Apple HomeKit gets thermostat to compete with Nest

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

Apple’s smart home platform is gaining another member: the Ecobee3 smart thermostat, the first connected thermostat to work with HomeKit. The Ecobee3 goes on sale today through Apple Stores across North America. It costs $249 and is essentially an alternative to Nest’s thermostat: it detects a home’s temperature and whether anyone is actually around and then adjusts heating and cooling accordingly, with the goal of saving homeowners some money. The thermostat can even be made a bit smarter by buying additional sensors (a pack of two costs $79) that can allow it to detect temperature and presence in other rooms of a house — one sensor is included with the thermostat itself.

The Ecobee3 is a big step for HomeKit. It features remote sensors and is controllable by Siri. To me, this is a product that brings HomeKit into the mainstream.

There’s also an iOS 9 angle here. Writing on Dot Info, Joe Caiati paints this picture of what Apple HomeKit might bring:

Siri finds out that you like to make French press coffee every morning. It doesn’t actually know that detail specifically, but since you ask Siri to set a timer for five minutes every morning in the kitchen, it proactively asks you when you get in the kitchen if you want it to start “your timer” and that it will wait for your go ahead.

It’s all about context. The world is changing. Apple is investing on proactive intelligence in iOS 9, creating a more intelligent context, one that will not only start the coffee, and let you adjust your thermostat remotely, but one that will learn your likes and dislikes, understand your habits and tweak the ecosystem accordingly.

Interesting times a’coming.