if that sends a command and you go to the next notch up, that sends another command and it's going to get like confused. So I'm, I'm really interested how that's going to transfer over into, into home kit. But if I could use that for the shades down here in the studio, I would love that. Like a little matter control on the desk that I could like scroll up and scroll down to adjust the lighting in here, like through Apple home and,

That would be pretty sweet. So it looks really nice. 30 programmable commands. So it actually is 30 different commands. Like those are for Apple Home. So 30 commands that can show up in Matter or Apple Home.

It's going to be things like double tapping and triple tapping a button, like those types of commands. But this is great. So if you have any SwitchBot stuff, this is going to bridge those over into Matter. And then you're also going to have the IR control showing up in Apple Home. So you can control things like fans, TVs, all that sort of stuff through IR standard remotes. But it looks pretty cool if you have SwitchBot stuff.

This is a great new one if you don't have one already. And it comes in black, which has looked really cool. The image looks sweet. I've got one of those Elgato Wave XLR things for my desk here for my mic. And it's black. It has the rotary. And more than anything, I use it as like a fidget toy sometimes. Just going back and forth. There's no end. It just keeps going. Yeah, it's great. I love it.

Then we have, we're switching brands now. We're going over to Thorbolt. So Thorbolt has a whole, well, not Thorbolt. We've talked about them in the past in terms of their brand strategy because it bothers me, but there's like one company that,

I think Sleekpoint and then they have the sub brands under that which I hope these are all correct and this is the problem with the branding here I can't even keep them all straight but I think Airversa is under Sleekpoint and they do like thread air products and then there's the Thorbolt line that does security products so they already have a smart knob that we've shown on the show and now this is their first deadbolt so Thorbolt X1 and the

Because Thread is what this company does really well in and Apple Home, it is, of course, a Thread-enabled Matter smart line. Well, let's say, I don't even see Matter in my notes. We're going to say for sure Apple Home. Possibly Matter. For sure Apple Home. So Thread-enabled Apple Home support. Home key. So tap with your watch, tap with your phone, authenticate that way. That's built in.

It has a fingerprint reader, 100 fingerprints can be saved on the device and encrypted as well as 60 passcodes. Industry kind of standard, that AES-128 bank level encryption here with those. No cloud storage needed. Mm-hmm.

We've got IPX5 resistance, so this is going to be fine on your door in like the rain. It'll be cool. And the last thing is for power. It has eight AA batteries, which is crazy. So it'll actually run only on four if you happen to only have four available. And it has an outward facing USB-C port. So if the battery dies, you can still plug in like a battery pack and power your door in an emergency.

Keys also still work, so there is a keyhole. But keyhole, there is passcodes, there is fingerprint, there is app control, home key, voice commands, all that stuff. Andrew, what is the price per access method? Okay, if we're looking for the PPAM, this is also pretty low because we're looking at a price point of only $130. Oh, wow. That's much lower than I would have expected. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Like I for a thread lock that has home key at one hundred and twenty nine dollars that also has fingerprint and passcodes. I like it. And it's got to be a chunky boy with eight room for eight double A's in there.

So the hardware costs themselves might be a little bit more than I would have expected. So yeah, that's great. Wow. Well, I mean, with 8AA batteries and Thread, though, we're looking at a battery life of 18 months, they say. Wow. Yeah. Now, half the time with smart locks, I literally just divide their estimates by half because maybe I just use them more. But I feel like a lot of those estimates are...

a little, like they go a little longer than they actually do in use. With the batteries though, like you don't have to take this thing off and plug it in or find an extension cord to plug it in. Like you just pop new batteries in. This is, I actually really liked the battery use case for smart locks and, and doorbells for that matter, if they're not wired. I mean, I think the reason that people don't do them as much is because of the bulk.

like trying to put a double A batteries is quite a bit. I don't mind a bulky deadbolt though. Like there's something about some weight to it that makes it feel a little bit – maybe it's just a feeling and not a reality, but it makes it feel a little bit safer to me. I just talked with one of my friends about this, Eric, Modern Day Tech. We were just talking about this with door locks and how it's like they – now I'm losing my train of thought.

But with the door locks and just how long the batteries last and like what's the better use case for that? And like they seem to go so quickly. And even with like other ones like the level lock, they put that little battery in there. And then the people are like, oh, how secure is that? And how are you going to get access? That's my favorite question is like why would I put a smart lock on there? What am I going to do when the battery dies? I'm like, what do you do now? It's literally still just a door lock with a key.

Like, it literally just adds functionality. Nothing is removed. Right. So I think this is great. 18 months use is fantastic for that with HomeKey. And then you still have a key. You still have USB to freaking power this if you had to. Like, keep a 10-foot USB cable in your car and just run it from your cigarette lighter to the car door. I'm curious. If somehow you got to that point. I'm curious. Just...

I agree with you. It's adding functionality. It's not removing functionality. I am curious, though, how many people buy one of these locks and then never charge it again when it dies because they just revert back to the old dumb doorknob? Ooh, that's a good question. But see, at that point, I think you're wasting money because your PPAM is literally like 100%. And you're only using $130. Yeah, exactly. You're paying $130 for 1AM. For the classic AM. The OG AM. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Okay, let's keep going. I actually have this one on hand. So this is pretty cool because I can actually show you one of the new products. So Nanoleaf has two new products out and we're definitely going to talk about these in a future episode as well. But the first one is a new rope light. This looks pretty cool. I will say Nanoleaf's designs that they are highlighting on their website for this rope light are fantastic. Like they're showing like guitars. There's a cityscape design.

It literally looks like a New York City skyline. And I'm like, I want all of these on my wall. There's one that's a retro boombox or something or a camera. And I'm like, I want to put the camera right behind me here in the studio. And then the cityscape looked really neat above a headboard and stuff and the guitar.

I wanted all of these designs. Like they just pick some of the other rope lights, like for the wall, like the ones where you just like, you change the shape. They're a little, they're a little abstract and a little boring, but they really did a good job with coming up designs for inspiration that fit the length of the rope light. Yeah. So that is very cool. One of my, one of my clients does a really good job at that also when they're

It's GE Lighting Sync. They make all sorts of like in-store or at CES or any of their events. They'll spend, I don't know, half of their setup time with a, not a graphic designer, but like the equivalent of a graphic designer in real life taking all these lights and making awesome shapes like that. And their displays are out of this world. But Nanoleaf has always been really good at their website, their materials. So this just makes sense that they're figuring this part out as well.

For sure. I remember the GE Sync one that I saw at CES that I really liked. For a kid's room, there was a rocket ship. And I loved that they had the rocket ship was in blue and then the fire coming out of the back was red. And I'm like, that's such a cool idea to have.

I love the things where they can have multiple colors in there. You can actually make the fire because there's like segment control on it. You can make the fire like red, orange, yellow as it's going back. And even with the tint of like blue at the front, it's very cool. All these companies are really killing it with the lighting. Yeah. So Nanoleaf does have the addressable zones as well. So multiple colors throughout the entire thing. Now here's the, here's my only problem with these lights and this is from any brand. I have problems with the,

commitment when it comes to like mounting things on the wall. Like I am always like, Oh man, I'm going to love putting that camera up there. And then like a week, I'm like, man, I wish it went with the skyline. I should have done them. Like I should have done with the guitar. The guitar would have been cooler. And I always worry about it. Cause you have to take it down.

and change it but with some of like these rope lights you have to have fairly strong connections so like they're screw in so if you change them and even the adhesives are still never like 100 perfect i feel like i still end up ripping up some paint or drywall or something when i'm trying to remove a lot of those so like i always panic a little bit about committing to a shape to put up onto the wall but if you do have that if you're someone who has tattoos or

you likely feel like you can commit strongly enough to a design. Maybe these lights are for you to be able to pick that design you like, mount it on your wall, be good to go. Have you seen this company Mixed Tiles? It's not smart at all. It's not a smart company. It's just like...

it's different art and, or like frames. It sounds familiar. You can look it up later, but they, they've nailed the ability to put it up, take it down, put it up somewhere else. Like they're sticky material or whatever that they use is fantastic. And I find that's actually my biggest concern with all of these lights. Um,

their their adhesives i don't know if it's just a florida thing i'm down in florida and the humidity and everything sometimes gets to this but indoors even their adhesives are awful and i always find myself having to use the clips and the screws and all that instead because the adhesives just don't work they they'll fall down plus we've got little kids at home as you do they're always grabbing onto things and pulling them down like especially the ones that are underneath cabinets or anything like that um

So yeah, the adhesives are always an issue for me. But I wish that one of these companies would take what Mixed Tiles is doing because we have those picture frames and they're fantastic. We can just pick them up, move them somewhere else and they last. That's awesome. I love it. I feel like the only thing this has to be because

of like the rope lights like you're they're still made of like you know some sort of flexible material but there's still like that lateral pressure as they're like trying to like so they kind of like their openings I feel like over time any tight turns you do will eventually like spring open so I feel like that's

Got to be the problem with it versus a picture frame that is like static. Yeah. And you're just worrying about the downward light pressure. So I wonder if there's also like sticking it against a wall versus underneath something, whereas gravity is true. Less concerning. We're getting a little too scientific here for me, but yeah.

I know. Okay. Well, luckily the second one I actually have right here so I can show it to you. And these are solar garden lights. And I have, I want to hear your feelings about these because I have, I have complicated thoughts about them. So high level here is they are actual, like, um, I don't, I don't know how to describe them. Hold it. It's like a, like a landscape or a bouquet. I saw these at CES, I think. Yeah. I saw these at CES. These are really cool.

Yeah, because they always put stuff in their suite and then I'm like, what is new? What can I talk about? I don't even know. What are you doing, Jimmy, over there? You look like magic wands. Yes, I have a bouquet of magic wands on my hand. You know the trick where it's like, hold it up and you give it to the kid and then it falls to the side. Yes. So there's like, I can count them here. There's four, there's eight magic wands.

one solar light, but like they're literally black stems and then the tops about two or three inches are clear kind of like acrylic feeling plastics and That's like your diffuser. So there's an LED in each of the ends of these it sticks into the ground and these like fan out all over the place a little bit and so it's very kind of like Modern looking and they can be any color you want for the most part so a bunch of different colors in here and

The only downside to this is they are not smart. Like, they don't work with Apple Home or anything directly, which is, like, surprising, but...

for nano leaf and I actually thought like I want to ask I want to ask them is like why wasn't there like a low power thread option could these not be powered with solar and work with the red because thread is so low power and now we're getting more products for the outdoor between like I mean the Eve Aqua is thread for outside and

The Aqara G5 Pro that I just reviewed, that's a thread border router, or at least a router, to extend your thread network outside. So that's extending it. So I'm like, I could put these out there and have thread work and have these all connect, and it would be great to run them over solar. But they're just regular lights that are powered over solar, and then they include – I have it behind me.

A remote. If you're watching the video version of this, I have the remote in my hand. You can see it. It looks like a standard audio remote. You have a dial at the top to change between colors, brightness, temperature, RGB, all of that stuff. Then you have timer buttons for 4, 6, and 8 hours. And then one is for sunrise, sunset. So you can do that. So you literally change these with a physical remote.

Put them on timer. I mean, my thought is maybe they just went like, it's easy. Hit the sunrise, sunset button to have them turn on only at night and set the color you want. And you don't need to have smart control. Does Natalie do this with any of their other products? I can't recall another non-smart product from them.

Yeah, so I was shocked. Literally, they sent me the PR, and I had to respond like, how do you control them? Do they have Apple Home or Matter? Because I'm not seeing either in the specs, and they're like, it's actually a remote. Well, hey, look, Ma. They made it. They're on HomeKit Insider without the HomeKit compatibility. Yeah, they did it. Yeah, there you go. But I think they're still really neat, so I'm definitely putting them outside. I'm going to go try them, and I will report back how I like them. Let's do it.

It's definitely like a different look. Like it's not one that I would have liked. There's nothing else like this on the market. Yeah. That's for sure. It's very unique. Okay. Do you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of a small mini outdoor version of those crazy lights that every teenager and 20-year-old has in like their college dorm. Then when you get a Target that are silver and have a bunch of like five or six lamp heads that you move all around. Yeah.

It is a small version of those that's all black and you can't control where the lights go. Like Pixar light? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I hear that. Listen, they're pretty cool. And I saw the material. I saw these at CES and I thought they were cool. I saw the material. I didn't realize they weren't smart. I guess I didn't ask the right questions. But yeah. What's the cost on these again? Those are not that bad. Hold on. Let me pull them up. I'm hoping you say like sub 50 because that to me, you could buy a few of them, make it really work. That sounds like a good deal. Yeah.

I think you could definitely get a few of these for your yard. And I would do, I would do probably four or six of these. Okay. You're, you're pretty close. So a two pack is 50 and then a six pack though is one 35. That's, that's great. I mean, I wish they were smart even still at that price, but that's, that's pretty good. If you can, can you control all six with the same remote? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's smart in itself, I guess.

135 divided by six, you're looking at 22 bucks a piece, 22.50. But how much is it per branch? That would be the PPCM if we're looking for a price per control method. There you go. And this is just one. So we're looking at 22.5 for the PPCM, just remote. Oh, gosh. Just remote. So good. Okay, speaking of gardens, let's take a break. Thank our first sponsor for the episode, PPCM.

Speaking of gardens, how about fast growing trees? Yeah, it's time for our first sponsor break, which is for fastgrowingtrees.com. And they are one of my favorite sponsors every time we get to the spring because I love taking care of like the house, the garden and growing things for my family. And fast growing trees is probably my favorite place to get things. So did you know that fast growing trees is the number one online nursery in the U.S.? They have thousands of different plants and over 2,000

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I think that's one of the important ones because when you're going online and looking for plants, you don't want to buy something that's not going to thrive in your area. Yeah, so fast growing trees takes care of that. You just give it your location, like your address, your zip code, whatever, and it'll tell you what zone you're in and can filter your results by just the plants that make sense for you. Yeah, so you're not going to pick up a fruit tree that's just going to die in your backyard. No, you're going to find one that is literally unrivaled.

Specifically made for your location. Made. Grown. Whatever. But yeah, so I have several fruit trees back there, multiple apple trees, as well as cherry trees that I got from FastGrowingTrees.com. And it includes a 5-in-1 apple tree, which I still think is the invention of ever, and I don't know how more people don't know about them, but it is a singular apple tree that grows fast.

5 different varieties of apple. Yeah, they literally have all these different apples on one single tree. And what's even better about that is it makes them self-pollinating because they will bloom at the same time with each other so that way they can cross-pollinate on one tree. You don't even have to get multiple trees to get apple.

I have apples on there growing right now that I will be able to harvest in just a couple, like a month or a couple months, whatever, whenever apples are harvested here in Ohio, depending on when you're listening to this. But I think that is amazing.

I also have pink lemonade blueberries from them, which they, they have a million varieties of blue blueberries, but these ones are like pink in color and they're like tart and sweet. And I had never even heard of them before buying from there. And I, I love them. And the bushes look great. They are fantastic. They're growing so well. Everything I've gotten from there has just taken off compared to things that I've gotten from nurseries around here. They just never seem to last as long. I don't know what it is, if it just how they're, they're potted or grown. Uh,

I don't know. I'm not an expert in gardening, which is why I'm glad that I have used fast growing trees in the past for trees, shrubs, all of that different stuff, landscaping around the chicken coop, all these things I have done. Don't get caught up in like fruit stuff because I like those because I like to grow things for the family, but they also have other stuff too. Your boxwoods, like everything to make your garden, your landscaping, your property, just

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Try it. Turn your big business idea into something huge with Shopify on your side. Sign up for a $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash homekit. That's all lowercase, homekit. Go to shopify.com slash homekit today, shopify.com slash homekit. Let's go ahead. Let's get into the big stuff that we want to talk about this week. Johnny Ive, Sam Altman, OpenAI,

AI things and the smart home. And I was very, I was just busy this week. So like, I did not like get to check in on a bunch of news. I was just kind of heads down getting videos out. And I'm like, I jump into like Twitter and stuff. I'm like, Holy smokes. The entire world is like exploding right now. Talking about at least the tech world. No one else cares, but the tech world is going crazy. The best way to describe it is I saw this on Twitter. So this is not some original thought on X. Um,

It's like the equivalent of LeBron taking his talents to South Beach or something like that. You know, like that moment. This is pretty big. This is a big deal in nerd land. For sure. I mean, I have seen every possible thing of like, well, this is going to be a failure based on what they're talking about that they're launching to Apple is doomed because they lost like their lead designer who is now taking his talents to the

but that's also an Apple partner at the same time. And then we're in, we're into like the world of wearables and like glasses that Apple is supposedly launching next year. And then like mixed reality devices. Like it seemed like we jumped into the future very quick, just with this news because of what it's going to be.

End up meaning. Now, okay, let's do the high level. You fill in the blanks here in case I miss stuff because, again, skimming through news. So I believe like Johnny Ive and Sam Allman had – they had like their partnership going already. And they were designing some sort of AI hardware. And now OpenAI has just officially acquired that hardware startup to bring it inside of OpenAI for –

Johnny Ive to launch a family of AI devices. And then Ming-Chi Kuo steps in here describing a little bit about what the device will be, and it's basically saying Johnny Ive believes in, like, a third device that you carry around between your phone, your smartwatch, and now this device.

AI companion. It'll live with you all day. It'll have microphone and camera to be aware of the world around you. One of the use cases is apparently to wear it as a pendant necklace type thing. But Johnny Ive is also not keen on people wearing it. He also wants them to be able to just bring it around with them. And yeah, it's going to be just aware of their entire day.

and be some sort of AI device. Right now, current prototypes put it smaller than an iPod shuffle, I think is what I read. And those are the details that we kind of know so far. I think maybe announcing it next year and then full launch by 2027. And they had some pretty ridiculous goals of like first to sell like 100 million devices or something and

All these lofty ambitions, I guess. And it's very curious at how these things are going to live with you, especially how they're going to pertain to the smart home. And because right now, like something like, you know, everyone's switching to like these third party things to get stuff done, like the chat GPT and all these other like now AI voice assistants, but they can't even control the smart home. Really? Yeah.

So what's your take on all this? Did I miss things? What are you thinking here? You didn't miss things, but I'll definitely fill in some chatter that I've been hearing in addition to the reporting that's out there. The first thing I will just caveat, like take everything you hear from me, but also from everyone else you're reading with a grain of salt. Johnny Ive comes from the school of like...

like mastery and deception when it comes to leaking, right? We're, we're in a different stage of Apple leaks now than we have, than we were when Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs were in at, you know, in their heyday. Okay. So take everything with a grain of salt. The other, the other thing I will mention is that this wasn't just some like announcement. This, this was a $6.5 billion acquisition for a roughly 50 person team. So, um,

Just a massive, massive deal that if that was the only detail shared, that in itself should send shockwaves through Cupertino and make Apple pretty scared. Mostly because they just have been at every step of the way so far behind the eight ball on AI.

And the fact that their legendary designer who fathered from a design perspective their biggest hits in the last two decades, nearly three decades, and helped turn around the company with the iMac. I'm actually reading this great book right now by Patrick McGee, Apple in China.

And the first, you know, several chapters is all about that turnaround and how Steve worked with Johnny and made that all happen. And it's just, it's fascinating history. I'm sure you're aware of a lot of it already as are your listeners. Yeah.

But the point is, this isn't just the humane guys that did the pin. They were former Apple also, but they weren't Johnny Ive, former Apple. That was much lower level engineering versus the lead designer at the company. So this is significant. The other part is...

the family of devices. Okay. That's, that's talking about the future of this partnership and where they're going. It sounds to me like the first products to be released are not their hero. Their goal is not to be a third device that you're carrying around.

I don't know if this is five years down the line, 10 years down the line, whatever it is, the pace of AI has been, and the hardware and everything that's been around it, it's just been incredible. I'm wearing this client of mine, Bee, the Bee pioneer on my wrist. They're about a year old, and they already are selling like hotcakes. They were in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago, like just huge things happening in this space in general, and that's just one of my clients. There's so many different brands out there that are doing a ton of different great stuff. So,

I think the family devices, it's not going to be their hero product. Their goal is to actually replace the phone eventually.

And they have to have the technology catch up to that goal. It's lofty, of course. But that pin, the pendant, it being on your wrist, being glasses, that can't be the final form factor in my mind. From what I'm hearing from different people tapped into the industry that work closely with the OpenAI team and are there in San Francisco, you know, in their little community that they're always talking, I'm hearing something that's earworn.

It has the microphones, the cameras and everything, but it's replacing something that is replaceable in your day to day versus right now your iPhone or your smartphone doesn't seem super replaceable.

But your AirPods or your Beats or whatever you're wearing, as long as you can tap into the general functionality that everyone loves when it comes to those devices and augment with the AI stuff as well, there's no reason someone wouldn't want to replace their AirPods. No one's married to their AirPods like they're married to their iPhone or even their Apple Watch for that matter.

Although that's a separate story. So I think that's eventually where this goes, just based off of what I'm hearing. But the other aspect is what's happening in the smart home, like you mentioned. Are they going to have their own, you know, chat GPT speaker that competes with what's out there already and integrates with all the, you know, the smart home stuff that's already there? I don't see why not. You're not wearing your AirPods around your house.

But you do have smart speakers that can have a camera on them as well. We've seen that tried before with Meta and Google and Amazon as well. So there's definitely...

precedent for that type of product, but not with the LLM power that ChatGPT has showed its powers and how great it can be. So I think there's this two-step process. Your iPhone is always on you, in your home, outside your home, but it's pocketed, so the camera isn't always accessible to add that level of context. And I've been talking for a while here, but let me step back for a second.

The reason an AI product like this would want a camera and a microphone is because the power of personal AI and agentic AI on your behalf...

It's exponentially better when the context goes beyond just listening or just tapping into your digital world. If it could visualize your physical space around you and the context of that and use the audible context around you, the audio itself, and tap into the digital, your calendar, your email and all that, all of a sudden that's like the trifecta of access to context of your life that...

that it can perform um agentic ai tasks on your behalf like it never could before and so that's why the ai pin and all in the meta ray-ban glasses like all these companies are trying to get those cameras out there because that's like the missing component so that's why you need that type of thing so your pocketed iphone is not helpful it's not helpful for this unless they figure out how to read through your pant pockets right um you know see through your pant pockets which

I don't know if you face your iPhone the other way, that can be problematic. So unless someone's figuring that out, they need a device that is visible, but has the vision access to everything around you. I was thinking about, all right, let me pause and I'll get back into the camera stuff. But Andrew, what do you think about all that? That was a lot. It is a lot. And that's the problem is like so much of this is so varied.

There's so many questions. Like, for me, right now, I use AI for, you know, several different tasks. Mainly, I mean, I feel like I'm behind with most people in how some of this stuff is being used. Like, I will say...

Like right now I'm in the phase of like hating most AI things because it seems like unnecessary and it's ruining so many things, which especially on the creator side, people are hating. Like they're generating full videos and just giving descriptions to AI engines to turn. I saw people were sharing, um,

Oh, the new AI Johnny Ive pin leaked. No, it was a model that Ben Gaskin made on Twitter. And then someone was taking that and created like a whole AI post and posted on Twitter. Like Wall Street Journal just leaked Johnny Ives, new AI product and just put those there. And, uh,

All of this between Ben Gaskin just created those with AI, and then it was clearly an AI-written post about this fictitious AI product that doesn't even exist yet. And I will see other, again, AI-written posts on Twitter that say –

iOS 18.5 was just released. Here, these are the... This is the biggest AI update yet. And I was like, there was literally nothing in 18.5. Like, tweaks to the mail app was what my eight-minute video touched on. Like, get out of here. And I'm like, I'm sitting here doing all this research and testing and making this huge in-depth video of the...

the tiniest intricacies. And then there's AI people that are just getting massive engagement on social media and making tons of money by exploiting AI in people's

willingness to just consume the most attention-grabbing headline. So part of me on the creator side and the new side is like, I hate this current world. It makes doing things responsibly and the right way so much harder because I'm competing with that. My headlines just feel so boring because they're the truth. And

These made-up, exploitative AI ones are insane. So part of me comes from that angle. And then going to the smart home side of things, we know AI is where the smart home is going. We have been to this point, like, first step was you could control things from your phone. That was a breakthrough. And then it's like, oh, we can automate those things.

But especially in a home, nothing you do is that regular. Like there is some regularity, some habits that you do every day that start to get predictive. And Apple has started to do that in like the tiniest of ways, which would be like control center, right?

You know, you happen to be going to bed, you slip down to control center and it's like, hey, you want to run the good night scene right now, don't you? And you're like, I do. You little control center. You little control center, you. Yeah. You know me so well. You know me. So it's like, oh, it's starting to get that little predictive stuff that's, again, it's all on-device AI things. But then beyond that, it's going to have to, like, when you add cameras and you add, like,

presence and all of those things to the mix, now you're getting to a point where it can be much smarter in actually controlling your home. So maybe that's the reason Apple wants to do its own smart home camera. Like it's not necessarily because like they, they want to compete with the likes of a Cara or Eve or Logitech or anyone else, but they want to have like that level of privacy while starting to offer that level of AI automation in the smart home.

you know, we're talking, you know, a couple of years out still to get close to that point, even at the pace of AI to do it with privacy in mind is still going to take a while, which has been Apple's problem like this whole time. Like they were caught flat footed on the LLM chatbot situation. They were caught flat footed on, you know, scaling. They said because they don't want to buy enough GPUs. I think that report said my street didn't want to buy that many GPUs. Oh, can we do with like half? No, clearly not. So you, and then you couldn't buy any more cause they didn't exist. Um,

So I know they were caught behind in a lot of those things, and I hope all this has been a really big kick in the shin for them to push things forward. And I am unbelievably excited slash nervous for DubDub, you know, in a couple weeks. I can't imagine them meeting DubDub.

let alone exceeding, but meeting expectations in two weeks with everything that's going on. And that's the other point I wanted to get to with this whole announcement. First of all, the $6.5 billion acquisition was of a company called IO, a startup, okay?

and was announced during Google I/O. So the mastery at play of, you know, the PR mastery there of hijacking Google I/O's moment when it comes to, you know, the value of those two letters was awesome.

The other part of it is the timing, which all these companies play. The fact that Microsoft Build and I.O. and DubDub and all these developer conferences are all trying to beat one another. And Samsung does their thing with the phone launches and this and that. So the fact that this was announced now, two, three weeks before everyone goes to Cupertino for DubDub, and Apple is very clearly behind. And to your point, also kind of a pseudo partner of OpenAI, right?

There's just a lot at play, a lot of different layers to this onion here that I'm more on the nervous side than you are maybe versus the hopeful. I haven't seen the ability of this Tim Cook-run Apple over the last 15 or so years to innovate at a pace that would be required to catch up, let alone pass these other brands like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Well, especially where Apple is right now with the problems with, you know, Apple's voice assistant. Like, it had to go back to the drawing board so much on that. So, like, they're not going to over-announce, right? They're going to show things that are doable, that they're actually going to release because they can't have a second misstep. Second is generous. That's a conservative... Yeah. Third, fourth miss in the last several years. But I'm talking about, like...

basically announcing a major set of features and then being at minimum a year behind okay so i'm not gonna listen not to play this game but carplay 2 okay unless you have an aston martin that's a 2026 model

Let's go back. We'll go to AirPower. We could talk about the Apple intelligence stuff. That's already three in the last three or four years. There's got to be more that I'm not thinking of. And I feel that Apple intelligence can actually be broken down or segmented into a bunch of different misses all under the umbrella of Apple intelligence.

That's true. I wouldn't call it air power thing. In CarPlay, I really think that I'm not putting that blame on Apple. Like, that is car manufacturers and half of them are super evil. Like,

I'm of the school of the buck stops somewhere. And if Apple wanted to, they could have put the pressure on these companies to figure it out. But it was such a hobby project for them. It remains such a hobby, especially with all the Project Titan getting canceled things like

all that stuff happening and then shifting resources to focus on vision and then to focus now on AI and Apple intelligence. Like, I just think they didn't put the resources there because there's all, that's one of the things we talk about a lot. Um, when we were at CES, we were kind of talking about this, about, you know, why don't some companies support Apple home and they only support Google and this and that. There's all, there's a finite amount of resources, just like there's a finite, finite number of, of GPUs, you know, it's the same thing. And so Apple dedicate their resources elsewhere, uh,

And it had, they dedicated it to, we're getting so far off topic here. Had they dedicated it to CarPlay too, I'm sure they could have made it work. I don't know. It really feels like it was just the manufacturers are so like they have to completely change their dash systems to be controlled through HomeKit as well, or HomeKit or CarPlay versus their own systems. And they had to literally give up control of every single screen in the car, allow every single physical control to be controllable through HomeKit.

I don't disagree with you, but then don't announce it two years ago. Right? Like, that's what it boils back down to.

And I don't think it worked. I think consumers got super, super excited about it. And car manufacturers still did not want to give up that much control. I just think that's a strategic miss because consumer reception to CarPlay is already huge. It is, it is,

up there with top five questions asked when people are purchasing or leasing vehicles. I heard it was the second most requested feature when buying a new car. There you go. The consumer awareness of car play has never been better and higher, and manufacturers are aware of that. I would have...

ridden those coattails versus trying to, you know, announce to the world we're working on this, but not have the actual buy in it. It just said it seemed premature and had it been a one-off I I'd be more forgiving, but it seems like they've been making a lot of premature decisions and announcements because of outside pressures. And I'm not some, I am a Steve Jobsian, like whatever, like fan boy, but I'm not wearing that hat at the moment. I'm just trying to be,

Whatever. We are so off topic here. We are. Going back –

Johnny I've and everything. Also, if anyone's watching the video and I keep glancing to the left, I'm trying to control the TV for my son from my phone. So that's why I'm like, what are you watching? We're recording on a Sunday. Just putting this out there. Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, we are recording. So there is family. My son, you didn't see it, but he was banging on his bedroom door about 10 minutes ago. You might have seen the door like, I sent a quick SOS text message to my wife like, you know.

I'm on this is our commitment to all of you to deliver an excellent episode of HKI on a Memorial Day holiday. So this is our commitment to all of you. Circling back to what I'm curious about, how how things are going to connect. How is this going to connect? So we have like, you know, an LLM or a hardware product coming from Johnny. So let's say that comes out and it convinces me to want to wear this.

Some sort of AI. Like right now I have the- You're asking the CarPlay 2 question, but for OpenAI. Basically. Yeah. So like how do we connect OpenAI to-

Apple Home slash Matter? I mean, is it going to have to all be Matter and essentially abandon the Apple Home side of that? And we're just going to have to worry about everything that goes into Matter? In which case, if that's true, you all need to start switching over to Matter products now. Don't buy anything that's not Matter if that's

the play. Or if there's going to be a tie-in. I mean, Apple would they do a tie-in of Apple Home to your AI companion of choice? I'm not sure that's the route any of this is going to take.

I think that's too pigeonholed to a smart home use case. And what is more likely to happen, maybe it gets there eventually, like these individual integrations, let's call it, with different like Apple Home or Matter or whatever. But so for example, these guys, B, okay? I saw this demo at CES from them and they've refined it since. It's still not out to the public, but it's something I can talk about. They've talked about before. It's very cool. Um,

The be wearable, the way this thing works is it basically is recording our conversations and then spitting back not just notes but tips. So like, oh, you haven't spoken to your mom in two weeks. You should probably give her a call. And by the way, last time you spoke with her, you were talking about this recipe. Maybe tell her how that cake went and how it looks. So it's giving you pretty custom personal AI recommendations. The

The next part of this is being more agentic. So I've said agentic a few times on this podcast. For those who don't already know what that means, it's the AI taking action, taking agency on your behalf.

And the way they were using this as an agentic AI is they created a cloud clone of your Android phone. Okay, so backing away from iPhone for a second. They created a cloud version of your iPhone. So you know how like you have iPhone mirroring on Mac now where you can have your little iPhone on your screen and you can...

So they're basically doing that for an Android device. And the B was controlling that cloud version of Android. So if you wanted to send a WhatsApp message, it could send a WhatsApp message, not on your phone, but on the cloud clone of your phone. So I think this agentic part of the OpenAI stuff, all these integrations, everything that's going to be happening with this device, it will be creating clones of your devices and operating them on your behalf.

Does that make sense or is that too deep in the weeds? It does. But I also feel like, especially for Apple home users, that's never going to be a use case. Like they want, like literally we're at the point where we're like, we need everything done locally in the home and all of that. And if the whole point is to have, you know, virtual cloud servers that are aware of everything and also controls your own, like not only would that not work when you're not connected to internet, but,

Then it's also just on a privacy level so far outside of what – especially on the Apple home side – want. And now you're getting to the crux of why I think Apple has been so reserved. Like there's – the privacy question has always been a big deal. The other part of this, and just flipping it back to the open AI part for a second.

OpenAI is in a position where Apple wants to do what they're doing. This partnership with Johnny and IO and Loveform and everything that they're working on is exactly what Apple and other big brands in the tech world want to be doing. Why would Apple open their quote-unquote walled garden up to OpenAI to allow their AI wearable to play nicely with an iPhone or an Apple Watch or a Mac or whatever it is?

So there is a barrier that not enough people are talking about that I think will be pretty hard for OpenAI to break through. And to me...

If I'm Apple, I'm holding that chip, those chips so close to my chest and, or my vest, I don't know, whatever the phrase is. Vest, chest, they all rhyme. I'm holding that as like my last ditch effort at keeping open AI at bay and giving us more time to catch up and do this ourselves. And then all of a sudden the privacy component, it's less of a problem because Apple's doing it themselves and we can rely on Apple's, you know, privacy promise that they've been

you know, hopefully keeping two odds for the last several years. I mean, if Apple can inject enough money into this, I think they are still well positioned because they're trying to do, they're trying to do the AI stuff.

that they were late on while also doing the privacy stuff. That's why we had such a ridiculous amount of time at dub dub last year, focus on private cloud compute. So it's like, Hey, we still technically do have to use the cloud, but we're literally creating this whole entire new cloud model and the cloud operating system that we're going to make publicly available for people to audit and check for security problems. And like, they're like, okay, we're going to have, we're going to use the cloud, but I promise you it's super secure and private and all this stuff. Like they're,

I'm sure they had to spend an insane amount of time...

and resources doing something like that. So maybe OpenAI, like you said, will not be able to control Matter and Apple Home stuff in the future. And we're just going to have to rely on Apple's AI that eventually surfaces. I mean, we still hear that we're going to get that LLM version of Apple Assistant in two years, which still isn't terribly far away. But if that's two years away, maybe that's the point where

It starts to be able to actually proactively control your home. Like you said, like that agentic aspect of Apple's Assistant to do things for you. And it running primarily locally, doing that AI, a lot of those AI models on your HomePod and home screen situation, but still relying on maybe...

private cloud compute for additional resources in that. Or maybe it's able to use the private cloud compute to create more models or something and then run versions of them locally. Like a combination of them. I think that's probably the more likely scenario.

Yeah. Yeah. Which that also gets me super excited. Yeah. Super excited about that. If it can happen, I'm, I'm game. And that will be the version of AI that I will be using. I can tell you right now, if it's Apple made, it's likely going to be the one that I'm using. So yeah, I'm, I'm pretty pumped. There's so many questions to be answered here and time will, will definitely be the best hell. I'm, I want to talk with you after dub dub and see, you know,

I want to watch this episode back after DubDub and see how wrong we were. Because that to me is like, I would be so happy if I was wrong. I want to be wrong in this situation. I want Apple to be successful. So hopefully we are wrong, or I'm wrong, and your hope shines through. That would be pretty good. You have faith. Hey, my wife is named Faith for those that do not know. Okay.

Yeah, it's great. I'm just the perpetual optimist for everything. I think it stems from being a Browns fan. And if you're not an optimist with the Browns, then you're not a Browns fan.

Like my brother, every year he's like this, the year Superbowl baby, this is the year. And instead every year is a rebuilding year, but we'll get there eventually. Hey, we got, we got Ohio state. We got the guardians that just kicked Detroit three times in a row. It was pretty awesome. So that feels great. So Ohio, Ohio still got stuff going on, but yeah, going to be optimistic here.

Apple has the money, the teams. It just has to play catch up. And I think, like you said, keeping everyone out will give them extra time. And it's not like any of their stuff is still going away, at least for a very long time. People are not going to start switching to this stuff. And they still have their install base of computers and everything else that's still...

are massively used. And I think if OpenAI approaches it with that mindset, like we're not trying to replace iPhone, Mac, whatever, right off the bat. This is going to be a slow replacement, if ever. If it can't play nicely with each other, this will be a slow burn. And they have to be comfortable with that and comfortable with continuing to innovate on the products that they can get on people's clothing, on their ears, on their glasses, whatever, and be comfortable with that.

100%. Awesome. Well, thank you, Dan, so much for hanging out today. Let's go get to our families and enjoy some nice weather and all that kind of stuff. Hopefully everyone else has a great holiday today if you're listening on Monday or had a great weekend otherwise. I know a lot of people like listening on their commutes and stuff. So hopefully you didn't have a commute today and you guys can all just enjoy this episode on Tuesday and talking to you from the past.

I think next week I want to do a bit of a WWDC wishlist situation. So anyone out there who has suggestions on what they want to see, I didn't even get to it today, but Mark Gurman actually had a whole report that TVOS is getting redesigned. That should have been in our news. And we had so much to talk about with Johnny and everything.

I didn't make the cut. So we'll talk about that next week. But if you guys have suggestions, stuff you want to see, send them over to me. You can do it on Twitter, Andrew underscore OSU. You can find me on threads if that's still a thing that exists. You can email me at Andrew at Apple Insider dot com. You can leave a comment on the video version over on YouTube dot com, YouTube dot com slash HomeKit Insider. Dan, you send me your suggestions, too. I'll make sure I get them in there.

And let me put a plug out there also. Just like we said at the beginning, I'm calling all smart home brands. If you want me to wear your logo on my shirt, send me patches. I will be sewing them on ahead of the next time I'm guest hosting here or guest, you know, being a guest on the podcast. And I will be representing you guys. You just, you send them my way. We'll, we'll talk. Oh my gosh. I, I am speechless at this point. I can't believe you didn't even remember that. I had already forgotten it with everything else we talked about. And here you are making your own,

If you ate first, you lost. Oh, it's been great. Thank you so much, man. Everybody else leave the podcast 510 100 star review on your podcast player of choice. We'll see you guys all next time. See ya. Thank you.