Home Sharing brings us closer to totally automated homes
With the release of iOS 4.3, Apple brought some much better integration with iTunes' home sharing features. Among those is the ability to stream your entire library from your Mac or PC to your iOS device.
But this is just the beginning of the potential power of the iOS line of hardware. Could we be far from the day when we run our entire house from our glass- and aluminum-covered devices?
The majority of households in the United States have WiFi networks that extend throughout the entire establishment. And with more and more devices like televisions and alarm clocks becoming connected with WiFi and/or Bluetooth, it seems to me like home automation is becoming a reality much quicker than we expected it to.
When I think of home automation, I also think of the group of people who aren't technologically savvy. It would be nice for them to use a familiar UI in a product that would essentially be a modern universal remote. Except this universal remote would have all of the features of the iPhone or iPad that most of these consumers already enjoy.
Home automation even helps the medically handicapped. Being able to swipe your finger over a slider that turns on the lights in another room is much easier than getting up and flipping a real switch for sufferers of something like arthritis. It also would be able to make a home safer for everybody, by putting into place alarms like we have today that are easier to set up.
I'm not saying that any of this will come around tomorrow. But if these trends continue the way they have been, then we may see home automation being a regular thing by the year 2015.
What are your thoughts on home automation?
