In the beginning was the word.... and the word was Media Centre (OK, 2 words)

 

OK, so yet another HomeKit blog/review site, etc?

Well, I hope not.

This is going to be my practical experience of HomeKit as I have implemented it, and continue to implement it, in my own home. It isn't reviews of products, per se... but more on what products I've used and why. In some circumstances, why I have swapped products out and replaced with others.

So, let's start with why I chose HomeKit.

It's really quite simple. It actually starts from the early 2000's. I was living in the Bay Area of California at the time (I've been back to Australia since then and am, currently, back in the Bay Area again). I was a fan of Palm Treo phones, as I had been a Palm Pilot user for quite a while, and I tried to use Windows Media Centre. Basically, I found Media Centre to be a great idea.... and completely unreliable! I tried and tried, but it just drove me insane with the amount of admin I had to do.

In 2005, I returned to Australia and worked for a company that gave me a Mac. My god! a laptop that actually worked without constantly crashing and I didn't have to spend half of my waking life being an admin... especially when you add in my partners Windows laptop as well. Still, I hadn't given up on Palm yet and I self imported the Palm Pre which I thought, and still do, was superior to the iPhone at the time. It had multi-tasking! Real multi-tasking! But I digress....

At home I replaced my Media Centre with a MacMini and iTunes, with a device from Elgato (Now Eve) to copy in video and Audacity to be able to digitise all my records (I have some obscure ones). It took about 3 years to do it. However it was so reliable! I was hooked!

Finally, Palm went to HP and it died (Although WebOS lives on as the UI for LG TV's), and I bought my first iPhone, and then came an iPad....

Basically, now, our house is an Apple ecosystem... driven by my lack of desire to be a sysadmin at home (I'm in tech..... I want to get away from it at times!).

So, sure, that would suggest HomeKit... but there are plenty of people who have Apple products and use Google Home or Amazon's Alexa, and other platforms. Some people have multiple platforms.

What sold me on HK were a few things:

1. I had an Apple ecosystem and it takes so little effort for me - yes, obvious
2. Apple is always very user centric and I have a very firm belief that technology has to be end-user centric. Now that doesn't mean you can't come up with bright ideas, but it must be delivered in a way that can be easily consumed and doesn't take too much thought to use it. Apple has excelled at that. I would rather wait for something done well rather than first to have something.
3. Privacy and security. If you don't know what I mean? Then just go look on the net. Search Engines are your friend!

Now, are there some detriments to HK? Basically, yes:

1. The ecosystem is much smaller, but I'm generally able to find something I can integrate in although...
2. It's usually more expensive
3. There are still some things I can't integrate in, or do not have a category in HomeKit, so even if you do integrate it in (More on that later) it isn't quite right.
4. Apparently Apple is a pain to deal with, for integrators, so see item 1.

With regard to item 4, Apple relaxed their rules a little. Initially devices had to have an Apple chip inside. Now it can be done in software and they have tried to streamline the process a little. Still, I've heard that things could improve.

Still, all said and done, I do not regret my decision although some of the journey has been painful... but I have been doing this over 4 years now and I have over 200 devices in HK.

So, this blog will take you through my journey. The next post will be about media, both music & video I have, and what I've discovered.