At any time in human history, we have never stopped our imagination of the "home of the future".
911, Thomas Edison predicted in the Miami Metropolis: "A baby in the 21st century will lie in a steel cradle, his father will sit on a steel chair, beside him is a steel dining table, and his mother's boudoir is decorated with various gorgeous steel furniture."
For the then Edison , a steel house is his entire understanding of advanced technology.
People's imagination is always limited by the technological development of the current era. After experiencing the technological explosion in the power era, human beings began to step out of the steel cage, and their imagination of future families gradually became richer.
will automatically order milk mailbox, a 40-inch super-large TV, and a floor that never mops the floor...
"Home of the Future" is becoming more and more specific. Compared with "technology", we want to use the word "magic" to describe this imaginary scene. After all, we can only see mops that can move on and candles that can automatically light up and go out in the movie "Harry Potter".
Nowadays, these magical scenes have been realized by technology. The "never-stop broom" has become a round sweeping robot, and the "self-extinguishing and self-brightening candle" has become smart light bulb . All the magic power is summarized by us in a simple word - smart home.
This transformation revolution for the "Future Home" has attracted the participation of technology companies of all sizes around the world, and Apple , which is at the forefront of technology, is no exception.
In 2014, Apple officially released the HomeKit kit on iOS 8, laying the foundation for this "home of the future". Two years later, on iOS 11, Apple released a home app, adding support for home centers and automation, and outlining the general outline of "the home of the future".
When it comes to WWDC2021, Apple has thrown out an unprecedented name - the Matter Agreement. Apple announced that Matter will be integrated into Apple's smart home system in the future and become an important part of it.
Just as people still don’t understand Matter, Apple officially updated its support for Matter devices in iOS 16.1 and brought a brand new home app to help users truly build the "home of the future" in their minds.
▲ Cecilia Dantas
Before this smart home transformation came, Cecilia Dantas of Apple's home product marketing team accepted an exclusive interview with Aifaner and shared how Matter will change people's attitude towards smart homes next.
We believe that smart home devices will eventually be brought to the homes of more consumers, which will be a real exciting thing.
Smart home needs to evolve again
smart home has been developing for nearly 30 years since its initial concept sprouted to a huge industry with a market size of hundreds of billions.
Many scenes that were only in science fiction films in the past have now become a reality. For example, we can just give a command to the voice and the washing machine will automatically wash clothes; when we leave home, all the lights and curtains will automatically close, and the sweeping robot will work by itself...
These beautiful scenes have been portrayed by countless smart home manufacturers over and over again, and everyone is sending the same signal: the trend of smart home is ready to blow to thousands of households.
Finally, some people who are keen on trying out are moved by these beautiful scenes and are determined to "renovate" this old house that has lived in for more than ten years. But just as they were preparing to place an order, they unexpectedly discovered that the pool of smart home is much deeper than it seems on the surface.
The first thing that came to consumers was the names of various protocols: HomeKit, Zigbee, Bluetooth , Wi-Fi... All kinds of familiar or unfamiliar names appeared in front of you, making people unable to start.
Then there is no visible and intangible brand barrier: only products from the same brand or the same camp can achieve linkage and communication between devices. Once you buy the wrong one, there is no way to talk about "smart".
Although smart home wants to knock on the door of ordinary consumers, it is obvious that consumers are not ready to accept it.
If people need to go through a lot of learning to master this "magic", then a large number of consumers are destined to become "muggles" who cannot use magic.
And the emergence of the Matter protocol is to use a sharp axe to cut off this unattainable threshold.
About Matter agreement, Ai Faner had detailed reports in an exclusive interview with Tobin Richardson, CEO of CSA Alliance, at the beginning of this year.
Simple, the Matter protocol is a smart home protocol jointly developed by more than 280 companies including Apple, Google, Amazon , Huawei , IKEA, etc. Unlike the proprietary protocols that would constitute brand barriers in the past, Matter can achieve cross-brand connections, which is almost unimaginable in the past.
We are excited to be one of the first companies to release Matter support, and the reason we think Matter is meaningful to the industry is because Matter's accessories work across platforms. Therefore, this means that users will have more choices, and manufacturers only need to adopt one agreement to serve more customers.
Dantas said that Matter is an important development for the smart home industry, and the Apple team believes that the Matter standard can bring benefits to consumers and the entire industry, which makes them extremely excited.
▲Image from: 9to5mac
Matter will the emergence of Matter bring to consumers what intuitive changes will it?
In fact, users do not notice any obvious changes when using it.
Dantas's answer was beyond our expectations, and she explained further.
When designing Matter, a core issue we are concerned about is to enable the Matter protocol to seamlessly connect with home systems such as HomeKit, which is a change that takes place at the bottom.
Matter What really brings changes is that when a user walks into a store, he or she can take the device with the Matter logo to use with the existing home system without thinking about compatibility issues.
Dantas believes that the greatest significance of Matter is that it restores the experience that smart home devices should have - purchasing, using, and enjoying, which is no different from other furniture and equipment at home.
is precisely this experience that people are most familiar with. In the future, the rules of the smart home market will be rewritten and a new ecosystem will be opened.
Don’t think too seriously about smart home
Matter From the initial project to the official implementation, it has been nearly 4 years since it has attracted the appetite of smart home users.
iOS 16.1 As one of the first systems to support Matter devices, many users who are concerned about the development of smart homes hope to find traces related to the Matter protocol. Therefore, Aifaner also asked Dantas questions about some practical experience issues.
First of all, the relationship between the HomeKit device and the Matter device. Dantas said that for users who have built a smart home system based on the HomeKit system, the Matter device can be added seamlessly to it, and there is no difference in use. The user experience here in
, in addition to the functions of the device itself (such as switching lights and adjusting brightness), also includes the functional experience of the Apple ecosystem such as home app automation control, Siri control, etc., which can all achieve seamless connection.
If you are not a geek user who is very concerned about smart home protocols, you may not even notice the difference between the two.
Dantas said with a smile.The way to add a Matter device is also very simple. You just need to scan the QR code on the device or touch the NFC tag on the device to easily "take a new smart socket or sensor into your home". In the past, the cumbersome connection methods that frequently switch Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were greatly simplified.
In addition to simplifying device connections, Matter can also help users get rid of "app troubles" - in the past, when buying a brand of equipment, you had to download an exclusive app to use. On the surface, the device became smarter on the device, but in fact it just moved the control panel to your phone and spread it in one app after another.
Now, Matter can allow devices from different brands to appear on the same app, and no longer need to jump back and forth between a number of apps. For example, you can see home camera images from different brands in the home app, or let light bulbs from several brands work together.
There is no doubt that after the official promotion of Matter, the smart home devices that users can choose will become unprecedentedly rich. In order to adapt to this device expansion, Apple has redesigned the home app.
We take this opportunity to rethink and redesign the home app, which has a brand new look, contains more information, and has become more customizable content.
The power of Apple Home is that it can run on all your Apple devices, so you can control your home with your iPad, your iPhone, your Mac, and even your Apple Watch.
Dantas said that whether it is a novice user with few accessories or a geek user with hundreds of accessories, the Apple team wants to make sure they get the best experience in the same app.
In addition to the experience, the privacy protection measures of smart home devices are also a concern for many users.
Dantas stated that Matter's privacy protection measures, like HomeKit, were built since the beginning of the protocol development. In Apple's home ecosystem, all data is end-to-end encrypted , and neither users nor manufacturers can read any privacy data on the device.
From HomeKit to Matter, we protect users' privacy information as always.
During the interview, "seamless connection" is the most commonly used word Dantas uses. It invisibly downplays this huge change in the industry belonging to the smart home market, making Matter look more like a natural evolution of smart homes and makes users as unaware as much as possible. This is actually an innovation originating from the underlying architecture.
This is indeed a rare "subtraction" for the smart home market that has done too much "addition". Smart homes can finally bypass complicated protocols and working principles, appear in front of people in the simplest way, and change people's lives.
When talking about the smart home usage experience, I asked Dantas to share how I usually use smart home devices and how I feel.
Dantas I thought for a moment and said easily.
I am actually a little far behind those heavy smart home users, but as a fan of smart home users, I really enjoy the changes it brings to me.
There is no light switch at my doorstep, so when I got home at night, I had to walk into the house in the dark and turn on the lights.
Now I have changed into a smart light bulb, and I set up an automatic light turn on. As long as I get home, what I wait for me will become a bright house, and no longer a black room that needs to be clumsy. This has made a huge difference in my life.
In fact, smart devices are much simpler than their cold name. They are not like serious devices such as mobile phones and computers that require complex computing. They just add a little technology to things around us that are commonplace.
But it is precisely because of this inconspicuous technology that life that has already formed a fixed pattern has the possibility of change. The beauty that we have never encountered in the past is hidden in this subtle possibility.
Matter protocol for smart homes is to discover this beautiful "magnifying glass".
