Apple has n’t always been a company that fiddle well with others . More often , it seems to enter into grudging arrangements with others — Motorola ’s involvement in theill - fated ROKR phonecomes to mind — or forge tenuous relationships that act as stopgap until Cupertino can afford to reduce the other party free . ( See , most recently , the company ’s abandonment of Imagination , which up until then had made the GPUs for most of iOS gadget . )
But in guinea pig where the ship’s company is trying to boost others to buy into Apple ’s ecosystem , it ’s been somewhat more welcoming — as long as it ’s clean that Apple is the big heel in that relationship . The company has notoriously mellow touchstone , and it expects other firms to cope with them if they desire in .
lately , however , Apple seems to be relaxing stricture on some of its technology platform , ostensibly with the intent of make it easy for third parties to develop product that work with Apple ’s own . This bodes well for the time to come of those applied science — because without third - political party investiture , they ’d in all probability be lying fallow .
HomeKit advantage
Apple released HomeKit as part of iOS 8 in 2014 , but it was n’t until the follow year , when Apple ship the plate app as part of iOS 9 , that the feature really go to come into its own . Even then , acceptance was slow , in part because of those high standards from Apple . The company rightfully prioritized security system of smart home machine , but it insisted that company enforce the hallmark feature in hardware . This was not only expensive and potentially cumbersome , but also made it basically impossible to update elder devices to be HomeKit - compatible .
With Apple HomeKit , you may keep in line all aspects of your home with the iPhone .
At this year ’s Worldwide Developers Conference , however , Apple changed its tune : go forwards , developers who want to create HomeKit - compatible devices can expend software authentication instead . That not only create HomeKit integration more attractive to possible developers who want to sweep up it among other political platform , but also makes it in reality plausible for exist smart home gismo to be updated to work with HomeKit . Which means there could before long be a lot more HomeKit twist out there , without Apple let to lift another finger .
I convey a gustatory modality of this firsthand this calendar week , as Philips updated its chromaticity switches and movement sensor to becompatible with HomeKit . Sure , the implementation is n’t perfect , but it ’s far well than having to replace my existing devices with Modern hardware for utilize them with Siri or the Home app . And most of the problem thatdoexist can be mend via software , meaning that I can keep those twist around and reap the benefits .
The AirPlay’s the thing
Among Apple technologies , AirPlay is kind of notorious for have … less than stellar third - party support . In the past , speakers created by other vendor have often had glitchy or poor performance . For its part , Apple seemed content to lease AirPlay subsist at that level for several years , but at this twelvemonth ’s WWDC the companionship also cite ( somewhat offhandedly ) that AirPlay 2 would come out in iOS 11 , tvOS , and the forthcoming HomePod .
Though AirPlay does , of course , have hardware requirements — it habituate Wi - Fi rather than Bluetooth — it seems that many speaker vendorswill be able-bodied to update their existing merchandise with AirPlay 2 compatibility via firmware . More to the distributor point , AirPlay 2 has desegregation with two other cardinal Apple service : Siriandour old friend HomeKit . That intend you ’ll be able to use your articulation to tell your iOS devices where to dally your audio — a skillful potential add-on for third - political party developers who do n’t have the resources or inclination to build their own representative command systems .
Apple surely could have continued to use AirPlay as its own first - party vantage , especially when the HomePod arrive this winter , but the troupe now seems determined to reinvest in the technology for others as well — perhaps in part because wireless , multi - room , and sassy loudspeaker have become a burgeoning diligence of lately . Just this hebdomad , Sonos foretell that it would besupporting AirPlay 2 starting next twelvemonth , including bringing support to some of its existing product . Perhaps that says more about where Sonos is than where Apple is , but it ’s something that would have been tough to think a few years ago .
Starting in 2018 , Sonos will support AirPlay 2 in some of its devices .
It’s dangerous to go alone
All of these move go to making Apple ’s ecosystem more immersive , not only for third - party developer but also , at last , for consumer . Competition in wireless sound and fresh home devices has become more and more fierce , and Apple ’s traditional “ go it alone ” mentality is n’t needfully a succeed normal in these arenas .
The simple truth of the matter is that with technology becoming more and more dispense among lots of gimmick in our household , on our individual , and so on , it behove Apple to cater attractive frameworks for third parties to desegregate with . Apple ca n’t do everything , much as it might wish to think it can , and a in force relationship with third parties will , in the end , help Apple win over even more customers .
