Apple Video Doorbell & 2024 Smart Home Wrapped!
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider.

It is that time of year. It is, you know, as you're listening to this, if you're listening to it on the day it releases, it is December 30th, making this the final episode of HomeKit Insider for 2024. So we do have some smart home news to cover out of the Apple camp again. Bloomberg hitting the reports literally the evening right after our podcast is recorded. So I have news to talk about that.

broke literally a week ago that many of you are probably by now familiar with. You've probably seen in the headlines and I now just get to talk about it on the podcast. So, uh,

Thanks, Mark Gurman over there, keeping me a week behind on the podcast. But hey, it's worth covering. So we're going to cover the Apple news. Then we're going to do a bit of a wrapped, a 2024 wrapped session. We're going to talk about the highs and lows, what I liked and what to look forward to in 2025. Because I'm calling it right now, I've been saying it, 2025, the year of the smart home. It is hellish.

happening. Apple's leading the charge. 2025 is going to be the shift in the smart home space. So

Let's get into it. Final episode of 2024 right ahead of CES. I'm so excited. So the big news out of Bloomberg is that Apple is working on yet another new smart home device. This joins the new HomePods that are coming, the new Apple TV that is coming. This joins Apple's new smart home display. That is a big deal. And it'll be joining the camera that is supposed to be coming out in 2025. So let's get into it.

Or 2026, rather. So what is this new device? Well, it is a smart video doorbell. I think this is very interesting. And there's some things here that Apple could do that maybe we can't do necessarily with third-party products. So the big thing here is Mark Gurman first says this is going to be arriving at the end of 2025 at the absolute earliest date.

judging by Apple's pace at the smart home, don't even take that with a grain of salt, like literally just plan for 2026 at the earliest because they have been so slow and on all of their smart home releases, like they, they're always behind. So I'm going to say 2026 for this project, uh,

The big unique feature is it's going to have advanced facial recognition, and then it'll be able to recognize your face, scan your face, and then unlock your door if you're identified. So basically, face ID for your front door.

Super cool. This is very unique. There's other things that do this. So it's not like this is... It's not entirely unique, but I think Apple could do it in a much more secure and private way than we probably see with some of the others. But I think the big thing here is that Apple could be taking on the likes of Ring. It could be really going after Amazon with this kind of product. And, I mean...

This is just so interesting to me to see Apple really hitting that smart home space with its own first party products beyond the TV, the speakers. We're going to get this display. We're going to get a camera. And now we're going to get a doorbell. But not only that, how is it going to unlock the door?

Apple is either going to have to create its own lock or more likely, in my opinion, partner with a lock maker that's already out there. It could go with with Schlage, could go with Yale because both of them, I believe, are sold in Apple stores. There's also the level level lock that's out there. That's a big one.

Apple partnered with them with like the home key launch and everything. So there's, there's lots of options that Apple could explore. So they could launch a video doorbell and then launch with a partner on the lock side of things, or it could just like license everything. I wonder if we could even see someone, uh,

you know, partnering with Apple to create all of the hardware like Belkin. I mean, Belkin already has the doorbell. It could work with Apple on like a second generation doorbell and then also have its own smart lock that could go along with it. Something like that.

There's a lot of options here, folks, and we're a little early to be able to know how this is going to shake out because Apple easily can change its mind five times by the time this product makes it to market. But headlines again, smart video doorbell, face ID unlocking as you approach. Now, that would go alongside Alero. That is the automatic unlock.

ultra wide band unlocking mechanism for the door locks themselves. So you could have something where you could just walk up to it, unlock thanks to wearing your Apple watch or your iPhone. Basically you get close enough. It's going to authenticate the proximity and then unlock your lock for you versus this, which is going to be facial recognition. So you could have your choice of like, okay, do you want to use home key? Do you want to use the automatic unlocking? Do you want to use facial recognition? You know, pick your poison. Um,

I think a lot of this starts to speak to Apple really is going to improve. Maybe I'm just being excited and being optimistic here, but that's what we do. I'm a Browns fan. I'm overly optimistic about everything. But I'm hoping Apple really is going to push into the AI video processing because as we all know, Apple is not doing great at

with their AI video processing compared to the competition. Literally, I mean, I used an Arlo doorbell for the longest time because it was so much better. Still is so much better at recognizing people, cars, animals, packages,

versus Apple that somehow misses complete motion that happens, let alone people and the other things. And then on top of that, you can't even use those recognitions to drive automations. Like, if there's a cat walking across my porch, cool, let it do its thing. But if there is a human, turn the lights on. You can't do that. You

You can only turn things on or off when any motion is detected, whether it is a branch or something else. So Apple has a lot of work to do, but I'm optimistic that it's going to figure it out. It's really pushing into AI here, and a lot of stuff is going to be done locally, and I think we're going to see these new, much more capable devices coming to the smart home, like the Apple TV and the new HomePod, that are going to be able to do those things and handle those tasks more competently than

on your home level. So lots of cool stuff there. The other one that I am thinking of that is similar in terms of unlocking is ultra lock, like L O Q at the end, I believe they have like a facial recognition thing that they say is also very secure and does like a 3d scan of the face similar to face ID, but I've never tried that yet, but, um,

We'll see. We'll see. I'm going to have to start investigating that a little bit as we get closer to Apple making something like that a reality. Similarly, Bloomberg is also saying that Apple may not be working on a router anymore.

This makes me very bummed. Basically saying that Apple is not doing this currently, but their new chip, the one that is codenamed Proxima, that we have covered on Apple Insider many times, it could theoretically convert something like a HomePod or an Apple TV into mesh access points. So again, really curious at how some of this stuff is going to come together and play together. Like, are they hoping this could work via Matter?

Where you could use these in conjunction with a different wireless network? Or is it just going to be for a smart home network? I don't know. But Apple's really putting a lot into that Proxima chip for Wi-Fi, and I assume thread, Bluetooth, all those types of things. And it's first coming out to market in the smart home products, in the HomePod, Apple TV, before coming to the likes of the iPhone and the Mac and the iPad. So Apple is doing something here. They're working on something.

Again, 2025, the year of the smart home and Apple is leading the way. So that's it for the for the smart home news of the week because we didn't really have it. No one's launching new products. There's nothing really changing, right? We're going to have CES with all the news. We also had everything else before this and no one's launching anything the week of Christmas and Hanukkah and everything like that. So no other news is coming out this week.

But again, we're going to see. Yeah. So I'll be live out in Las Vegas, like the recording podcast from a hotel room. And I promise I I'm going to do my best to keep the audio quality up to snuff for all of you. I'll see if I can find a guest to join me, but recording times are always weird when I'm changing time zones and everyone's already hammered from such a busy week. And I, I can't record during normal times anyway, because I'm on the show floor. I think, uh, uh,

Last year or the year before, I had to wake up at like 6 a.m. or something out there during CES weekend. It was unpleasant, to say the least, to try to get that done. So we will see how it works, but I think we're going to have a lot of smart home stuff, a lot of things starting to fill in the gaps. Maybe we're going to get some Matter-related announcements I think would be very nice to see.

Matter had a big year in 2024, a lot of new releases and device types supported. So maybe we're going to have announcements on new devices coming and new devices that will be supporting it announced at the show. So be sure you guys are staying tuned for all of that.

So if you care, if you want to revisit things a little bit in 2024, let's go ahead and talk about how the year went. What were the most popular episodes of the year of HomeKit Insider? And then I'm going to finish it up by talking about my favorite products that released this year. Now, 2024 was hard, right?

It really was, you guys, for this podcast. We had a little bit of a tumultuous transition from two hosts to one host. I had never edited a podcast before, and I had one dropped in my lap. And the options were figure out...

how to edit a podcast or stop doing this. And I have fun doing this. I hope you guys all have fun listening to this. And I wanted to keep doing it so badly, so I poured a lot of work into trying to do that, mixing it up with guest hosts and a lot of support from the community on people stopping by, helping with audio and all of the other...

that we ran into along the way. And I know probably in some ways we lost some of our loyal audience that didn't want to sit through some of the issues with bad audio and things like that because I know how important that is. I truly do. And I have worked very hard to try to make everything better and consistent. And there are still shortcomings. I know sometimes it's a little hard with guests, but...

We're continuing to do our best and improve the quality of this podcast every single week that we do it. We've gotten much better. I now have drop-in presets for Wes and I on our audio. So at least when Wes or regulars are here, it's going to sound great.

We also have, you know, we've at when I started doing this, we didn't have chapters or artwork, any of those things. We have all of that now. So all of that is there for you guys, whichever podcast play you're listening on. So I hope that makes it an improved experience. And we've been doing a lot, a lot more. So, you know, let's keep rolling in 2025. It's only going to get better from here. Share this podcast as you guys always do. I, I so much appreciate it.

So what did you guys all find so intriguing in 2024? Well, of our 2024 episodes, probably the most popular one out of the gate was the CES episode. So like get hyped for January because we're hitting it again. That was probably the number one episode of the year out of the gate. Biggest metrics right there after launch.

After that, we had our initial rumors for Apple's smart home display. Like those things really started heating up in February, actually. So that was our second highest episode of the year. Apple smart display details leaking.

You guys also loved some of our guest hosts, including when the thread organization stopped by thread group, stop by. That was a very popular episode as was Brian Tong. Brian, who also does amazing stuff out at CES. He's like one of the big hosts out there for that. Brian does great. And his episode in August was incredibly popular for the podcast. So clearly Brian's got to get back on the podcast again in 2025. So we'll be doing that.

Um, and, uh, we also had a good episode with Ikea adding matter. Apparently that was also huge. Maybe I need to look into the Ikea stuff more because of that as the title of the episode really spurred some downloads. So that, uh, another, those are probably top six episodes, I think for 2024. So some guest hosts,

CES, Apple Smart Home Display, the Red Group, our tvOS Deep Dive, breaking down everything new with tvOS 18. That was also in this top six, seven episodes. So popular there too. Go figure. All these smart home topics that are very specific, you guys were just eating up. So that was great to see. So my favorite products, I picked out one, two, three, four, I think five, five products here for 2024. There were quite a bit.

But I feel like in 2024, there was a lot of kind of repeat products, which is even shown in my list of devices that I've chosen here. Starting out with Chi 2. Chi 2 launched in earnest this year, and I know that you guys don't like if I hit it too much. And I hit it a lot at the beginning of the year, partially because it was so new and we just had a huge shortage.

a wave of products coming to market after being announced the year before. So it was a lot, very, very fast. So we've, we spread those out a little bit, just mentioning them a little by little.

But it was still a big piece of everything. I truly do believe things like standby mode are part of the smart home. I mean, I can literally sit here on my desk. I sit with my iPhone in standby mode with things like a timer and all my smart home controls. And it's very simple to be able to control things like lights and everything else going on. So I love having standby mode and integrating the smart home controls. It's super handy.

At night, when I go to bed, at bedtime routines and setting all that stuff, I also have, like, my blood sugar on my nightstand, so I can literally roll over in the middle of the night and see where my blood sugar is, if I need to make an adjustment, if I'm going low, anything like that. All these are very useful, at least in my life, so...

was a huge thing in and of itself. If I had to pick two or at least one big product, I still really like this. I just talked about on the show that nimble portable charger that has like the little cover and you pop it open and it's got the thing and it supports like standby mode and it's

like that cactus leather. It all feels very nice, supports fast charging for the Apple Watch. This was a huge thing for me. I really love this. I'm taking this out to CES. It's been my go-to charger here for quite a bit. So that was probably one of my favorite Qi 2 chargers, but there was a bunch of them. If you care, go back, listen to those early episodes because I covered quite a bit of them on the podcast. Next up in the list was the Roborock S8 Max V Ultra.

There are a lot of great robotic vacuum cleaners. We cover a lot of them. I have a lot of them sponsor stuff on the YouTube channel, and there were several that I really liked that were super cool and did unique things that work really well. We have another sponsored video coming out, I think, probably this week up on the YouTube channel from...

I can remember who they are off the top of my head, but it's an amazing robot. I really, really like it. And it's able to recycle the water out of the air, and you never have to change the water tank. And when it mops the floor, it comes back, squeegees the mop clean, uses the dirty water from the tank, and puts it back into the station. And it literally...

cleans the water, it boils it, takes the dusty, the gross dirt of it, puts that into a dustbin, and then takes all the clean condensated, condensed, you use the condensation to evaporate all the water out and then use that to fill up the clean water again. So it has purified water at all times in there ready to go. So you never have to refill it. And it does an excellent job of cleaning your floors. The mop sticks out the side. I really like it.

Point is, there's a lot of cool robot vacuum cleaners out there, but the one that I have consistently used and kept set up the longest has been the Roborock S8 Max V Ultra. It is just incredibly consistent, easy to use. I like the looks of it.

It fits well into the home and it's just, it does what it does very well. It's the one that I, that I've been using every single week or day that I'm cleaning with it. It's probably been the go-to and it's also one of the ones that I trust that's going to add matter when the time comes. It gets already matter certified. It's ready to go out the door as soon as Apple or Roborock pulls the trigger on it.

it'll be set. So that that's been my favorite one so far. And I use it all the time to clean. So it's gotta be on my list. Next up this again, not new, but this wasn't our very high in our top episodes, early episode of 2024 when level we found out was actually matter certified already. It took them like eight additional months to pull the trigger on that certification and actually update the level lock with thread support and

And this product didn't come out in 2024, but the thread update with Matter did. And I know it was a rocky rollout for that. Home key was a weird thing to get that enabled again, but this lock is fantastic. It is so smooth. It looks great. Easy, easy install, easy use. Home key, Matter, fantastic.

the red fits right in to your door. So there's no bulk anywhere. It's just hard to find anything better than that. And even though there's a lot of really cool locks out there that I like and do different things and work and are quiet and all these other great aspects, uh,

This again is the one that I go back to. This is the one that I prefer and that I trust the most putting into my house. Um, it's, it's been great overall. I really, really like it. And now that this update is here, I feel like it is more reliable than ever. And it answers very, very fast. When I set my good night scene and it locks that door, I feel like it just spot on. I feel like I'm going to need to get a new one. Um, when a Lero comes out, or maybe this will support a Lero because it already has ultra wide. Does it have ultra wide band? Maybe it doesn't. Uh,

I don't want to misspeak there, so don't ignore what I just said. But this lock has been so great. I feel like I'll have to upgrade when an Alero one comes out if it is a new model. But I have been so appreciative of using this lock every day. Of all the smart home tech, it's, again, one of those that I'm using every single day. So it's hard not to make it into my list.

Next up, number four, number four on my list are the SYNC, the GE SYNC, C-Y-N-C, under cabinet lights. So these I ended up mounting in my kitchen and they have been phenomenal. So they are, I believe, full color. They are different shades of white. They are the different brightnesses, all of that.

They can connect together so you can string a whole bunch of them together with one power cord and you're good to go. So I replaced light strips that I had before, just Philips Hue light strips with these. Now I will say the best part about the Philips Hue one was setting the automations through the Hue app using the Hue motion sensor. Second to none. They were fantastic. I could come out in the middle of the night. They would be dim. I'd come out during the day. They would be brighter, change the temperature, all of that stuff. Like,

you can't beat it. But in terms of how they actually look and perform and everything else, the sync ones look a lot better. They are brighter, more consistent, and they're like large and flat. So they have a bigger area of coverage of the light. And it makes a big difference in terms of like usability compared to, you know, a strip, a string going underneath the cabinets. Um,

These are much more broad, just gives a lot more light. And I really like it. The downside is the automations. They don't work as well because it's all done through home kit and having like a motion sensor with a bunch of conditionals based on time of day and stuff like that.

I feel like don't work as reliably or as fast as the Hue ones did. Hue was just, they were instant, instant. The second detect motion and you could dial all of that in, but HomeKit is getting better at it. I did end up getting a good routine that works very well. It's not as fast as the Hue one was, but I think that's going to continue to get better here. Apple is also going to be able to start adding its own things for sensor features.

well, what's the word I'm looking at? Sensitivity. Sensitivity. Because that was added with Matter. Matter can now support the sensitivity of motion and presence sensors. So I think by combining a presence sensor like the ones from Aqara, setting that sensitivity in the Aqara app and tying everything together may be the best picture to do everything that I want, but it's just going to be a little bit more tinkering to get it worked together versus Hue that worked out of the gate.

Still, I love how they look. I love how they work. They do work with Matter, and I've had no issues at all in reliability. So for that reason, they're number four on my list of my favorite smart home products from 2024.

Okay, last one. We don't see too many of these, but I love the Aqara U300 Interior Door Lock. So this is a lever lock, and it's meant for interior doors. So if you have, this could work for a garage, for...

uh, your bedroom, office, studio, um, anything like that that you want to keep locked, right? It could just be where you work at home, a home office. You don't want anyone else to be able to round in there. You got your kids in there or you're having a party like in a movie and you don't want someone like ruffling through your tax documents on your desk or something. I don't know what you do. Don't judge me. Um, but, uh,

you can use something like this to lock it. Now it supports a bunch of different things. There's a built in keypad on there. There's a fingerprint reader that you can use to touch your fingerprint, but it also supports home key. And that's where I found this really met its stride and why I ended up liking it so much. I am going to talk about this on a future podcast when faith joins me because we put this on our bedroom door of all the doors in the house. And the reason why is because, you know, our kid is opening up all of the doors all of the time. And, uh,

We actually have to keep our cats separated. So every once in a while, Oliver is kept in our room because it's like the biggest room and it has like our own bathroom and he has his litter box in there. So sometimes Oliver is up there and Easton's around the house and they have to stay separate. So I don't want Harrison going down there, opening our bedroom door, getting into anything or letting the cat out. He literally has tried to get in like the litter box before. So I'm like, don't, don't touch things in the litter box.

And we needed to lock our bedroom door. This was a very easy way to do that. And now it is the simplest way because I never have to run anything. I can, for the most part, I'd say 90% of the time, the fingerprint reader would work first time, but every once in a while, it wouldn't be on like quite right where your thumb is. Like it's literally, it's a great spot for it. It's very convenient, but sometimes it would be off just a little bit. I should probably try to re-enroll it and see if that helps improve it. Like, you know, a hundred percent of the time.

What I found is literally quicker is just to walk up, touch my watch to it, unlock with home key, and then walk in the room. It feels so smooth, so easy. It works great. So because of that, I really like the Akari U300, and it's here in my list of smart home products for 2024. So I want to know what you guys love. Let me know. I really want to see what resonated with all of you. Let me know your feedback on the podcast.

brutally honest. You guys are always brutally honest. I get the emails.

I get the love. I get the frustration. I get all of them. So send me your thoughts. I really want to know your favorite products of 2024 and where you think the podcast should go in 2025. I promise you it's going to keep getting better. It's going to improve as 2025 becomes the year of the smart home. We're going to have more great guests. We're going to kick things off with CES and all of that great news. Let me know your feedback, what products you love, what you want to see.

Let's do it. So thank you sincerely to everybody for listening to the show, for joining me on this journey. Let's continue to make this podcast the best smart home podcast on the market. Otherwise, do what you guys do best. Give me a 5, 10, 100-star rating on your podcast player of choice. Share this with all your friends and family. If they want to know more about the smart home, go ahead and watch the video version of this, which is just me staring at the camera.

wiggling my hands around like a madman over at YouTube at youtube.com slash HomeKit Insider. Otherwise, I'll catch you in next week's episode.