Apple Smart Display Delayed, Level Bolt Update, & CES 2025 Preview
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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 joining me this week, pretty excited, this will be our CES catch-up before January. It is Dan Turk. How you doing, man? What's going on? This is becoming annual. I like it. I know. It's a pretty CES HomeKit Insider show. I love it.

For sure. So you've been on the pod before, but for those who maybe missed that first episode, tell everyone a little bit about you, why we're excited that you're here.

Well, I work with Andrew a lot, but I'm on the PR side. So I represent a bunch of smart home companies. I work at Max Borges Agency, the preeminent consumer tech PR agency. We've been around for about 24 years, and I touch all of our smart home brands. And so I get to work with Andrew on the back end on a lot of the stuff that

you talk about on the show and talk about in your writing. We work with each other on that on the back end. So I'm excited to be back on the show. Thanks for having me back. And we've got a lot of smart home stuff to talk about. It should be fun.

Yeah, a little bit of inside baseball. I mean, we got a lot of, you know, we have brands come on to talk about their products. So it's kind of interesting to see you're kind of like that middleman of what's going on behind the scenes. You're repping your Eve shirt today. We got some Eve news to talk about. I swear that wasn't on purpose. Oh, sure. It's freezing down in Florida now.

Okay, freezing down here in Florida. Folks, I am in Ohio, if we all remember. We're getting blasted with cold temperatures and lake effect snow, and he's in Florida. We've been waking up to 50s, 60s, so... Oh my god, I feel so bad for you. I'm walking around outside in the 50s. Get out, like, well, sorry, outside in, like, t-shirts in the 50s, not huddling with a sweatshirt.

It'll be all cozy. Eve keeps me safe and warm. That's what we got. That's what you're going with. There's the PR swing coming out already. Well, I don't know what's been going on with you, but I've been struggling, and I've gotten so annoyed at Find My. I love the whole Find My network. It's great. We're getting new features in 18.2 here whenever that RC release ever happens here in December. But...

So here's the thing with like the air tags is they're so great until it decides like the time that you need them. The battery is dead. I swear I never lose my keys. I haven't lost them in like a year. Fun fact, that's probably when I changed the battery last. So now I can't find my keys and the battery is dead. I am so frustrated. It's literally like you wait forever.

I've got a fun anecdote from the PR world about all this. So this predates AirTags. And Find My was around, but it was different, right? It was like Find My Friends and Find My iPhone and all that. It wasn't the Find My devices because I have an AirTag on them or whatever I put my AirTag on. You remember the company Tracker? Yeah.

They were like one of the big air tagging companies back then. Were they like the Bravo Tracker or something like that? Was that them? I don't think that one specifically, but it was something around there. Okay. T-R-A-C-K-R. They left the E in there. So they came to us years ago wanting to rebrand. And their big problem, and this was such a big like aha moment for me as a PR person...

of how consumers and customers interact with products and brands.

they came to us and they're like, every time a customer interacts with our brand or products, it's because they lost something. They're trying to, it's the worst moment of their day, right? I can't find my wallet. I can't find my keys. So their mental association with, you know, our brand and everything we do for them is at the worst moment in their life, right? It's like, oh man, I can't find this. I can't. It's always when you're frustrated. Yeah. Right. And I

When I learned that, I couldn't believe that Apple was getting into that business. This is the company, Apple, that won't let product placement be with a villain or something in a show. They're so nitty gritty and detailed about how people interact with and see their brand. I couldn't believe that they were getting into the AirTag space because of that whole lesson I learned.

So yeah, what you're experiencing right now, that one moment where you don't have your battery and this and that, like, that's exactly why I'm, I'm so I'm like, I, I'm just baffled by, by Apple being in this space. Well, um,

I'll maybe one day find my keys. Luckily, I have a backup set in the meantime. But let's get into some news. So first up, top of the show, Apple TV+. You can now subscribe to Apple TV+, directly through Amazon, which is pretty handy. So it's being integrated into Amazon Prime Video, and you can subscribe directly through there.

this makes sense. I mean, you've got Amazon branded TVs, you've got streaming devices and everything. And I think it was on those already somewhat before, but now it's directly through prime, which is pretty handy if you live in the prime app quite a bit. And it's always nice to see the ability to subscribe to it through these other apps. I really like Apple TV plus. I don't think it's going anywhere at all, but it's really cool to see it just expanding and expanding to more devices and services out there.

Yeah, it's like this universal language. I don't know. It's making nice between Amazon and Apple. That's that's like a really cool thing to see. So yeah, I'm happy to see that as well. And like you said, if you live in the prime world, and you want to just subscribe through one method, and I'll start giving your credit card information out to everyone. This is a really cool deal.

Well, we're going to start on that slight high, the slight high for Amazon-loving people, and bring it back down quickly because Quo just this week or past week came out with a new report saying that Apple's smart home display...

has been delayed. It's been delayed yet again. Originally, Quill was saying this was going to come out in 2023. Then it came to 2024 and then 2025. And now it's the back half of 2025. So Quill was saying Q3 of 2025 now, sometime after DubDub. Most likely reason is due to software development of their new platform. It's got a new home OS running on this thing.

And, uh, also in there, Co Quo throws in, uh, he's expecting about 500,000 units in 2025 is what they're looking to ship, uh, easily reaching the million mark by 2026. Um,

Two things about this. First, terrible timing because I just did an entire video on Apple's 2025 roadmap and instantly, literally, it's like I hit the publish button and then Quote came out and said, hey, guess what? M5 iPads in fall 2020-25 and Apple Smart Home Display is pushed. So two big things in my video, instantly wrong. So my track record on that is not going to be great, but those are the punches that we roll with in this business. What about your track record?

I mean, you're a victim to Apple's delays. What's new with them? I mean, another software delay. I feel like this is just the new status quo at Apple. So, yeah. Yeah, 100%. I mean, this is – I get it. It's a whole new platform. But the fact that it's been delayed multiple times already and here we are hunting it again. And I was so stoked for –

an early 2025 release because it was going to start them off really well in the year. And in my mind, we were going to get like maybe a simple version of it, kind of like we did with Vision Pro. We'd get like the launch version of it, and then we're going to have a beta within three months, right? If this came out in March and then we had a beta of Home OS 2 coming out in June for a fall release, I

I thought that would be exciting. You'd even get like new previews of features just after this thing is able to launch where they're able to expand on it more. Like I think it was going to evolve really quickly and that was going to be great. And now, now we're in this weird spot because Apple, Apple's going to be able to have this device not launched until after dub dub, but it's not going to be able to introduce the software at dub dub. So,

So I don't know how that's going to work. If Apple will just rebrand Home OS before that and include HomePod and Apple TV and just not mention the other device, or are they going to just completely remain silent, then launch Home OS after DubDub with this new thing? I don't know. It's now the timeline. It seems wonky. Yeah, I think you're onto something there that...

I don't think this is going to be some specific UI just for this display. I think there's already a ton of Apple displays in your home, right? You've got your iPhone, your iPad, your Apple TVs. You even have your Apple Watch for little widgets and things like that. So I think this will be another device that carries this operating system, but you're still going to be able to use a lot of the functionality on your other devices that you already have. So.

So I imagine DubDub is the place they reveal this and then maybe they've got some additional hardware that they – maybe they push the hardware out and announce it at DubDub like they did with Vision Pro. That's true.

Or they wait for later on. Either way. I also don't think this is necessarily... When he says software, I don't think this is Home OS that he's talking about. I think Home OS is kind of baked. We've been hearing about it for a while. It shares a lot of similar language and existing features that Apple has released in other devices. So I'm thinking what they've got with standby mode. Or maybe it's a dynamic island type play. They have these...

These modules baked out already. I think what the software holdup is, is the secret sauce that's going to differentiate Apple and smart home that no one else has managed to really tie into with extreme precision yet. And that's Apple intelligence. I think the AI play is what the delay is here. And since Apple intelligence has been, you know,

getting further and further delayed or slowly making its way into what everyone imagines it can be, they're hedging their bets here and saying, give us a little bit more time to get that fully baked out in the smart home world as well. And it'll make the purchasing decision for a lot of customers for those 500,000 units a lot easier to make when they know that Apple intelligence is involved.

And I wonder if it has anything to do with the matter front as well. And I didn't have this in our notes here, man, but we also saw that Apple delayed robotic vacuum cleaners until 2025. I mean, those were supposed to be included a while ago, at least by the end of 2024, and now that is sometime in 2025. Yeah.

Yeah, I noticed how they didn't say early 2025, late 2025. It's just 2025. And I think it's for the same reason. They're going to try to stack all these smart home innovations and announcements at the same time. There's no reason for them to go, you know, one and then wait six months later to do another. They're going to try to really hit consumers hard.

uh, with all the smart home announcements at once. And it's, it's so cool that they're finally making a big deal in smart home. I mean, it's been a while as a hobby project for them, but this is, this is the prophecy from the, the Walter Isaacson biography, right? That they're finally getting into the home, uh,

I think we've heard about the TV rumors for the last little bit as well, make an actual TV set. Who knows if that ever comes to fruition? But the idea that they're making a home display something that's key for them, this next big thing that they're working on, I think it's so cool to see that come to fruition.

Yeah. I mean, we saw – so now RoboVax were delayed. We've seen RoboVax delayed in matter from every single brand. I mean, we haven't seen Ecovacs, Roborock, really even SwitchBot. Like most of these all have like – they literally have their certification and yet they're not launching their products. Whether there is something that they are all also struggling with or whether they're just –

Waiting for Apple, which I still find weird because they're one of the smaller, you know, kind of components in the larger space. I mean, you've got Amazon and SmartThings both in Google Home. I think all three of them already include support for RoboVax. Apple's the only one that doesn't.

So it's weird to me. They'd wait for Apple before pulling that pin on their MatterSupport unless Apple has convinced them to hold on and they can all launch these products with Apple's fancy new display and make a big show of it. I mean, Apple has the 1.3 certification already done. Like we've seen that. So there's a lot of like pieces here. We're just waiting for Apple to kind of, you know, finalize it and put it out there.

Yeah. Is it a coincidence that all of them have the certification and aren't out there yet? Probably not. I think the wink of the nudge from Apple is probably happening to your point. Um, and yeah, it's a small component of the smart home, but matter seems clunky if you're not getting all four ecosystems, if you're not getting access to everything. So I think waiting and seeing is, is probably the best bet for a lot of these brands. I also think there's probably components of backend stuff that has to be done that's causing these delays. Um,

in addition to all the other coincidental things that are happening, like the Apple delays and stuff like that. A hundred percent. Okay. So let's talk about what's on your sweatshirt.

This week we had some official announcements from Eve. Eve has their new app for Android that is out and it works with, so far I believe, at least this one new product. There's an updated version of the Eve Thermo, so that's like the radiator valve. And they have a new out-of-the-box version that has Matter, so there's no firmware updates needed, nothing, you don't need to repair or anything like that out-of-the-box version.

works with matter works the new Eve app pretty nice matter over a thread of course but we also what did you think about a you know since you maybe know some of you stuff what do you what do you think about those Eve rumors from last week with the new those new shades that were we're kind of rolling around on Twitter

Okay, so let's start with the Android app and then I'll get to the rumors. Super excited about the Android app. It's been a long time coming, as you know. We've announced it, I think, over a year ago now. And so it coming out finally is really great. There's also this slow and steady approach here, right? We're seeing it come out with just the one product support. There will be fast follows for other products as well. So we'll see that too. But we're really excited. We've worked closely with a lot of our partners, including Google and their home APIs, to make this actually come...

to market. So we're excited to see this new segment get access to the Eve that everyone knows and loves, the private, secure, no-cloud Eve. The rumors. I think there might have been...

Some rumor mix up here. So we've had for a while the honeycomb shade options from Kool-Aid, our partner, right? They're still not available as the Eve blinds collection. But I think maybe what's coming out here is there was an event earlier this year in Germany where Kool-Aid, our motion blinds partner, released this cool thing called the smart frame. Did you see that when that came out?

No, I missed the smart frame. So it's a...

a frame, like a window frame that magnetically attaches to your window. And in that frame is also the honeycomb blinds that go up and down. Oh, that's very cool. So that was announced, not released to the public. So I imagine what the rumor mill was showing last week was that going through like all the regulatory procedures and everything like that, like all that backend stuff. So that's going to come out. I don't have a date at all.

But it's going to come soon, probably sometime in 2025. It's a really cool non-invasive way to put smart home blinds in your home without having to go and hire a technician or an installer. Yeah. Without having to go drill holes or anything like that. It's really, really point and shoot easy. That's so cool. So basically just literally – so is it glass then on the front and back? You just get a box in the mail and you'll just like slide it into your window frame and boom, you got honeycomb shades? Yeah.

So no glass. It relies on your existing window glass. It's just the frame with the blinds. You can put them in the middle. There's a track on either side, so it actually pushes up and down the honeycomb blinds based off of whatever you need. It actually has a solar panel on the backside as well, so it's sitting on your window collecting solar power the whole time. It also has USB-C for charging, but this gives it that extra juice, so hopefully you don't actually have to charge it very often.

And it uses Matter over Thread, it uses all the great motion blinds technology, the same motors and everything that we've been accustomed to for the last couple of years since we released these. But it's a really cool non-invasive way to kind of upgrade your setup. And yeah, I think we're going to see more of those types of things because people don't want to start messing with their blinds and hiring installers and all that type of stuff with all these invasive smart home products.

Nice. I love it. Okay, we have so much more news to get to. But before we do, let's take our first break. Thank our sponsor for the show. Our first ad here is for Shopify, which is like perfect for...

Perfect timing. So, of course, we just got through the holiday of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and I did at least a little bit of shopping. Nothing crazy. I restocked a few things, and it was so funny because I'm saying, like, oh, my gosh, every single website I am buying through is a Shopify website. I ordered, like, the new – not new, but –

the bite fluoride toothpaste i really like those for travel because they're like tiny little little things you just chew them up in your mouth go to the website boom shopify easy checkout kick it over to the shop app to track and then it pushed me over into um even apple wallet it even shows my order status in there and those were like delivered it's so handy to do uh then when i was looking in the shop app to track the order i found another website that i was interested in and i started looking at them and then i bought stuff through them just on accident and

And then I needed sheets for our bed because ours have a hole in them because we have a cat. And I was...

trying to find some new sheets and I was looking for a website that had split top king sheets. So if anyone knows, those are the ones that like literally are split on the top, but not the bottom. So you can't do the, like the split King. It's just the split top King. So you're limited. And I was trying to find some, I'm like, Oh, this website looks good. These sheets look very nice and they're on sale for black Friday. Let's go ahead and try these out. Like, but I don't know, is this website sketchy? I've never heard of them. I don't know how I feel about giving them my credit card information. And I got to the checkout process. I'm like,

It's, it's Shopify. I'm completely good here. Used Apple pay. I had no worries at all. Tracking those show up today. Like everything has been great. I love it. Like that's just the consumer experience from Shopify. It doesn't even count all the benefits on like the logistics side, managing inventory between retail and online locations in store pickup management, uh,

all of your shipping in which countries you ship to your payment processes of having to worry. Are they going to accept Apple pay, Google pay, pay later, shop, pay, whatever.

All that stuff is handled. You can offer things like, you know, package protection through different plugins for ship. There's so much to do. That's great. Like, I just love it from the consumer side. It's just as good on the management business side. If you haven't already, you can go ahead and check it out. So upgrade your business and get the same check-in express process that you

Rothy's, Brooklyn and Allbirds, Bite, the 15 other places that I bought from over the weekend. Go ahead and try those with Shopify. Integrate Shopify and upgrade your sales today. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash homekits, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash homekits to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash homekits.

So our next news PR, I am continuing these sponsors with you. That was so organic. So beautiful. You're incredible. That was awesome. I will say they did not write that. I, they wrote the part where I said shopify.com slash home kit, but the rest was, I was genuinely excited, man. It's like, how often do you do orders actually show up in Apple wallet? They never do.

And the fact that I have like all... Yeah. Yeah. I hope my wife doesn't listen to this episode because I got her some Christmas stuff from Everyday California. They're right here now on the Shop app. I got Harrison some new cards for his Yodo Player Shop app. Bite toothpaste, whatever that company was that did the...

Linens, those are through here. Farty I was looking at. There's so many, and it makes it really easy. And I like that they're in Apple Wallet, and no one else does those things. I'm glad I learned that you like those Bite toothpaste because we actually just signed a company recently that makes – they're called knobs. They're non-fluoride versions, I believe. Yeah.

See, I'm not going to knock them, but that's my only thing, is I want the fluoride version. Like, Byte has both the fluoride and non-fluoride versions, and I want the fluoride versions. And knobs, I was going to try them, because they were, like, marketing like crazy, and I'm like, oh, they don't offer a fluoride version. And I'm like, I...

I want the fluoride. I know a couple of friends who are like dentist tax and they're like, that's the number one thing you can do to like help your teeth is to use like the fluoride stuff. Like I'm not a dentist. I don't know, but I trust them. Uh, and that's the one thing I always hear even from my dentist is use a, uh, toothpaste with fluoride in it. I know some people don't want to use it. That's fine up to them, but that's what I'm looking for. There's a lot of split. It's, it's almost right not to get, it's like the vaccine debate right now. There's a lot of, uh, decisions and, and yeah, opinions on this. So, uh,

We'll let you off for both of them, though. But yeah, knobs out there. Go and get it if you don't want the chloride version, guys. Nice, nice. Okay, so getting back into the smart home news and out of the toothpaste news, Walmart has bought Vizio.

Which I think is crazy. So first off, Vizio does have some good integrations with like the Apple Home and AirPlay and things like that. But we know, everyone knows why this is. And Walmart's not even hiding it. They're literally saying this enables them to market new and different ways for advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale.

Uh, it was a $2.3 billion acquisition. It included their smart cast TVOS, um, not TVOS, but television operating system, uh, has 19 million user accounts that Walmart can immediately start marketing to. Um, this all comes after F after Vizio just settled with the FTC for like two and a half million after they found they were selling their customer data without permission. So, um,

Yeah, this is a thing that happens. It's a marriage that kind of makes sense. I mean, I remember reading about this when it kind of first started hitting the news, I think like February or something earlier this year. They had to go through all the procedural regulations and all that to get approved. It finally is. This kind of just makes sense, right? Walmart wants your data, rightfully so. Like if you want to be advertised to properly, I guess this is a great way to do that.

Vizio has your data as they've shown in court, not just outside of it. But it's, yeah, it just makes sense. And I guess as a consumer, just buyer beware, right? Make your decision if you're okay with them having your data and selling it back to you in the form of ads, then go for it. You're going to get a cheap and pretty good quality television set out of it that kind of stacks up with a lot of the low range, mid range sets you can get out there right now.

Right. It's always going to be that compromise. And when we're looking at TV sets, you're going to be very split on, on what you're getting. And then there's like that whole extra add on of like, because they're doing things like adding like incredible Dolby Atmos sound in your television. But you know, how's that compared to actually putting like a soundbar or something? You've got the, them investing in their smart TV operating systems, but you know, I would always recommend just getting an Apple TV. I,

I've actually always... Vizio sets have always been decent for picture quality. I've never really liked their SmartCast TV, but for the actual picture quality, they're pretty decent. And they were pretty quick on the uptick with things like Dolby Vision and stuff. So I don't want to...

naysay for any of those reasons. If you like Vizio, what I would recommend is getting an Apple TV and not, like, turning off all their smart features, like, completely, and just sticking with an Apple TV. If you don't want to use Apple TV, if you want to give your data to Amazon instead, you know, pick up a Fire Stick, whatever you want to do. But then you can avoid that stuff. You don't have to use their smart operating system. You can... Because they're basically kind of subsidizing their TV prices. They can bring the prices down because they know they're going to make it up by selling your data. So...

This is a choose your fighter type of thing. I mean, who do you want to give your data to at the end of the day is the question you have to ask or answer, I guess. I also, we have Apple TVs on all of our TVs in the house. We turn off all the native smart OSs that are on them and we just go with Apple. That's definitely the household that we're in.

Sounds good to me. That's what we're doing here too. Don't use anything native on the TVs. It just starts to get really weird when you start knowing everything that you're watching and then when you're home and there's so much stuff that you can glean just from...

When you're watching TV and everything. And it's not just us and our spouses, right? Like we've got our kids and they're learning to use the TV. I mean, my five-year-old daughter knows how to use the Apple TV remote better than my wife does. So she's starting to do that and then Apple's getting information from them and whatever. I mean, Apple's private and data and all that, you know. But it's scary when you've got your kids into it as well. 100%.

Well, the smart home company Homey has announced some new dashboards. So these are coming out to existing people, existing users. There's multiple customizable widget-based dashboards you guys can choose from to basically control your smart home experience. Homey works with a bunch of different platforms. They are out with Homey Pro Firmware 12.1.0, an app version 9.0.0.

If you have an older Homey Pro that isn't already on there, you can unlock this with a paid firmware update. It's not that much, but at least it's like,

something that you can do. So I don't use Homey, but I have played around with their hardware a little bit. They have some nice stuff that's out there. I haven't tried it, but if you do, let me know how you like these dashboards because they seem pretty nice. They look very slick. This is essentially what we're waiting more from Apple, more of these customizable dashboards. Yeah. That's how I'm looking at this. This is like a precursor. This is a preview of what's to come next year and the year after from Apple. But

Homey's been killing it. I also don't have any Homey products, but I've played around with it. I read about it a lot and see it in a lot of YouTube content. They've been killing it, and so I'm glad to see them continue to crush it here. And I know they've got a really strong following and consumer base that are obsessed with their stuff. Yeah, 100%.

Okay, we still have more news to get to, including another update about Level. The Level saga continues. Other deadbolt news, and we'll talk about more. But before we get into it, let's take a break. Thank our second sponsor for this episode. That's right, there are two, because we had such an excellent guest. They wanted to double book, get extra sponsorship time. The numbers are going to be crazy this week. Like, what, Dan's on? Everyone's watching and listening this week. Hey, Dan.

Give HomeKit Insider some money. Let's go. Well, let's thank our second sponsor for the episode. It is ExpressVPN. So you know what's not fair? The fact that Netflix hides thousands of shows and movies from you based on your location and then has the nerve to just keep increasing their prices on you. Now, you could just cancel your subscription to protest or you could be smart about it and make sure you're getting your full money's worth like I do by using ExpressVPN.

This is also perfect timing because one of my, the biggest use case for me with ExpressVPN is like traveling and like we are in the peak travel season. My parents are about to travel. It was record holiday numbers for traveling through airports and it just seems like a sitting duck situation. Like you're probably good. You realistically probably good. But the fact that there are still a lot of people getting so much data stolen and

Your data is worth an incredible amount of money out there on the market. And if you are traveling, going through airports, coffee shops, and you're on public Wi-Fi, you're still trying to do things. People are still trying to work and get things done. It makes me way too nervous to risk putting any of that information out there. When I'm going through cities, airports, cafes, restaurants,

I'm always running a VPN, especially before I do anything, let alone the fact that I can watch like out of market games and things like that. Express VPN or VPN is so, so helpful. So yeah, you can avoid things like Netflix hiding content based on where you are in the world. So you can change your location to where you want to be located. They have servers in over a hundred countries. You can gain access to thousands of new shows and never run out of stuff to watch.

This thing works on a bunch of other streaming services too, like Disney+, BBC iPlayer, and more. So yeah, it is easy to use. It works on basically all of your devices, iPhone, iPad. It works, there's a native ExpressVPN app for your Apple TV. Yeah, there's literally a native app you can do on your Apple TV and switch your Apple TV's location, whether you're bringing it with you or you're just using it at home. It is blazing fast speeds, stream HD with zero buffering, rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. So,

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Well, next up. Another NBA client got there during the read. Yeah, ExpressVPN, longtime NBA client. We're big fans of them. They got me in their hooks also. Thank God. I use it all the time, mostly for out-of-market games like you were talking. But I originally, when they first signed on with us five-plus years ago, they gave me a comped account for a year. And then that comped account ran out. And I've been paying for it ever since because I can't stop using it. I use it daily. It's become such a –

a mainstay in my tech subscription repertoire that, yeah, yeah. It's funny how that's happened so many times with a lot of sponsors on this show. I'm not going to lie. Like, still getting those factor meals. Like, you know, definitely still buying those every once in a while. Okay. Exactly. So...

level, level, level, level. We have talked a lot about their issues with their matter update. The biggest issue has been essentially on Apple side, which is enabling home key support after the upgrade to matter. The, the base, the biggest, uh, how to fix that right now while Apple kind of figure something out is just to keep resetting your lock and re adding it. And eventually it should offer you up home key again, a little bit annoying. Well,

If you don't have the level lock plus option,

you can be happy because the level bolt is now out with matter too. So if you have an existing bolt, you can upgrade it to support matter. And if you are buying, you can now buy a version with matter pre-installed. And what makes me happier about this one is that you, there's no home key to worry about because the bolt is the one that's just on the inside of your door. It's like their OG one that was incredibly popular, uh,

Because it's like the invisible smart lock, like literally just goes inside the door. Now, HomeKey has to work by being very close because you're using NFC. So this does not offer NFC, does not offer HomeKey. So the Matter update here should be very smooth and easy. And people are still saying, like, why would I upgrade it to Matter? Like, why? The biggest benefit? Thread.

Your smart lock will now operate over a thread. So if you have your thread devices nearby, something like an Eve Energy that's not a plug for Eve, but something like an Eve Energy that is nearby that's able to act as that border router, your HomePods, your Apple TVs, any of the Nanoleaf products, there's a ton of stuff that'll act as those thread nodes to expand that thread network further.

Thread is going to be lower power than Bluetooth. It's going to be more responsive than Bluetooth. So if you are someone who does have a growing thread network, thread is going to be the way to go here. So I would upgrade 100% to Matter for the thread support. I will say since upgrading to mine, I still don't have HomeKey because I haven't reset it five times, but it has been really, really fast.

It's been much faster now with that thread upgrade. 100%. You're getting a response to this. And, yeah, that's definitely the reason to upgrade. I love that it's the inconspicuous smart lock as well. Their OG that's so popular. That's definitely the one I have and would like to keep using. So that's definitely the way to go. And, hey, just back to the beginning of this episode, Andrew. You lost your keys. Don't worry about it. You got your level lock. It's fine. I'm good.

If you do have a level bolt and you want to do the upgrade, you have to like apply your requesting this basically. All they want to confirm is that you have a compatible home hub and that you have like the correct model. So you can go to level.co slash matter dash update level.co slash matter dash update. Just put in your basic info.

You'll get it within a day or so, I have to assume. It's great that they're doing this. This is something Eve did a while ago as well when they first came out with, I think it was the three initial OTA firmware updates for Matter, for Eve Energy, Eve Motion, and Eve Door and Window Sensor, I believe. They had this almost like check-in with customers because the Matter firmware update is irreversible.

And once you do it, you can't go back. They want to make sure that you're in the right place and you have the right system set up. So it's smart. I also love levels website. They really have it all boiled down to the, you know, dotted T dotted I's and cross T's. Um,

with all the information you need. It actually kind of looks and resembles, not an Eve plug here, it kind of looks and resembles like Eve's website that they put up, their slash page when they did all this as well. But it's great to see other companies that have matter-proofed or future-proofed their products

Listen, it's definitely a consumer expense that they pass on. Level is not cheap by any means, but you're getting a great quality product. And they put the internals in there necessary so that you could upgrade when Matter became available for them. So that's really great to see.

I did harp on them a little bit because they didn't like, they've had those thread radios in there since launch and they've never enabled them. Like they could have done home kit over thread and they never did. And it was, it was always like a package deal. And people, some people don't realize that matter in thread are separate. Like you can know a hundred percent.

have thread without matter and you can have matter without threat. You can do matter over wifi and you can do thread direct with home kit. And they wanted to, to put them as a package deal. And I was like, you could, you could be giving all these home kit users as benefit right now. And you were waiting and, you know, ultimately it kind of makes sense because they do want to make sure there's enough thread users out there. They do want to make sure enough people have the thread devices and it's not too confusing. So, um,

I get it, whatever. I'm just happy that we're here at this point and we have thread enabled lever locks now level locks. It's good to finally see that. But yeah, like the thread radios are in there. I, I wonder, I think consumers are probably not super aware of this. You probably are just being a pro user and in this space, but there are a lot of products out there that include multiple radio sets that aren't actually tapped into both from Apple, by the way, which I know is heavily reported on, but from other companies as well. Companies I work with, uh,

include five, six, seven radio types in their hardware so that they can tap into them down the line when necessary. Yeah, very cool.

Well, here's another one. This is for renters though, which is also kind of under under categorized. So this is from smart rent. They have their new alloy deadbolt plus. So this is being pitched directly to like large apartment complexes and dwellings like that, but they have their new alloy dead boy deadbolt plus that includes support for home key, which is kind of rare in this space. So ideal for rental communities, easy access for families, friends, and property managers.

uh, reduces rekeying, which is one of the selling points, right? Because there's property managers have people to get in. They have to show units. They have to get in for maintenance, anything like that for people who are living there. They can't change their locks because they need to keep support for that. We actually see a lot of people using things like the level level lock because they're able to put it right into their, to their deadbolt, keep their existing deadbolt and keys, not change anything. People were doing similar things with August because it worked same way. Keep your keys, just keep,

replace that inner part, you're good to go. But now you have one that's going to be integrated from the community itself with home key, which I love. And they also heard that they're going to be able to put this on places like community rooms, like the, like a gym, anything like that, which I love because you can just, when I was living in like a community, you always, I always have like the key and the thing, and they would have like a little

tap thing to get into those spaces. So I would never use anything else because I'd like have a key to get into my apartment and then have to bring my little fob to get into those community spaces. Now I could just use my phone or my watch. Like how much cooler and easier is that? If you're going to go to the gym, I don't have to bring anything else. I can just bring my phone and I can tap to get in or my watch to get in. I love this. This is very cool.

Yeah, get ready for more of these types of announcements. I think the smart home industry is going this way. Consumers are great. Individual buyers, that's awesome. But this renter category, this residential, multi-family living category is going to be big money for smart home. And you're going to see a lot more of this popping up over the next little bit, not just in locks, in smart home energy management, storage, creation, etc.

all sorts of other things like smart blinds to help maintain climate control in these units as well. You're going to see all sorts of this type of stuff and they're going to be package deals as well. So you're going to get the lock and the blinds and the smart outlets and everything, the smart thermostats all packaged together by one company creating all the hardware or one company kind of putting all the hardware together and allowing property managers to manage this whole system. It makes sense.

This is, I feel like, where it should have been years ago. And it's taken some time, but I think this is going to be wonderful for people living in those communities. Okay, so this last one is in... Give me the downsides.

I think, you know, you got the number codes and the keys and all that, but when you put in a smart lock like this that doesn't have an actual physical key as well, there are people, you know, they say on their website, everyone's got their phones with them or their watches with them. That's not necessarily true. Kids don't necessarily have phones with them all the time. So I'm waiting for that next step.

tech in smart locks specifically. I personally am a fan of smart locks that give you multiple access methods. So you've got the pin key, you've got the physical key, you've got a proximity like a home key type thing. ADT has this cool thing called trust a neighbor where you just walk up to the door and it opens and

for family members and trusted neighbors as well. But I'm looking for that next one that allows support or allows use by people that don't have their phones with them. So I think there's some cool ideas brewing at a lot of these companies. Look out in 2025. I can tell you there's going to be some cool announcements. But it will open up the world of smart locks for everyone, not just those carrying a phone.

That's true. The kid thing is always the tough part. And, you know, we'll be getting into that. And I'm sure you have already got into that of like, because Apple doesn't really have parental controls for their smart home devices. And I wonder if that's something that we're going to see Apple get into a little bit more because it's like it's kind of carte blanche with your kid. You have to give them access to everything, including, you know, lights in the parents bedroom. Like, do you want them to have access to that stuff? But they will.

So it's going to be a weird thing there. And the similar thing with, you know, smart locks is like you want them to be able to have that easy access to your door. But what if they don't have a phone? So you make sure you have to have some sort of keypad or some other variant of entry, whether it is a physical key, keypad, facial recognition, fingerprint, whatever it's whatever options going to be. But yeah, there's going to be something there. And I hope Apple kind of expands that a little bit with whatever they're thinking for the smart home.

I think they will. I think parental control in general has become part of their mental checklist before product shipping. Kind of like privacy, kind of like cloud support and a few other things. They go through a checklist of, okay, here are the features and controls and whatnot that we need to give our end users. Are we tapping into that for this product? And they go off the checklist. And I think parental control is one of those now. I hope so. Yeah.

Okay, so this last thing that we had here, before we can talk into CES stuff if we want, but someone wrote in asking about, are there any third-party 25-watt MagSafe chargers? Now, I checked with a couple of my sources, and from anyone who's seen anything so far, still no 25-watt third-party chargers. So, well, first off, yes, there's 100% no third-party chargers that offer 25 watts yet. Like, absolutely not.

The deeper question is, like, is it even possible? And from the checks that I did, Apple is still not, as of yet, offering a 25-watt module to third parties. So if you're a third-party accessory maker, you make a charger of some sort, you can't even buy these. So, no, the only one is Apple's official 25-watt MagSafe cable in two sizes. Yeah.

You mean that sprung this innovation on the world and didn't really fill in all their third-party resellers is keeping it all for themselves for a bit? Shocker. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is I reached out to a bunch of different companies after this announcement. And I never – the thing was I never got a consensus on how third-party accessory makers felt about this. I had a lot of people give me these things and like it was –

I didn't have – there was no – everyone had completely different thoughts on where this was going. The only thing that I saw that was like a singular thread from people was that they all believed that Apple was just going to give this to the Wireless Power Consortium specifically.

same way they did with the original MagSafe, and we're going to get an updated version of Qi with 25-watt charging. So whether they call it Qi 2.1, Qi 2.3, I don't know how their naming scheme is going to work. That's not the point. But we're going to get an updated version of Qi wireless charging with 25 watts at some point, whether we'll see that at CES or whether it's going to be further down the line. I don't know.

But that's kind of where this is going to go. At least I think so. So even if Apple did offer these 25 watt modules, I don't think we'd have a lot of the, maybe a few like quick players, maybe ESR or anchor jumping in there quick and picking this up just to offer like a couple of products in the Apple store. But I think everyone's going to wait for cheap to support this natively and just go that route.

Yeah, I think it's going to go the Chi route as well. I don't know how much we're going to hear about this at this CES. And if we do, it's not going to be immediate availability type product announcements. It'll be something that they talk about and they push much later in the year. There's a lot of factors in play around CES. For some reason, the tech gods...

meaning CTA, decided it's a great idea for CES to be right around the holidays, right around, sandwiched in between the holiday season and then Chinese New Year, where manufacturing is just completely kaput for at least two weeks, if not more. So a lot of times, and anyone who follows CES regularly knows this, you got a lot of announcements that don't actually come out until much later on. This is going to fall under that category, if at all. I

I think, you know, kind of the way Thunderbolt 5 went last year, where I think you're going to see a lot more of it this year because there's been that separation, that time and space between announcement and now availability. So you'll probably see a lot of Thunderbolt 5 type stuff at CES. I'm not sure you're going to see Qi 2.2, 2.3, whatever they call it, to accommodate the 25-watt module just yet. To your point, I don't even know if the 25-watt module is available to third-party accessory makers just yet.

Yeah, which is, that's the thing that this stuff drags out so long. Because for Chi 2, we got it. I'm mixing up my years here anymore because especially, again, where CES is placed right at the beginning of the year. We had the announcement of Chi 2 one year and then we didn't get accessories until the entire following year.

So it took an entire year before those first products came to market. So if, if she announces support for faster 25 watt charging, they could announce that at CES 2025. And then we don't get products until 2026. That could, that could be the possibility here. Getting Apple quite a lead. Yeah.

Yeah, these companies are making their CES products or 20 to 5 products way before these announcements actually happen. So their roadmaps are a lot deeper and longer term than consumers might expect just based off of news cycle and stuff like that.

Um, that's actually one of the reasons I'm quite surprised dating back, going back to the beginning of the episode where we talked about, um, Apple home OS and all that. Um, I don't think there's software issues that are delaying this, right? It's, it's something that's a little bit more recent, uh, which is Apple intelligence. It's not something that's been, um,

They've been working on it for a while, but it's really coming to fruition technology-wise because of the innovation that's happened in the last couple of years just over the last few months. And so the Home OS thing, it's been around for a while. It's been on the roadmap for a while. And that's why I think we're thinking Apple Intelligence here. But yeah, the roadmaps of these companies, especially the hardware roadmaps, which are a lot longer than software roadmaps –

When they see an announcement like a Qi 2.2, 2.3 that supports 25 watt, maybe it's Qi 3 or Qi 25, leave it to brands or to consortiums to go and skip a bunch of numbers just to give us a new naming scheme. It's going to be Qi 25. You heard it here first. And that's going to take a while to come out for sure.

Well, what do you think about, let's talk about CES. What are you excited for? I mean, obviously, I'm sure you're excited for a bunch of things that you can't talk about right now. In vague terms, what are you excited to see out of CES this year? I think it's going to be another AI year. It's continuing to be the buzzword and everything everyone's working on, especially in smart home. I know it might seem disappointing, but

sometimes, I think it's going to get better. And the proof is that Apple is finally recognizing that this is the secret sauce. This is what we need to kind of make smart home awesome, which it's been, but smart home is not a new category right now. And Apple is finally getting into it outside of their hobby mode that they do. That speaks volumes of what's happening. The other...

thing I'm really interested in is smart home security. I think it's still yet untapped. There's cameras, there's, you know, sensors and this, but no one's really put it all together in a super compelling way just yet. And I think, again, AI is what's going to make that

really, really interesting presence sensors, using machine vision and camera vision to understand where you are and what you're doing, who you are and what you're doing in your home. So it's not just...

using it for security. Who shouldn't be here at this moment? Whose presence is detected that shouldn't be here? But who should be here? And how can we make their smart home more comfortable and entertaining for them? So I think that's some cool stuff that's going to come out of CES from companies you may not expect it from. And then followed by Apple's announcements in 2025, it'll really add the credibility that that category needs to kind of beef this thing up. Here's a question for you on the PR side of things.

From on a journalistic side of things, I feel like we've seen a lot of fatigue from customers of being worried

overwhelmed, uninterested, and over the AI pitches. Anything we do with AI, it gets lost in so much of the noise that is out there right now. The interest is just not there, and yet we're seeing companies literally tacking AI onto everything. The crazy thing is, robotic vacuum cleaners,

They've used essentially some form of AI for years and years and years to already do things like object detection, to know is that a sock? Is it a block? Is it Andrew's keys? What is this thing that's under the couch? It's able to know those things, and it's already been doing it. And now we're just getting hit with massive AI logos. Almost nothing has changed on the product, but they're just throwing these buzzwords out there. And I feel like it's being used frequently.

overused so much that it means almost nothing anymore. And that's unfortunate. I get annoyed. Yeah, I'm with you. And I get the consumer exhaustion and the fatigue. I get the journalistic fatigue around it as well. I think it's actually a problem on the brands. They like to overpush buzzwords too soon, too early. Let's stick with the robot vacuum example.

They call it AI. Most RVC companies, most robotic vacuum cleaner companies, we're not using AI like we're talking about AI now, which is, you know, I'm talking about like chat GPT AI, something that is communicating back with you in real language. It's able to think for its own, on its own. The AI that these RVC companies were using for years and years for detection or for obstacle avoidance or for mapping, it was more...

comparing what's in their system. So they've got a database of a thousand socks, a database of pet poop, where they show the robot has, either in the cloud or on device, a comparative model. Is this a sock?

Let me check my database. If it's not in my database, it's going to run over that SOC because it's not recognizing it. And that's why you see a lot of those failures a lot of the times, which don't happen very often. But 90% of the time it's working because it has that SOC image in its database. And that's just an example.

But that's not the AI that we're going to be seeing at CES. When we're talking about generative AI, something that's able to communicate with you or with the environment in a way that hasn't been done before, that's where I think we're going and what's going to be talked about a little bit more this year. And...

To your point, I do think consumers are going to be exhausted because they don't necessarily see the difference between that. But when this is finally going to be something interesting for consumers is when they don't have to worry about it. It just works on its own. It is detecting their presence automatically.

It is making those decisions based off of just its onboard intelligence and the decision-making it can make right there and then. It does not have to compare it to a cloud. It doesn't have to go back to any database. It's just doing it right there and then. That's when I think consumers are going to be like, okay, we don't have to hear about this because it's just working. It's just a part of the product. Yeah, but there's obviously value here, right? Because everyone's going into it, and I think they just –

Everyone, they blew it by talking about it too early. Like they literally just started slapping that logo on everything. I'll tell you what, the day I can tell my brands and clients not to talk about their big innovation that they've been working on for years is I guess the day you'll have me back on the slapper.

It's just like where I – like you said, like they've been – like because AI is such a nebulous term and there can be essentially AI models versus generative AI versus all this stuff. And it's getting used in all these different applications and like toothbrushes with AI that's essentially, again, just comparing models of how you're doing and giving you advice. Like –

It's not that much, but people are like, oh, AI-powered toothbrush. There's three people that are like, that's exciting, and the rest of it is like, why do I need AI there? I agree with you. That's why I think Apple sidestepped the exact words AI there.

and have focused so much on Apple intelligence as a feature versus AI because people are tired of just the AI pitch. And I think branding it as a feature is at least a little bit different and tries to segment out versus all the noise that's happening from every brand using it to market the

It's very similar stuff they've already had. Yes, and Apple also fell into the same trap, though, because they released this thing too soon. They're talking about it too soon, and it's not fully baked, and consumers are getting tired of that as well. So it's a cash 22, and I think...

Yeah, we're going to see more of it, whether consumers like it or not. And hopefully this is the time when it starts to make a little bit more sense for them. Because I'm excited about what I'm seeing on my end. And I think it should be pretty cool in the next couple of years. I don't know if it's 2025 CES, CES 2025, but it'll start or continue now, I should say. But over the next couple of years, we're going to see something so radically different from the AI space. I mean, just today, Sam Altman was...

toning down the excitement, I guess, for AI or intelligence of what's it called, AGI? Yeah.

General intelligence. He's toning down the excitement on that. So maybe things are a little bit different in the general world. But when we're talking product specific AI, so robot vacuums or smart home, I think it's going to be eye opening over the next couple of years. And it's going to be completely game changing for the industries.

I agree. I think that's what Apple is leaning into a lot. I think that's probably why they feel like there's actually this opportunity in smart home now when they can start to lean on AI to do predictive stuff and to make your home kind of react to you and feel more homey and smart instead of just you creating an automation with 13 different outs for random scenarios and all this other stuff. Yeah.

here's to 2025 i'm excited we can go on i agree this topic it's it's a problem we we will go on with because we're gonna have cs is like what first week second week of of january it's gonna be crazy there's gonna be so much stuff because yeah like you said we're gonna see a bunch of thunderbolt 5 because it was made official last year we saw concept devices now it's actually on the mac so we're gonna see a bunch of

Thunderbolt 5 devices across the board. Who knows what we're going to see on the charger front. Chargers feel a bit stale right now, right? Because we've had everyone launch their Qi 2 stuff. I don't think we're going to see too much more in that space. A couple small tweaks on that, but I think everyone's got pretty big portfolios already built out. It's going to be really interesting on the smart home space. I think what you said is really true on the camera side of things.

Using AI to start to be able to detect different things and be more accurate. We've even heard about how Apple's will be able to differentiate people even if their faces aren't clear. Or if you're talking, so they're going to be able to know exactly who people are without that. All privately, securely, and locally and all that stuff. So that's going to be really interesting to see how third parties are going to start to proactively do that.

Yeah. We've, we've seen like the familiar faces stuff from Google and other companies doing face detection and all that. It's, it's not, you know, foolproof. You know, I, I've talked to a reporter all the time that tells me that her UPS driver always gets picked up as her. And,

It's just like at some point you got to ask the question, do I look like my UPS driver? But I don't think she does based off what I'm seeing. So it's not foolproof. I think the presence component of it is a really good safeguard because then you've got the machine vision. Is this the person based off of what they look like or if I don't even see their face anymore?

Is this where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be right? Time-based event-based and, um, you know, the, the biometrics of the device that they're holding or have on their wrist or whatever. So that, that stuff is, it's coming. That's all part of that AI play. And it's going to be super cool to, to see not just the big ecosystem players like Apple work it, uh, but the, the third party accessory makers as well, how they tap into that. Um, it'll be awesome.

Awesome. Well, if anyone's interested in keeping up with the CES news, make sure you stay tuned to Apple Insider as well as here. We'll cover all the smart home stuff here on Apple or HomeKit Insider is where we're talking right now. Dan, anywhere you want to point people as we wrap up this episode?

Yeah, I'll do a quick plug. I'll turn my portrait off for a second. I wrote two books this year. It's been a busy year since we last spoke. Two children's book. The one over here is My Dad Does PR, all about nontraditional jobs. Kids grow up, they want to be firefighters and police and all those things that they hear about all the time. No one says they want to be a PR person. So for my kids, I wrote My Dad Does PR. I

I hope other PR people or anyone that has non-traditional jobs can go and check that out. It's available on Amazon, not Shopify. It's available in other places as well. But yeah, go check that out. And then I wrote one for super moms as well. Mostly stay-at-home moms, but any moms. Something that really touches to, you know, my wife is a stay-at-home mom. She's a great mother. And I want people to know and kids to know that that's a really great job as well. And there's a lot of hats that stay-at-home moms do wear.

So they're gardeners, they're organizers, they're accountants, they're cooks, they're spiritual guides for your kids. And so I wrote these two books for my kids, and I think a lot of other parents out there would enjoy them as well. Go check them out. My dad does PR. My mom does work. You can buy them on Amazon now. I love the title of the second one. I just think that's very fun.

Awesome. Well, I used a great company to help do the illustrations. It's called bear with us. They're out of the UK and they got the, the likeness of my kids and, and even me and my, my black t-shirt uniform, which I'm not wearing today cause it's cold. Um, but they got it down to a T. They even did like my wife's, that's my wife there. And they did her like Lululemon, like side bag thing that she wears. They, they nailed it. Uh, so really great company bear with us.

Little bit more to your side, depending on how these get cropped on the video version of this for people. No, so your center stage follows you over there. Oh, there we go. Let's pick them up. Just pick it up right here. This is my dad does PR. My mom does work. Those are my two older kids. I'm working on a third one now for our baby called My Siblings Do Homework. And so maybe next time we speak, that'll be out. And yeah, we could talk about that one.

Nice. Awesome. Well, thank you everyone. Check those out, Dan. Thank you for joining for the episode. Everybody else, you know what to do. Give us a five, 10, a hundred star rating on your podcast player of choice. Check out the video version of this over youtube.com slash home kid insider. You can see the covers of Dan's books. Otherwise stay tuned. So much more stuff coming throughout the year and heading into 2025. It's going to be a big year. It's going to be amazing. I love it. Thank you guys for listening and watching. Catch you next time. Bye.