THE CONNECTED LIFE

I notice other people my age and older are also usually wearing watches. Some as jewelry or fashion pieces, but most as functional timepieces because, well, they just always have and that’s what they’re comfortable with. But people born after the late ’80s just don’t seem to wear watches anymore. That generation prefers referring to an omnipresent smartphone.

Apple recently announced details on its long-awaited Apple Watch. With a starting price of $349, the watch became available on April 24, meaning at least some of you reading this are wearing a watch on your wrist for the first time in many years.

There was certainly a massive wearables trend at this year’s International CES, and there are definitely facets of the Apple Watch that seem very appealing—and certainly far beyond the realm of just being a timepiece. With health monitoring, alerts, messages, phone calls, and the ability to use Apple Pay to spend money more securely and quickly than ever before, telling time seems to be one of the Watch’s ancillary functions.

More exciting for me are the potential benefits the Apple Watch could bring to home automation and control. I already use my iPhone and iPad to interact with virtually every aspect of my Control4, Crestron, and Lutron controlled home, so could my wrist become the next point of must-have control?

Honeywell, Lutron, and Alarm.com have already announced Apple Watch apps, which will offer simple and intuitive interaction with your home’s HVAC, lighting, and security systems, but the Apple Watch could harness geofencing and Siri voice control to facilitate automation in new and exciting ways.

Geofencing uses GPS or other radio signals to define geographical boundaries to create a virtual barrier, and once this barrier is broken, events or activities can be triggered. Imagine leaving your “house boundary” and having the doors lock, the lights turn off, the security arm, and the HVAC go into an away mode, all automatically. With locational awareness, the watch could know which room you are in and automatically configure itself to control that for you. Say, walking into your bedroom and knowing the TV you want to control, or walking into any room and just tapping the watch to turn on the lights.

Crestron offers something similar with its PP-100 PinPoint Proximity Detection Beacon, which can tell iOS devices which room they are in; but the watch could take these features to the next level, and the company is already looking at ways to integrate its automation systems with the Watch.

Apple certainly has a track record for reinventing or reimagining a product category as they did with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. And these iDevices all went on to play huge roles in the tech industry, literally reshaping the way systems were designed, installed, and used. Will Apple’s spin be enough to make wearing a watch cool and necessary again? Time will tell.