The Sunday Scene - 5

IKEA DIRIGERA smart home hub (source IKEA)

First

Adaptive Temperature - Steven Moser discovered a number of interesting snippets of text hidden in Apple’s recent betas. These indicate Apple might be working on a feature called Adaptive Temperature that would adjust your thermostat to save energy and get your house to the right temperature at the right time. I’ve never really been a fan of similar features like this from other companies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple could make something that works well. Apple and Google both have the advantage of really knowing more about when you’ll get home with Apple Maps and Google Maps / Waze.

Second

Adding Matter Devices to IKEA Home - IKEA recently released some major upgrades to their smart home platform. This post by Christian Cawley over at Matter Alpha goes to show how serious IKEA is about playing well with Matter and becoming a more important smart home platform by way of showing how it’s possible to control non-IKEA Matter devices in IKEA Home. We have lots of IKEA furniture in our home, but I haven’t ventured into their smart home tech yet. Looking at these recent updates, I think I should check it out pretty soon.

Third

Tim Cook Holds Apple All Hands emphasizing AI - Mark Gurman has details about a rare all hands meeting Tim Cook hosted from the Steve Jobs theater at Apple Park on Friday. Tim Cook did everything possible to make it clear to employees that AI is a priority and still an opportunity for the company.

While Apple is clearly behind right now, I’m optimistic that they will be able to find a valuable spot within the modern AI ecosystem as it evolves. As an app developer, I remember being surprised how it took years for smart phones to become the true center of our digital lives like they are today. In the same way, we are still in the early chapters of AI. I also think it’s a category that will mature right along with smart home tech. AI can bring more intelligence to the smart home, like Adaptive Temperature above, which increases the reasons to invest in smart home tech.

The schedule

There will be no live stream on Thursday night, but I have some videos in production I’m excited about that you should see posted soon.