HomeKit to Sync Up with All Your Apple Devices

At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled its HomeKit suite of “smart home” tools. HomeKit will allow users to control everything from their furnaces and air conditioners to their thermostats and security systems from a single connected iOS device.

Smart home technologies are already widely available, but there are some significant limitations on the way they currently work. As it stands, users must access each individual appliance or control through a dedicated app, which means that you have to go through one app to adjust your thermostat, another app to set your security system, and yet another to unlock your door or make your fridge colder.

Apple’s HomeKit is poised to change all that, but with a caveat. While all connected appliances and systems are accessible through a single app, current configurations stumble when it comes to remote management. What’s currently missing is a practical, reliable and secure way for end users to access connected smart home devices remotely, without needing a Mac computer to do it.

Some tech industry pundits are already looking to the Apple TV as the potential solution. Apple TVs run an iOS-enabled computing platform, theoretically making them the ideal vehicle through which users could access all their smart home technologies from remote locations, and with a single app. This would also allow users to circumvent the security concerns associated with providing smart home device access through separate apps.

For Bluetooth mobile app developers, the potential implications of smart home technologies are huge. Yet, as things stand, there is still a great deal of room to improve on remote and mobile interfaces while providing better security and privacy for end users.

If you’re an iPhone app developer in Boston, now is the time to start looking to a future filled with smart home technologies. The smart home is set to explode in the coming years, and developers who beat the competition to the punch by addressing current shortcomings in control and management systems could be poised to cash in.