Why Apple is finally making its own smart home devices
The Verge · LC · trust 50/100
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Apple’s new smart home lineup promises easier setup, tighter integration, and data privacy. But with steep competition and steeper prices, can Apple convince more people to adopt its vision of the smart home?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Close Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Senior Reviewer, Smart Home Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Share Gift Apple’s Home Collection, codeveloped with partners, is part of the company’s first major push into the smart home category. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Tech Close Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
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Apple’s new smart home lineup promises easier setup, tighter integration, and data privacy. But with steep competition and steeper prices, can Apple convince more people to adopt its vision of the smart home?
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Close Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Senior Reviewer, Smart Home Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Share Gift Part Of All the news from Apple’s ‘Welcome Home’ event see all updates Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Close Jennifer Pattison Tuohy Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
For more than a decade, Apple has told other companies to build smart home devices for its platform. This week, Apple launched its own . The Apple Home Collection is a lineup of cameras, thermostats, sensors, a smart door lock, and a video doorbell, all codeveloped with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric. They arrive alongside HomeView , Apple’s first smart display.
Even after 12 years of HomeKit, Apple’s smart home ecosystem still feels underdeveloped, especially compared to the competition. Amazon’s and Google’s ecosystems support more products, and both have popular in-house brands: Ring and Nest. Apple had nothing of its own to point customers to as an Apple experience — and now it does.
But why now? And does Apple actually add anything new here, or is this mostly packaging? At Apple’s “Welcome home” event in New York this week, I spoke with Kaiann Drance, vice president of product marketing for home at Apple, about the company’s new approach to the smart home and what this means for Apple’s commitment to Matter , the interoperable open smart home standard it helped found.
Drance says the big reason for this focus on new smart home hardware was the development of the right technologies. The first was Matter, which provided the ecosystem. The second was AI, which brought a more conversational Siri voice assistant . Both were necessary to create a dedicated home device in HomeView. “With the magic of Siri AI, it comes together in a way that we haven’t been able to deliver before,” Drance says. “That’s been a really critical piece of bringing this all together.”
The bigger play is HomeView as a gateway to the smart home.
The bigger play here is HomeView as a gateway to the smart home for Apple’s users. Buy one for playing music, guided cooking recipes, and checking your calendar, and you might soon want a camera or smart lock to go with it. Drance says they’ve seen that once people try a single smart device and find it easier than they expected, it “unlocks this delightful understanding of what’s possible once you bring these products into the home.” She argues that most people just don’t know what a smart home can do.
She’s not wrong. The biggest barrier to buying smart devices is that people don’t see any value in the products, according to research from Parks Associates. Privacy and security concerns and complexity also rank high, along with cost. While Apple isn’t addressing the cost concern here — the products start at $200 — the other elements are part of its pitch: one-tap setup, your data stays yours, one app to run it all. Apple’s stamp of approval also carries a lot of weight. “People who own Apple products are very, very loyal, and there is a large user base,” says Elizabeth Parks, president and CMO at Parks Associates .
Until now, Apple Home has been a bit like a buffet: You can pick from any brand that supports HomeKit or Matter and hope it all goes together. The Home Collection is more like the chef’s choice, a short list of dishes Apple promises will pair well. Drance says that’s what some customers were asking for. “There is a lot of choice with Matter, and there’s a lot of great products out there,” she says. “But sometimes we do get asked, ‘Hey, what product should I put in the home?’”
Rather than build devices itself, Apple chose to codevelop the lineup with partners that “have their own expertise in the home.” Both have a global footprint and home experience, she says, “LG more so in consumer products, Schneider through home build and home installations.” Drance says it was a ground-up collaboration with Apple bringing “the design aesthetic that would be suitable for the home and suitable to go with our family of products.” The company is also partnering with ADT through Apple retail stores to help people install the devices.
Drance says setup and ease of use were a big focus. “The one-tap setup was really important to make it so easy, having no need for a separate account, no need for a separate app,” she says. “We just wanted that simplicity to be at its core, and of course, the privacy that we’ve developed together with our partners.” She says everything integrates through Apple…
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