jeremyxmentzell

Apple’s vision for the home is blurry.

With Apple’s products invading people’s homes, I hedged my bets that surely the same company that created the incredible software and hardware integrations we use ubiquitously every day would be interconnecting the home in new and interesting ways.

Maybe they still will – but for now – they’re just not there, yet they remain frustratingly close to providing huge value to existing customers.

Don’t get me wrong – they seem to be taking steps with products like AirPort, AppleTV, HomeKit, and the upcoming HomePod; but its just too slow and horribly disjointed.

These products need to be deeply interconnected and I have some suggestions I’d like Apple to consider.

Yes; these suggestions take many liberties and assumptions but in my opinion their ultimate cohesiveness or ability to remove daily technological friction is much more valuable than their recent endeavors into making content like Planet of the Apps or Carpool Karaoke or seemingly abandoning products like the Mac Mini or the sizable time period the Mac Pro (despite the wonderful roundtable discussion that was reported on) was left to twist in the wind.

Here we go:

  • Get serious about the home.
    • Fork tvOS into homeOS that would run all of these products with a powerful AI like Siri under the hood.
    • Make it a “Voice First” model tightly integrated with HomeKit
    • A reworked Home tab in the Home app offering a more holistic view of your automated home and interconnected appliances or devices.
  • Make seamless home networking simple.
    • With the rise of mesh Wi-Fi solutions Apple’s single AirPort system is sorely needing attention and should be upgraded to facilitate this; maybe even leveraging other “homeOS” products as stand-alone mesh points that would connect to the main AirPort.
    • Extend Apple Remote Desktop through iOS so you can remote to macOS devices.
      • Remember – Apple doesn’t “sell” a physical macOS server any more – the Mac, ANY Mac is it with the Server app; so make remote administration easy so we can leverage it better.
      • This will never be a replacement for iCloud’s offerings – it simply suits a different user base – it might be small but I’d wager its the same crowd craving more powerful Macbook Pros, iMac Pros, and ultimately Mac Pros.
  • ♥ All Media.
    • AppleTVs are made to be the center of our home media experience right now; they need to start respecting and seamlessly integrate connected media files without 3rd party apps like Plex. (Codecs and transcoding abilities certainly factor into this – but lets imagine those are worked out.) We should be able to access Macs with large storage volumes or stand-alone Network Attached Storage devices and add their files to our available media library that show in TV like every other “providers’” content does.
  • Home Theaters are still a thing.
    • The HomePod looks like an intriguing product to take on Amazon and Google’s offerings but nothing that we’ve seen connects to the AppleTV’s audio source to create an immersive audio experience nor offers multiple form factors at launch to facilitate different home configurations or integrations with the Mac.

That’s my short list; I think these are achievable but Apple would really need to focus in on the home. Realistically this future is still years away on the ever turning carousel of progress.