HomeTech.fm - Episode 237 - The 4th Annual Fireside Chat Special

Episode Date: December 14, 2018

On this very special episode of HomeTech: Join us as we look back on the biggest smart home stories of 2018 on our fourth annual “Fireside Chat”! As in year’s past, we are joined by Mike Wolf, founder of the Smart Kitchen Summit and publisher of The Spoon, and Richard Gunther, host of the Digital Media Zone’s Home:On Podcast. This year, we are also joined for the first time by Rose Thibodeaux, founder of the excellent smart-home product review YouTube channel, “It’s Rose”, and author at the Home Alarm Report. This jam-packed episode will provide you with a comprehensive look back at all the trends that defined the connected home this year, including predictions about what 2019 will bring. Don’t miss it!

Welcome to the fourth annual Technology.fm Fireside Chat. I'm Seth Johnson with the Home Tech Podcast and sitting around the fire. Got some old faces and some new faces, but let's go ahead and go around in the comfy chairs. Everybody has their adult beverage and we're sitting around sipping in front of the fire here. Let's go around the room and say hello to everyone. I'm going to throw it over to my co-host on the podcast, Jason Griffin. Jason, how's it going, man? Yeah. Hey, Seth.

Happy to be here. Hard to believe it's our fourth time around doing this, and we're very excited about that. It's a very special event to be able to get together and just have all these different perspectives, and we're excited to welcome Rose here, who will introduce herself on her first Fireside Chat. Mike and Richard, happy to have them here as well, so looking forward to diving into it. Yep. So let's go ahead, and Rose is the new face. Rose Thibodeau of the, I guess, Rose, I know you from YouTube. I know you from Home Alarm, Home Alone Report. No, the Home Alarm

Report. It's the season. Yep. go ahead and introduce yourself and tell everybody what you do you pretty much nailed it okay my name and location already what do i do i'm a product reviewer i specialize in smart home security devices no i and your your youtube videos are i mean seriously like over the top ridiculously good i can't oh Oh, thank you. I aspire to produce something like that.

It's pretty good. And then, of course, you hear some laughter there. We've got Richard Gunther in the background. Richard? Yes, indeed. And I am here from the Digital Media Zone, as always, representing the Home On podcast. Looking forward to another good discussion. And I really want to see exactly how we did in last year's predictions. Indeed.

That is always the fun part. But before we start that, I'll pass off to Mike. Hey, guys. This is Mike, and I'm happy to be back. I have a beer in front of me. I'm sitting around the fire, and I'm in my slippers, and it'm happy to be back i have a beer in front of me i'm sitting around the the fire and i i'm in my slippers and it's good to be back and i'm kind of annoyed on our google doc that you have me first to go over our last year's predictions because i feel like mine weren't that

great so i mean we don't we don't have to do that yeah we can go in any order yeah i mean yeah so since you volunteered let's let's go ahead and get into that. At least my cat's some. I don't even have predictions. Well, you could just make something up. I mean, you can just say you were right on it. You could totally win. Right, right. No ability.

Rose wins because she didn't have anything. It's a clean slate mine um one of my my top ones was it was going to be a big year for potential um iot security issues we we had just come off 2017 where the mirai botnet attack had happened we had seen amazon keyhacking maybe i'm wrong but i don't feel like there was anything quite as significant as or as big from an i security standpoint, particularly at the consumer smart home level as what we saw with Mirai. I may be wrong on that, but if you guys know of one, I just feel like we didn't have like a signature big attack.

I think that's true. I mean, I heard of a lot of things that were kind of experimental, right? You need access to the Wi-Fi network. And then if you have that, then you can do X, Y, and Z. But I'm not aware of anything that was anywhere near as huge as Mariah. Right. I don't think there's anything that has come up as big as that. I mean, Facebook has Portal now, so... Yeah, let's just wait until next year.

So we'll give them a chance to maybe make that a big issue next year. My second prediction was augmented reality, mixed reality becomes more interesting. Well, I think it was, but I don't think in the context of smart home, it really became all that interesting. I was kind of in love with Plot, which last year at this time, this very cool home remodeling augmented reality app. They've been okay, but I just haven't seen this become that big a deal. So overall, I'd give myself like a C, C plus in terms of my last year predictions. You guys can go ahead and grade me higher or lower. It's up to you.

I mean, as far as security went in general, there were some big things that went. I mean, Facebook's leaks were huge. And then I think we had some good progress this year with like, there was a law passed in California that required minimum passwords to be done by the manufacturer or some type of like they demand as part of building the product that you sell a product that has, uh, like when you start up and install it, that you have to put a decent password in. So I think we've seen some progress this year on security, but, um, the underlying things, I don things, I don't think we're fixed. Yeah, I would say that

on the AR and extended reality side of things, I think we've seen some interesting stuff. I think what we've seen in kind of home design stuff, kind of extending the work that Ikea did. Everybody's iPhone now has like a built-in ruler and just a whole bunch of stuff that you can use practically in your home. So if we're talking about it being more interesting, I think it's more interesting. I think you got, I don't know, maybe a solid B on that one. so yeah so my grade point average is maybe a two five then yeah but yeah so i mean to your point richard i think that apple and and some of the platform players really moved along ar kit really kind of had another year to to become more more mature so So I agree.

I just don't feel like from a smart home perspective, we really saw anything all that interesting, but I definitely think overall AR and consumer adoption has become like a bigger and bigger, more aware type of thing. Yeah. Yeah. One of the areas I'm watching,

and I'll move on here momentarily, as it relates to AR in the smart home is the increased prevalence of support solutions. So the ability for somebody to provide remote tech support in the home and be able to notate on the screen and circle, say, unplug this cable or push this button or look at, you know, tell me what that says and things of that nature. You know, you're seeing some of these things like site call and there's a few others coming, you few others coming into the market. And right now, some of the AR features aren't really AR per se, but I think the potential is there for that technology to really make the providing of

remote tech support very interesting. So that's one of the areas that jumps to my mind when I think about AR in the smart home. Makes sense. Yeah, smart. Rose, did you have anything you want to add on to that? I'm not sure. No, I think you did great. I think we should definitely give him that B. You're being too hard on yourself, Mike. Well, next to be graded is Richard.

Richard had two projections, connected appliances becoming more mainstream and more do it for me offerings and services. So let's see. Yeah. So on on the first, I'm probably going to grade myself a little bit too high on the first one that connected appliances will become more mainstream. mainstream, but I really believe that this year kind of became the year where if you're an appliance manufacturer, whether it's a big white box or a countertop appliance, you need to have a connected appliance in the game now. And I also think that the surprise introduction of a ridiculously economical Wi-Fi connected microwave from GE, followed shortly thereafter by one from Amazon, kind of tipped that scale a little bit. So I think we're well along here where this is table stakes. And in fact, I use that very term in a proposal to a potential client this year,

that if you're working on appliances, particularly countertop appliances, you you've got to have wifi connectivity as one of your capabilities in at least one line. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. And I think that I'd give you high scores on that one as well, although maybe it's not a mainstream in the sense that everybody's got them in their home. From the manufacturer side, I think you're spot on in

terms of it is becoming table stakes. And not to go back to the service and support side, because I know that's not a glamorous side or an interesting side, but that's one of the things that as I look at connected appliances, I also think about that as the smart home moves forward and becomes more integrated truly into everyday users' lives. Having appliances that can tell you when something is wrong so you can avoid costly repairs, for example, is an interesting use case. And so I agree with you. I think they are definitely becoming mainstream, and I saw signs of that this year as well. Very interesting. Well, I know of one guy that is deep into the connected appliance business, at least in the kitchen. Yeah. Well, it's funny because I have this event, but

the interesting thing is, I don't know if you're you're like a consumer, like the test I always have is like my wife, like we're going to remodel our kitchen. I'm like, I really want like a cool new connected kitchen device. She's like, unless it's a built in, like it's a nonstarter. And what's interesting is most of the interesting kitchen connected devices are all countertop devices. I just feel like we need to kind of continue to have another year where we see the mainstream guys who are doing built-in appliances make interesting connected appliances. Because I just feel like if you're just an average person going to buy an appliance and going to like a store, I still feel like connected appliances really isn't like top of mind for them. I feel like it's something we talk about at CES and then at my

event, but I think most consumers aren't really thinking about it yet. Well, I would argue that at your event, certainly the company behind Thermador demonstrated that they're taking this very seriously. I agree. They're a company that if you're looking for built-in stuff, that's a pretty big contender there. I think finally we're starting to see some connected capabilities on products from Wolf and from Viking. And I'm really intrigued by the Signature Series from LG. I think that is just a really quite incredible built-in range that they have. But those are big ticket products, right? And what I think is

interesting and what I think is going to have some success are the countertop things that you you can buy for a hundred bucks, right? Like the, the, the $79, uh, sous vide one or, or the, or the June oven, which is now affordable for a countertop oven. You know, I mean, I'm actually very seriously considering trading in my Tabala for a June. Not a Brava? Not a Brava? No. So I think, I think that we need to get to this point where consumers doing big ticket purchases and remodels are comfortable with connected devices and comfortable with spending thousands of dollars on a device that is connected. And they know that the roadmap is going to be there. It feels a little more comfortable buying like a $300 or $400 or $500 device than buying a $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 device. So I agree with you. BSH appliances and some of these big guys

are definitely all in. I just feel like consumers aren't there yet. I think we may see that next year. All right, fair enough. Do I still get like an A-minus or did I bump down to a B-plus? You get an A-minus. I would pay at least $1,000 more if they come out with smart appliances

that could set the stupid little clock on the front. Hey, the GE microwave does that. It sets its own clock. Sold. Right, exactly. That'll fetch a premium. My other item was that there would be more do-it-for-me offerings and services. And I don't know if this is really true. I think we've seen an expansion of what Amazon is offering. I think

we've seen other companies like Best Buy and some others try to push their home services to be able to support your smart devices and stuff like that. But I don't necessarily know that we've seen this space grow all that much. I'm curious what your respective thoughts are. Yeah, let's toss it over to Rose. What have you seen? I mean, you're big into the DIY security market. What are you seeing there for the do it for me? Do you see people trending towards like straight DIY or people

getting frustrated with the products and buying? No. And I thought at this point, perhaps like Richard, I thought that we would just because the smart home is growing. I have readers and viewers that now have hundreds of maybe 10, 20, 30 connected sensors. And I thought there would be a breaking point, right? At this point in time, I need someone to do it for me because it's gotten out of control or I need a managed system, but we haven't gotten to that point. And I don't feel like they even need help with the basics as far as installation, getting things connected. I think there's so much information out there that they understand the products. They understand for the most part now what works with what. And I feel like that has diminished the need for extra help even more

interesting and i think i think with with you know products particularly like the security products that you look at where we've had some some phenomenal ease easy to use systems hit the market this year that i'm sure you'll probably talk a little bit about more later. You know, that's kind of, that's kind of knocked the market on its ear a little bit, made DIY a lot more viable, I think. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, Richard, you did really good. Hi, Morris, Richard. So far so good. Yeah, got the uh the best one on here uh mike anything else or richard gets an a minus all right agreed so uh i guess i'm next on the list so i'm gonna go uh i had siri in the can with a a crying you were right! This is your third time. Why the cry face?

This time you were right. Why the cry face? Yeah, you know why there's a cry face. Because it sucks? Oh. Let's rewind. Let's rewind a year. Yeah, exactly.

I think at this point in time, we knew that Siri in a can was a thing that was going to exist, but it wasn't shipping yet. So that's why my frowny face was on there. It did ship, and then no, it didn't really have very many features. And the features they said they were going to ship with it didn't ship till later in the year, like AirPlay 2.

But it also really hasn't been improved. The only improvement that I see here in December is that it's $100 off today at Target. Like, that's not good for this product, uh, that they were, they were trying to push out the door and, and, and make things on. So, I mean, my, my, if I, if we're going purely by, you know, frowny faces or emojis, I think I, I got an A on this. I mean, the excitement was there, but unfortunately, the product just has not lived up to what I think the hype was about. And I think they have, personally, I think they have a lot to move on, but I don't think that they've done it yet.

And it's still a problematic device in the Apple ecosystem. Well, Seth, I would agree. Sorry, go ahead, Rose. I was just going to say, I think it was just too little too late. Yeah, I think they're playing a big game of catch-up at this point. I think, Seth, you get high marks on the prediction, and it's

also proof that if you make the same prediction enough years in a row, eventually you'll get it right. Right? So there's that. I might do it again. At least I'm not predicting this year that there will be another one next year. Yeah.

Like I was going back through some of the show notes and people were predicting that there was going to be a lower cost Siri in the can or HomePod, I think is what we're talking about. And we have not seen that product come to market. The other prediction I had was that there will be horrible, horrible adoptions or implementations of, quote, machine learning or AI. I think I stole a little bit of that from Jason because he talked about it on that show. But I think I might get some credit for that. It's still been a good buzzword this year. And I think that there's been a lot of things that have been called machine learning and AI that have not really been anything other than PR. Yeah, although I might argue that I think one of the things that we've seen some really good implementation on, and this is kind of in that fold, is now I can't even think of the right term. Oh, man, I'm kicking myself.

But basically like smart camera use, like the camera being able to figure out what it's looking at. Right. Analytics. Yeah, not analytics. Mike, I feel like you know the term because we're seeing a lot of this in kitchen. Well, I think you've seen going back to like 2000.

Computer vision. Yeah. I mean, machine vision machine vision computer vision there's been facial recognition first it was like okay is it is it a dog or a person and then we started to see facial recognition um this type of core capability amazon and google and apple are doing a lot of like fundamental research on but i think you've you've seen a lot of consumer facing uh services roll out that say hey this is a feature of my smart camera you'll know if a consumer's or if a person's in your home or if it's a dog in your home um and and i'm sure rose could talk to us but this is like one of the the diy camera features is just lets you know, like, Hey, you should know if there's a person in your home and it'll alert you to that. So like I have Canary and one of the features that it added this year was facial recognition.

I think that I'm going to say it's better. And there's some products that we can talk about, for example, Lighthouse AI. The problem is that the really intelligent computer vision devices are not mainstream. So Lighthouse is a product that most that the really intelligent computer vision devices are not mainstream. So Lighthouse is a product that most people haven't heard about, but they actually used a 3D time of flight sensor, which is coming from autonomous vehicles. And it doesn't have a motion sensor. Instead, it's just sensing the environment, 3D environment, and it can tell what size the object is, if it's giving off heat. And then it can say, well, this is an adult or this is a child or this is an inanimate object. So we're starting to see some more intelligence come through.

It's just it hasn't made it to the nest and the Arlo's and for the most part to the canaries yet. Is that a price? Is there a reason, like a price reasoning behind that? Or is it technology that they, you know, I don't think nest or google has any problem getting that type of device but like is it a price point that they're able or not not wanting to hit i guess yeah i don't know it could be lighthouse definitely hit some sort of price point when they when they launched it was four hundred dollars oh yeah that's way more than yeah yeah i mean i'm not going to grade myself uh so i'll leave it up to the crowd and the masses i'll outsource this well i'm yeah i mean i don't i don't think you did all that bad on this i think

i think there's on this particular one it's just a matter of kind of people still misusing the terminology right like they're telling you oh this is ai for stuff that isn't really ai yet it's just really good algorithms and and i think we're still seeing a whole lot of that and until we get some some really true ai stuff like I even argue how much AI is in Josh AI, right? But I think until we see more true AI, we're going to get a lot more sloppiness. AI is the new cloud, right? It's this marketing term that's been co-opted by the big platform players like the Microsofts. And when you start to see the term AI on like football Sunday advertised, I think like it's co-opted. But that's just the way it goes. Yeah.

New prediction. The term AI is going to make us cringe in five years, just like disruptive does now. I think it already does. I mean, I really I hate hearing it because I just jeer at it. I'm like, that's not AI. That's that's crap. Yeah. I'm like, that's not AI. That's crap. Yeah. I'm with you there.

So last to be graded, last but not least, we have Jason over here. Jason, you had a number of predictions here. So I'll let you go ahead and get started. I did. And I can move through these quick because I think we've touched on at least one of these already. You know, one of my big predictions last year was voice control everywhere. And this was kind of the idea of voice control moving out of the countertop Echoes and Google Homes and now HomePods and being embedded natively, right, into more devices. And I think unquestionably we saw that this year

i mean yeah you totally get we saw it in a microwave well no we didn't see it we didn't see it we didn't see it in a mic everybody's getting confused by that you're right it's a voice control love bowl microwave but we did see the cameras and absolutely absolutely and you still see companies stupidly trying to come out with their own voice control system. Cough, cough, Samsung, cough. So, you know, not a lot to belabor there. Again, I'm not going to grade myself and we can come back to that. But I do think that we're seeing a lot that, and I do believe that'll continue. Next one I had, I feel like, was a little bit of a slam dunk, honestly, in hindsight. You know, continued blurring of the lines between pro and DIY functionality. I think this goes to what Richard was talking about a little bit with DIFM service offerings.

And, you know, I don't know. On this one specifically, I didn't see anything this year that really jumped out at me and made me say, wow, I didn't expect that. I think that when I consider the blurring lines between pro and do-it-yourself, to me, that's just the new normal. And I think that we've been seeing that trend for three, four years now, at least since we've started the podcast, Seth, and it's been a continuing theme that we've talked about. And so I think this year was a continuation of that, but I didn't see anything super dramatic or surprising on that one in particular. No, but I would argue that this was more obvious than it ever has been before at CDN this year. Yeah, I would agree. And we're continuing to see that, right? You're just seeing more and more of these companies come into that channel and space and try to figure it out. And I think that companies may be coming to market with a new product and realizing that it is actually very, very difficult to get these products set up and working correctly, particularly if you've got a user who's trying to make a device work in any sort of a larger ecosystem,

other than just using it as a point device. And so I think a lot of these companies are figuring that out. And some of them are figuring it out the hard way. And you're seeing more of that convergence between pro and DIY. And then the last one, the continued deterioration of traditional pay TV business and increased streaming options. I think slam dunk on this one by far. One of my biggest stories, overall themes of the year. I mean, the amount of stories that we saw come across this year in terms of new streaming services and the hemorrhaging of traditional pay TV subscribers was

really not, I can't say shocking to me, but very, it struck me, right? It is a very, very prominent trend in the home. And I think that pay TV providers still have a lot of the market share when you look at the overall picture, but the trend lines are not moving in their favor. Right. No, obviously. And I think we have a little ways to go before we see that tip. And I might also argue that we're in a bit of a bubble, right? We're looking for this news. And now I think we are seeing some of the traditional providers do some more creative things by coming up with their own apps and stuff like that. And I think that's kind of interesting too, right? Like you don't need our box anymore. You can just use your Apple TV as a secondary box for your, or as a primary box

for your cable service or whatever. So I think that's kind of cool too, seeing that business change as it very much needs to. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And we'll talk a little bit more about it as we move into some of these other questions. So I don't want to hit on it too hard here. But I agree with you, some of the responses and the amount of responses you're seeing from pay TV providers like DirecTV, for example, is interesting. And clearly, their hand is being forced a little bit there in terms of responding to this growing trend and just complete sea change in the way that a lot of people are are thinking about tv and you know content consumption in the home that looks like he's about to burst i i have been i've been we've been talking about this on our on the show quite a bit

and uh yes you have if if this is a strategy that Jason Griffin has put into place to, to get a better grade here at the end of the year and sandbag, this has got to be the best, the most well, well played, well played, sir. Cause yeah, we've, what I thought was a, a boring story that we were initially talking about. We just kept packing these in, uh, has now kind of intrigued me. So, and I think I'll talk about that a little bit later. It's now it's, it's kind of turned and I'm, I'm starting to realize that, uh, I'm, I'm watching more, uh, less of what I would consider traditional TV, like, um, and every, the shows that I care about, the shows that I want to watch are actually on a service like Hulu or Netflix. So um but we'll we'll touch and touch base on that later uh anybody else want to want to chime in on on uh the deterioration of uh pay tv or grade me yeah let's get a grade for jason i think you got

straight a's dude oh thank you you don't think so the art of divination. Yeah. It was a little bit of a safe prediction, so I'll give him a B+. Fair enough. He didn't try hard enough. I didn't predict robots. I mean, pay TV has been deteriorating for 10 years, right? I mean, we've seen the rise of Netflix. Roku became a company over the last 10 years, so it's not a new story. I think it last 10 years. It's not a new story. I think it really accelerated,

but it's not a new story. Man, he would be a hard professor. Mike just wanted to see robots. That's true. That was like two years ago. He was here for that, dude. I got to stretch on my predictions a little bit.

Maybe I'm bitter because I got C's. my predictions a little bit. He's right. Maybe I'm bitter because I got Cs. So I'm just grading you hard. Well, we'll take it on the bell curve there and give you a – I think everybody said A and Mike said B-. So I think we'll give you an A. All right. Drop the high, drop the low. All right.

Let's see. So let's go ahead and move into the discussion this year, what we usually talk about. And the question we put forward to everybody is, what's your favorite or most surprising home technology story of 2018? It doesn't necessarily have to be the most significant or most important, just one that you felt resonated with you most or something you just plain didn't see coming. And I'm going to go ahead and, Rose, you haven't had much to say for our predictions because you weren't around last year, but let's go ahead and start with you.

What were you most surprised about this year? Kind of talked about this already, but I'm going to go with Alexa Cook My Potato. That's what I was most surprised about. Also known as Amazon's massive and random product launch. I think the idea was to put A-L-E-X-A in places where Amazon felt that consumers would interact with it the most. But to me, it just felt like they didn't put any research into it at all. And they were just throwing spaghetti at a wall, seeing what would stick. They gave us that Amazon microwave, smart plug, audio devices. What else did they give us?

I know I'm missing. Oh, the ugly wall clock. I mean, unattractive wall clock. If y'all have one, or getting one, I'm sorry. This is not my style. But it, you know, and I think what was, that was surprising to me, the number of hardware devices they put into the market, that was surprising. But the features that they plan to launch, that's actually a little compelling, like the A-L-E-X-A guard feature that they're launching. I'm looking at Richard every time I say this because I know. You can say it. It's okay. It's a safe word here.

It's liberating. I've given up. It's liberating. I'm not say it. It's okay. It's a safe word here. I'm not saying it. The guard feature basically will turn your Echo device into a listening device. So it can listen for glass breaking, carbon monoxide detector, your alarm siren. I think that's really compelling. Yeah, I think that's brilliant. Yeah.

You know, I think Alexa's strategy there with that launch was definitely the spaghetti launch, like you said. And it was just throw a whole bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. But I think for them, it's a land grab, you know, and that's what it is for all these companies right now. And their interest is in getting Alexa in as many places as they possibly can. Sorry, Richard, I'm just saying the word and I refuse to spell it anymore or uh come up with a code name but anyways i agree with you there was a lot of she is that what you're telling me to say oh yeah i don't yeah it uh yeah i mean the the spaghetti launch i mean amazon is that type of company i I think it fits very well into their corporate culture to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks

because everything that they do is done that way. And I don't think that they have any problem doing that. I think if a company like Apple came out one day and decided to do that and launch maybe, I don't know, a Qi charger or something, and it just never came to market. Oh, wait, that's happened. Maybe some features for a flagship product

that just don't get launched for a couple. Oh, wait, that happened too. Huh. Well, I mean, Amazon did like 50 or 60 products in that one launch. And I think all of them have come to market. Just kind of like, I think after we got over the wow factor, like Rose was saying, I to market. Just kind of like, I think after we got over the wow factor,

like Rose was saying, I think it was just kind of like, it's still Amazon. Like it's not. I'm going to argue with y'all vehemently on this. I think this is every single one of these products was strategic. The microwave is a way of demonstrating their chip set. Yes. It's a way of getting it out into many, many hands because they made it ridiculously

inexpensive. The plug, they're literally giving away when you buy other products so that you can get kind of hooked on the smart home stuff. The clock, well, it's not the most attractive clock ever. The idea of a clock that's also a timer and give you some visualization for it. And it's cheap. It's like 25 bucks. That too, I think is really cool. So, uh, I mean, I know Mike's going to talk more about this and maybe this is a good transition to have him go next, but I don't think this was haphazard. I think this was very intentional. But what's this? I mean, I'll let Mike, I'll throw it to you in a second. But Richard, what is the strategy of all of this? Is it just so you buy AWS developers and people come along and buy more servers from them? Because that's really all of that's great. And it's either

given away for free. But what's what is the strategy behind them getting you interested for amazon getting you as a consumer interested in the home home automation what oh because you know where you can buy that stuff yeah that that hasn't i don't think that's played out i really don't think that has i i mean you look at the studies and people are like yeah you get the the echo and you you nobody's buying anything off echo i mean i i i don't think that that has i don't think that's the strategy for them i think you're right in the fact that they're showing off what they can do technology wise and what they can what they can sell sell how many ec2 servers they can spin up but i i'm i'm really

wondering what the long like if jason and i deal with clients that better this doubter on the echo since the day one and it's still like the biggest voice client out there in the market like 70 market shares that what they say but not even not even close to being the best user experience not the best best app. The app is garbage. I mean, like be the best, but it clearly can't be because of the company that is tied onto it. Someone else with that name. Yeah, exactly. Be best. Hashtag.

The trick with these types of conversations is not to spend all your time talking about Amazon, which is super frustrating because they do so much. I mean, I think Richard had it right. This was a big strategic platform play for Amazon, like behind all the devices, behind the microwave. They launched ConnectKit. So ConnectKit was their module with Bluetooth, with Wi-Fi. They're actually finally building Alexa into devices. So if you're GE, if you're an appliance manufacturer,

you're not just doing an API integration, you're actually building it in an Alexa built into your device. So I think that was a big deal. And I think the microwave is them kind of showcasing that and kind of eating their own dog food, putting that out into the market and see what happens. I mean, it's kind of funny to watch it. It's like a $40 microwave with like a dash button on it.

May or may not be successful. The reviews have been pretty horrible on it, but I think that it was a big strategic move for them. I'm not going to talk about Amazon the whole time. I think the other big surprise for me this year was the Facebook video chat device. Like I didn't necessarily see it coming. I think in retrospect,

we probably should have seen Facebook doing a Me Too portal video device. They're pouring a bunch of money into advertising. Every time I watch football on Sunday, I see the Facebook ads on this thing. So I think it's pretty funny. It actually looks pretty cool. I'm just like you guys, I would

never have a Facebook device in my house with a camera on it. There's absolutely no way. Their brand for security is just ruined. So I just don't, I don't see it happening for me. If it autofocuses, I might argue that Jason should buy one. I need it. Yeah, there's something going on with my Logitech camera tonight.

I thought that was me and my drink, but okay. I'm doing it for dramatic effect. No, I agree. Facebook's brand is irreparably tarnished there, and I would never do it, but I think there's a whole host of people out there who will. And I agree. It's an interesting-looking device. I can't say I was super surprised to see it, given that Facebook is all about, or at least their brand has tried to be all about connecting people. And it makes sense. I think this is the type of product that I think about

my parents, right? And they would use it, although none of their kids would. So that would probably preclude them from getting it. But point being, you know, they're not necessarily beholden to, how to say this nicely, I guess they're not beholden to a market of people who are really paying attention, right? They've got such a big target to shoot at that they'll put this out there and I think they'll have some success with it. And I think it's got some interesting functionality. Hopefully it's got autofocus richard so uh rose is there any interest in you getting a facebook is it called the portal i think that's what it's called right yeah no no and i have cameras all over the place but i agree with your assessment

and i i'm gonna stick with my echo show and i do have the new google home hub but that's camera-less so i'm down with that i haven't unwrapped Google Home Hub, but that's camera-less. So I'm down with that. Haven't unwrapped it yet. And I think that's telling, right? That came out. We've heard rumors of this Facebook product. It seemed like all year. And I think they delayed it at one point because of some massive security breach that they didn't tell anybody about. And then it came out later in the year. But I think it's telling that the Google Home Hub you have doesn't have a camera on it. It's interesting, isn't it, that they would choose to do that. I know a lot of people are upset because they want to use it for video calls, like the Facebook device, but I'm not mad at all. Absolutely.

Well, Mike, I think we covered everything that you had on there. We had two favorite and most surprising being the Amazon September event. Richard, let's go ahead and move on to you. What did you find most surprising in 2018? While we're talking about Amazon, Amazon's billion-dollar acquisition of Ring completely came out of the blue for me. I just would not have ever imagined that. And while I will argue that they've done a good job of promoting the Ring product line, I still have a hard time seeing how they're integrating it. So I think that'll be interesting to watch over the coming year or so as Ring themselves had recently acquired Mr. Beams and they brought in all the Zonoff people.

I really want to see what exactly Amazon does to kind of make Ring more a part of the Amazon family of products because it doesn't yet seem that way. I'm not bashing on it in any way because I think, you know, I like the Amazon products and I like Ring's products. But I just did not expect this, particularly after their acquisition of Blink just a year prior. Yeah. I think the long-term play for like bringing in these access control systems are around services. I mean, Amazon has won a couple of patents this year.

One of the ones we've written about is this predictive ordering patent where they basically order food for you. They have it delivered to your table. So I think the long-term play for Amazon is basically having services that allow them to deliver inside your home. And so in order to do that, they have to have control over access control. So I think this is one of the kind of the long-term plays for that. Yeah, I will say on the technology side, because I work pretty closely with Ring and my day job, and I would say that they have – it seems like to me that they have been ramping up the frequency that major performance things happen. I guess having money and a lot of people available to you can do some nice things. But I've noticed the videos load faster, which is a major complaint in the past.

I know that they have announced they have announced some like a mass of amount of features that we kind of went over in one show where it was like, they're going to be doing 24 seven video at some point and some kind of streaming video. So I'm curious to see what comes out of that on the technology side. The integration side would be nice, but I, I, I think for a long time ring has been kind of riding on that like easy to set up product and you know easy to deploy easy to install um not so much working great product type type product but uh now i think that they're trying to get that quality up so that those complaints go away and then they can start looking at the integrations so that's just kind of what i

have i'm guessing at i have have no, I have no formal insider knowledge here to know what's going on inside. But what I've seen from the outside, the product has gotten better from from just a doorbell that I installed two years ago. So I've been kind of happy about that. So let's go ahead and move on to to Jason here. Jason, you have a... Jeez, is everybody talking about Amazon? Well, to Mike's point, it's hard. And I'm sitting here dreading when you're going to call my name because Mike's totally right. And these shows can get so sucked into the vortex of not even just shows, but content around the smart home in general can easily get sucked into the Amazon vortex. But this one was interesting to me. It's not what you would think of as a, I guess, traditional Amazon tech story.

And my most surprising story of the year was Charlie Kindle, who was the former head of smart home for Alexa. He left Amazon back in April and said he was going to go lay low for a while and kind of do his thing if you followed his blog. Well, it turns out that he joined Control 4 in August, and he's their new senior VP of product, I believe. I could be misstating that title just a little bit, but very high position, obviously, over there at Control 4. And to me, it was a really cool story to see, you know, coming from the professional side as you and I do, Seth. I thought this was a big vote of confidence in the importance in the continued belief in the importance of the technology of the home technology professional.

And we talk a lot on these shows, and rightfully so about all of the movement that's going on in the do-it-yourself and consumer-facing sides of the industry. But ultimately, there is a very large industry of professionals, 10,000 or more companies that have been around for decades doing these installations. And what does the future look like for that industry? And I think that Charlie Kendall has a really interesting perspective on this. And particularly for somebody who used to head up one of the most popular DIY consumer-facing smart home products out there in the Echo. So for him to come over to Control 4, and he's blogged multiple times about how even he at his home hired a professional and the reasons why, and his reasoning for coming over to Control 4 is all

about that belief in the importance of a professional. And I know that everyone from Martin Pleen, the CEO down through that organization is very, very bullish on the professional channel. And so I thought this was a really, really surprising story and definitely a coup for the Cedia channel as it were. And, and I thought hands down, this was the single biggest story of the year that kind of made my eyes, you know, pop out of my head a little bit. Definitely. Yeah. I, it was a, it was an interesting time when that happened. I was just kind of thinking about how that's been a while that he's, he was brought in right before Cedia. And, um, I can't remember what, I think the stock

was around like $35 at that point. It's now down around 19. So I hope he's not regretting that move, but, uh, I think he's probably got better than the 12 I bought it at. Right. So I'm good. Right. Right. Uh, yeah. Buy, buy, buy high, sell low is what they say. Right. Um, you can tell we're not a business show. Don't take financial advice from Seth. So, yeah, it was an interesting time. I got to meet Charlie at Cedia. We had a meeting with him one-on-one and with some developers. And it looks like he definitely wants to shore up

some of the product lines at Control 4. So hopefully he's able to do that i think i think it's going to be i mean as amazon kind of moves fast like but i think control four is going to move a lot slower uh and so it'll be interesting to see what control four comes out within a year's time that you know may have his his name stamped on it somehow uh so i will be kind of holding my breath on that and seeing what, where that goes. Yeah. Yeah. I think in, in his blog post, when he moved over, you know, one of the comments he made was that he was looking forward to learning how to get stuff done at a much smaller public

company, you know, and it was just interesting perspective, right? Because in, in the little bubble that we operate in, in the CDO world, control four is one of the biggest out there, probably second to Snap AV only, right? And so the perspective there I thought was interesting, and I agree with you. I'll be intrigued to see what sort of measurable improvements he's able to make to the products and services that they offer. Yep. Anybody else? All right. Well, did I go? I i didn't because i i'm the only one that's not going to talk about amazon here i know i'm so excited so i'll talk about the other a

company apple um the most surprising thing for me this year was that i think it was their developer conference they announced that the apple tv team was going to be opening up some kind of API for the big three home control systems, Crestron, Control 4, and Savant. And they even went so far as to have probably three or four seconds of a slide up there with somebody walking around underneath it, which that blew me like out of my seat. Like I have not, I can't imagine that ever happening in any timeline that I've ever, you know, considered myself living in. But here we are, and Apple has announced that. And then I started thinking about it. And I started using my Control 4 system with my Apple TV. And I was thinking, you know what, I bet these Apple execs have

Crestron and Savant systems and Control 4 systems. And they have to pick up this Crestron remote. And they can't use half the functionality that they're developing and then putting out and putting into people's lives. So it kind of made sense after they announced it that they should probably go ahead and do that. But I think you're dead on. I think that's exactly what it was. I think that they had people who had high-end systems, and the streaming device of choice with all the services on it is the Apple TV, but you couldn't integrate it with that without using crappy IR control.

Well, we have IP control, but it's like the backdoor iTunes. You only get up, down, left, right. There's only five commands you can get off the thing. Right. I mean, it wasn't terribly useful, right? So I think this was a big deal. I love this. This was one of my favorite products. The Savant preview, I guess, of their remote that's going to even include Siri control was shown there. That was really cool. This capability is already in use now by the Kavo Control Center. They are using their API for this. Yeah. Interesting. I did not know that. And I agree with Seth. I didn't think I'd necessarily live to see the day that we'd see

Crestron, Control 4, Savant logos up at an Apple presentation of any sort. So I thought that was really interesting to see. And I agree with what you guys have said. I won't belabor that, but we'll see how robust this actually is and what sort of timeframe it moves in. But just to see Apple at least giving a nod to some of these professional systems that have been out there for so long and are in so many homes, although it's a very, very small, admittedly, percentage of the market that they're concerned with, it was cool to see. Yeah. I almost didn't see you holding up your Kava remote there with all the smudges. Well, there's no smudges on mine because I didn't take the plastic off.

Unfortunately, I did on my Apple TV remote and it's, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, interesting stuff this year that we've seen. I think, I mean, I got to say, there really wasn't too much of a news cycle outside of Amazon, you know, especially after they took that, that event in September and ran with it. Uh, I, I think they've, they've definitely been on, on the, the, the forefront of all our, all of our minds. I mean, we, we, we talk about stories that happened. I mean, this year we've had, I know it starts to look like the future when you have Best Buy stopping, stop selling CDs at their stores. Like it must be the future. Cause you can't buy a CD anymore at Bestd anymore at best buy um and and and hold on podcasts are now on pandora right so like everybody's

excited about that um but you know we've had our fair share of of of people or products die off this year too we've had staples connect rest in peace uh beat beyond right beyond uh said smart home is hard and left the company out. Lowe's Iris looks like they're kind of going the same way. Apple Airports. And we actually killed a buzzer on our podcast. I don't know if anybody knows that. Oh, yeah.

Oh, we know. Oh, we know. Just going down the list there. Yeah. So, I mean, so for 2018, the second question we have is kind of like, what's the most important overall theme that you saw for the smart home? And Rose, I'm just kind of going to go about in the same order. Let's go ahead and start with you. What did you see in 2018 as the most important overall story or theme this year? So focusing in on smart home security, I'm going to go with companies finally disrupting the revenue stream of old school security companies. So we've already talked about Ring quite a bit with Ring Alarm. They launched or wrapped up a lawsuit with ADT and finally launched the product this year with the $10 per month monitoring fee, which also

includes cloud service for all of the ring cameras. And then another company that comes to mind, it is crazy. Who? ADT, you have some explaining to do. $50 a month. Yeah. Another company that comes to mind is Noonlight. And for those who are listening that are not familiar with Noonlight, Noonlight started out as a safety app, and they've moved into being a service provider. They're providing security services in a really fresh way. They attach to different third-party devices like canary cameras, connected sensors, UMI, missing one, Nest Protect. That's a big one, as well as third-party apps like Lyft. And so as an example, what's fantastic about what they do is they can collect data from these devices.

I know it sounds a little bit scary, but they bring it in if an emergency is triggered. And then they can provide that information to 911. Again, this is just $10 per month. So as an example, if you were using a Lyft and your Lyft driver was a little bit creepy, you could trigger an alarm using the app. And the information would shoot over to Noonlight's UL listed by Diamond Certified Monitoring Center. And it would include the Lyft driver's name, your trip information.

And this is really important because right now there is a little bit of a gap in 911 cellular ability. So if you call 911 from a cell phone, they don't always know where you are. They can't pinpoint your location accurately, depending on where you live, especially in the United States. But Noonlight is able to provide that information using their app and GPS services. So I think this is pretty amazing. And I think that there's some old school security companies out there that have some explaining to do or some evolving to do one of the two. Yeah. That's really cool. I have to admit, I wasn't familiar with Noonlight and what a great idea. I was in a conversation the other day where

someone was actually telling me about the difference between how 911 companies can pinpoint your location from a landline versus a cell phone. And they showed this on a dot, you know, on a map and the area, the margin of error or whatever was remarkable. And I think applying that sort of ability to kind of hit the panic button in different situations, while it's not what we necessarily traditionally think of as the smart home, I love those kinds of stories, right? I'm a huge fan of those kinds of stories where this sort of technology evolves into use cases that aren't just about entertainment or fun or gadgets in the home, but things that can actually enrich people's lives or

make people safer, more secure, et cetera. So I think that's a great example. One of the things I saw Google doing two or three years ago when they were filing patents was they were thinking of security, not from just like a home security standpoint, but a neighborhood security standpoint. So they were actually looking at, okay, there's an incident in my proximity in my neighborhood. Let's send an alert to all the different connected devices. And I feel like Amazon and Ring were starting to go down that path this year. Rose, do you know, I feel like I remember something where Ring or Amazon, yeah, neighborhood-based security. I think that's a really interesting thing that I think was something I heard a little bit about

this year. Yeah, I took my Ring doorbell down because I'm running another one right now, but I still have the Ring app and I opted into Ring Neighborhood and it's fantastic. So using the app, you set a geofence and it's basically that geofence is your neighborhood. And anyone using the app, they don't have to have a device, can basically say, hey, there's an emergency or some weird guy rang my doorbell or someone's walking through my backyard. And it's shared with everybody within that geofence radius. What a great idea.

Because you think about your home, it's a part of a neighborhood and oftentimes things start somewhere else. Why not alert your neighbors about something that's going down? So I think it's a great idea. I agree. And I recently purchased one of the Ring security systems and have so far been very impressed. I'm really happy with the purchase and the Ring neighborhood alerts that I get, while I don't get a ton of them, thankfully, I guess that's a good thing, they're good to know about. And I like that sense of community and the, again, the ability to use technology as a platform to enable people, in this case, to connect with one another and make

our neighborhoods and homes safer. I love it. Yeah, it's a good idea. I just pulled mine up to see what the last 30 days of events that were happening. So far, I've got a missing dog, a missing cat. Yeah, you get those. A fire fire a structure fire that was reported and and my favorite one is the one marked stranger and there's a little kid that knocks on he does like a knock and dash thing he just runs off so it's really i mean i i like i like this idea sometimes i get little uh little notifications of like crimes that come up yeah close to the house there's the life 60 weirdness that maybe come to coming to home security, but it's worth it. Yeah, it's a better experience than an app like Nextdoor or something like that or Facebook where you're kind of getting strange things happening.

So, yeah, I'm all for that. Let's see. Let's go ahead and kind of change this up a little bit. I was on the Noonlight website trying to read more about that, and I kind of got off our notes. Here it is. So I'm going to hop in here real quick and kind of like hang off of Rose's thing too because mine was disruption in pricing. And when I wrote that initially, I think I had something about ring alarm in my head.

And that is a massive disruption in pricing for the security market if it gets adopted in the same way. And I'm not sure it will, because still security system adoption is pretty low. Rose, you probably know the stats on that. But it's not like anywhere close to like 100% of people have a security system or any kind of security device. It's very low here in the States. But I think expanding out a little bit more broadly, you have Ikea jumping into the smart shade market with some really inexpensive

shades. They have already have had like this and I'm going to mispronounce it, Richard, Trodfee lighting control system. So I'll take that recording and put it on our show. You made that sound so easy, Richard. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, so IKEA's got a lot of really, really cool stuff that they've been coming out with. And Xiaomi is still hanging out there doing their thing. Coming in with a little Xiaomi. Okay. And I have a recording of somebody in china saying i love just listening you to you pronounce names that's the best i am the worst wise cam can we add wise cam to your list yeah so i know you have that later and i didn't really

want to touch on it too much but yeah wise cam what is it a 20 or 30 camera that is on sale right now for like nine dollars I have no idea it's like I think they're just giving them away I don't think it's on sale but yeah they have a 20 and a 30 dollar one yeah ridiculous so like and it's a full-blown IP camera um I think made by Xiaomi I'm not sure but uh like it's a white box they've added their own service and application to it. I was a little bit skeptical at first because of the price, but I ended up hiring a network engineer, US-based network engineer to help me pull packet data from it. And this was after they had uncovered that some of the communication AWS servers internationally were going to China, which people were upset about.

They fixed it, said everything's kept here in the States. I don't know if that matters to people or not, but we did They fixed it, said everything's kept here in the States. I don't know if that matters to people or not, but we did pull the packet data and it all stays here in the States right now. So I think it's pretty impressive what they're doing for $20. It's not cheap. It's not something I feel frightened to have in my home or distrustful of. It's a pretty cool little camera. Also, by the way, can I just say if you don't like watch or read or listen to Rose's reviews of security data, she pulls frigging packet data. Yeah.

That's all you need to know. Exactly. I think that's really cool because that's honestly one of my big things, especially with, you know, with like there are some companies where you can sort of see what the bigger play is. Right. Like Google being the most obvious example. They'll sell you really, really dirt cheap hardware because they want your data. Right. With Wisecam, I'm like, OK, a $20 camera is not generating profits. So like what's the play? Like what are they actually in the game for in the long run, unless they're able to manufacture those cameras for even cheaper than I think they can?

I don't know what they're actually doing. And so that's the only reason that I get nervous, because I at least want to understand. I have no qualms about using Google in my personal life for email and calendar. And I know that that data is getting used for whatever. And that doesn't bother me because at least I know going into it, right? I question that with some of these products, I guess, overarching idea here is that they're getting so cheap that I'm starting to look at companies and go, okay, like, what are you actually doing? And what's the play here? I'm probably looking for that big acquisition check from Amazon soon. Yeah, right.

Right. And you're probably right. I posted on Twitter not too long ago that they just sold their one millionth camera. It's not too bad. Not too bad at all. Not too bad at all. And I mean, I don't know if you caught the episode that Stacey did where she interviewed one of their executives, but they claim they are not losing money. That's impressive. They're probably not making it either.

They're going for the quantity play. It's funny when you mentioned doing that packet sniffing and that they moved their servers back over to the U.S. I'm thinking, China probably has better privacy laws than the U.S. So let's move on. Now you know. Yeah, yeah. Let's move on.

Mike, you've been sitting there quiet over in the corner. You've got a couple of things here. What do you think was the most important overall story this year? Yeah. What do you think was the most important overall story this year? Amazon are focusing now. So you saw, obviously, Google last year roll out their first Google smart displays this year. They finally rolled out Google hub and being in the smart kitchen. It was really interesting to see the first voice controlled video kind of

application. They did an integration within it where they basically, you can walk through a recipe start and stop and control the video and in terms of the the the guided cooking aspect with your voice so like hey google show this video step again i thought that's really interesting because i myself think that voice is fairly limited you can only do so much with voice you can turn turn things on, you can turn things off, but you can't like learn from voice. You can't go through like a recipe of voice.

There's just so many things you can do. I think people are visual. So I think this move towards multimodal and really going all in on the Google side, I think is a really big thing. I think it's smart. I like it. That's why I like my screen on the wall.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's a great observation and absolutely true. There are limits to each one of these and benefits to each one of these interfaces as well when it comes to voice and that move towards multimodal, as you put it, which I haven't heard that term used, but I think it's perfect. Spot on. I think that's been definitely a big story this year. There's also going to be some stuff at CES that that's going to kind of blow your mind from a video standpoint. And also there's this, I've been one of the few people writing about it, but this idea of projected video interfaces where your surfaces in your home become an interface. Um, it's a little bit kind of, uh, um, I don't,

you know, it's something you might see from a movie, but like it's projecting the interface on the, on the, on your table or on your, on your walls. And that becomes the interface. You're seeing more and more of that, uh, I think as well. So I think you're, you're moving away from just voice interfaces, the main focus towards, uh, video interfaces, as well as like just everyday things in your home becoming the interface. I agree. I think that technology of projected control interfaces, and I've seen these, and I think they're so cool. I just can never get away from, I don't know about you guys, but I think of Minority Report, right? And it's so cliched. But I think more subtle,

when you think about the ability to make the kitchen island, for example, your on-demand, your control interface for audio or video. You think about how much time you spend around the kitchen island. Like, there are actually some really interesting use cases that could come from that. And I think you're right. As the technology catches up to what we can sort of envision in Hollywood blockbusters, that's going to get really interesting. Rose, you mentioned having the Google Home Hub, which is one of the multimodal devices. How are you liking using that over, say, something more traditional like a Google Home Mini or

an Amazon Echo? Well, I guess not much because I really haven't played with it at all. But Google Home, one down in the kitchen and you know i'm so basic i'm basic when it comes to using this device it's like everyone i think they set a timer they remind me that i have to be on this podcast that's about it i mean is that what was going on i didn't i heard one of them start talking over there. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I have an Echo Show. I know that Amazon introduced the second generation Echo Show. I don't have the new Google Hub.

But when I walk in my kitchen, and I find this with my family, and I probably talked about this last year, we all just instantly look at that video screen. Like Amazon has gone after the kitchen video screen that was a white space that no one really owns like no one really owns the video screen in the kitchen and so samsung's been going after with the family hub amazon entered with echo show google's throwing their in their kind of their bed in with the google smart displays i think that's a big interesting area like no one owns that space and we spend so much time in the kitchen. And obviously I spend a lot of focus on that. But like the kitchen video screen, like that's a really interesting place. Can I add something embarrassing?

The number one reason I use my Echo Show and why I wouldn't use Google Home Hub is because I use it for at-home karaoke. It has a lyric. Rose, you have to record yourself doing karaoke. I should. On a server somewhere. That's great. That's great. So, yeah, that's interesting there. Well, let's go ahead and toss it on over to Richard.

What did you find most important, uh, in 2018? That obviously the man is ruling us all. Um, I mean, I, you know, I had a really hard time with this because despite all the cool stuff that we talked about, I feel like it was kind of a slow year and we didn't see anything major. But a trend that I think I saw was that if it wasn't clear before, Amazon, Google, and Apple have the gloves out to fight for control of your smart home and are winning over what we might think of as traditional offerings in that space before, including apps. I would agree.

Go ahead, Seth. I was going to say like, you know me or the Stringify, those types of apps, maybe even if this than that. Yeah, I would agree on that. think especially with with amazon and google you know you're you're seeing the amount of advertising that they're doing for their platforms and devices apple's a little bit of a dark horse still i feel like because i like seth and a big believer in the vision of HomeKit. And I know it's a sort of a marathon for them in terms of getting penetration with that. But I think the vision of HomeKit is really sound in terms of what it enables from a manufacturer's perspective to be able to go

put out a device and just know confidently that it's going to work with anything else that has the home kit label on it but as far as a household name again i go back to i think about my parents right and my parents probably i know they know about amazon because they've got an echo at their home that i bought them last year for the holidays they've probably heard of google home i would be willing to bet you just about anything that they would have no idea what HomeKit is. And so I think that the platform war is real. I think Amazon and Google are being much more aggressive about it. And I think Apple is still kind of trying to figure it out, but I'm not counting them out completely yet. So I think I would assert that Apple is not doing as badly at this as everybody might believe they are. They got an enormous number of new devices on the platform this year. The problem is that's dwarfed by the thousands and thousands of devices that the Amazon Echo supports, right?

So I think you have this scale issue that Apple knows how to play. They're already the underdog in the PC space. And there are other areas where they just have a better offering. And I really think that Apple has a better offering, except for that whole damn stupid speaker thing, which was just a bad move. You know, so. But isn't it about Apple? I mean, Amazon skills is just such an easier integration. Well, and that's the other thing too, right?

From a development standpoint, Mike, developing for Amazon and Google is way easier than developing for Apple. Oh, and yeah, yeah. Someone mentioned Bixby. I'm able to count on, oh, look at that. No fingers, the number of companies I know who are developing for Bixby. But, I mean, I think the Apple mindset around HomeKit was like a 2010s mindset. And Amazon blew them all out of the water when they came with Alexa Skills. And so I think the problem for Amazon is they haven't really kind of moved forward and created a more modern integration approach.

So you still have to basically build in the chipset. What's interesting is Amazon actually came out with their Alexa kind of own module. They're kind of going backwards a little bit, but they're building Alexa into devices. But Apple's still kind of stuck in that old world. And I think that's why it's such a heavy integration. And that's why they don't have as many devices. Yeah, and I think it was just, you just misspoke there. But to clarify, you said, like a minute ago,

you said Apple was still sort of stuck in the old model, but I, or Amazon, you said Amazon was still stuck in the old model. And you were clearly talking about Apple. And I agree. Yeah, it's a different model. And I think that Amazon has done a much better job of making it easier for developers to develop for their platform. the vision. But my point is simply that Amazon and Google are certainly looking at it from the consumer perspective, doing a much better job of getting their names out there and generating awareness. And I think I'm still curious to see what, if anything, Apple is going to do to start

to associate their brand with the connected home in the mind of the average consumer. I don't see anything happening there. What is that saying that, you know, I think it's maybe from Jurassic Park or something, like we set out to do something and we never asked if we should. Like that's kind of like what I feel the difference between Apple and Amazon is. Like Amazon, yeah, you can order a pizza from just asking a little, okay, great.

I actually like that. I do that. I totally do that. Tell Domino's to send me a pizza. It works. And it's there. It's Domino's though. The thing is like Apple has, and Google at this point have the more refined and better interface into the system. Clearly.

I mean, I can't use the Amazon app without crying a little first and then it crashing. It just doesn't work. It's a web view inside this. I mean, it's horrible. I mean, they build crap software. That's the irony of this, right? Their touch experience, their visual experience is horrible while their voice experience is pretty good. Eh, I, I would, I would kind of put that as like, eh, as well, because like, it's still a very, like, it's still like a command prompt, right? Like we're not

getting anywhere past that. We're still having to type in the exact thing copy space directory in directory out like you know like that's what i feel like you're doing with an amazon google a little less much less but i think still kind of the same thing um apple i mean you can ask it whatever it doesn't mean it's going to answer the right thing or even answer it at all so like it's but you can whisper to it that's that's pretty cool And it plays good music. Um, but as far as like, if we're talking like home integrations, like I use home kit every single day. Um, I've had the ability to integrate Amazon with my, my entire control for system. And I've have the ability to integrate home kit with my entire control for system. Guess which one I use a home kit. I have

Amazon been sitting since day one has been sitting on my kitchen counter and I've never opened that app long enough to actually do it. Um, home kit, I put in a little, what is it called? The little home kit server thing that you can rig up and make work. And within, you know, an hour or so, like everything is up and going and it doesn't break. Like I don't even have to worry about it. So like I can say good morning and good night and the same things work and it goes to my phone. I don't have to be in the room with a little Echo sitting in there. Or on my watch, like anywhere in the world. So I think the user experience is so much better

with what you get from Amazon or Apple and Google than you get over Amazon. I think that's their long play, not so much the, you know, like you can integrate your water faucet with Amazon Alexa. That's great. That actually is great.

So don't even. Actually, that is great. I saw Stacy use that and I'm like, God, that looks, that's really, you pour a cup and it pours a cup of water. Exactly. That's amazing. Let's throw out one more barrier though for HomeKit. And that is that if you want it to do anything useful, like automations, you need a hub and

their hubs are not inexpensive you have to have apple tv 4th gen or greater you can use a third gen but there's limitations there or an ios device or leave your ipad at home plugged in then of course the sorry and a can as you call it another option but those are not inexpensive options right no that's a good point that's a very good point that's a very good point. That's a very good point. So let's see, who do we have here left? Jason didn't go yet. Jason has not gone yet. Jason, what have you, I mean, I think you touched on this a little bit earlier, but what do you think is the most important 2018 story? We did touch on it earlier in the predictions, but I wasn't going to put something else in here for the sake of avoiding

repetition because I truly believe this was the biggest, in my opinion, most important overall story in the smart home is the streaming TV and the changing patterns of the way people are consuming media and what's happening with traditional pay TV models and just the amount of movement that we saw on this front was remarkable to me this year. And even as somebody who expected to see a lot of movement there, I was still surprised. You saw things like Richard alluded to it earlier. So Comcast and DirecTV are now both discussing producing their own streaming hardware. You've got Disney Plus and Apple, both rumored next year to be starting their own streaming services. We know they're both coming. It's just a matter of when. Netflix, continuing to make massive investments, I think we heard

about a $2 billion debt they were going to take on to do original content, which is sort of an offshoot of this conversation, but the growth of original content from companies like Netflix and Amazon has been amazing. And I watch a lot of those shows and love them. So it's not just about the consumption, but the production models and all of that getting disrupted. You've got YouTube TV and Hulu rounding out their offerings this year, and more new services just becoming available left and right. Amazon reportedly working on one for Fire TV owners. We've heard about one coming from T-Mobile. HD Home Run just launched one. AT&T has their Watch TV service. And then interesting outlier Verizon seemed to have canceled their plans for their long-rumored service that was coming. Again?

Again, yeah. Everybody, except for Amazon, sorry, Verizon, is trying to get into this game. And I just think it's such an interesting landscape to watch and just so much movement there. And I know we, as listeners to the show know, here in the Griffin household, we just cut the cord a couple of months ago. And certainly that hasn't been a long time, but we haven't looked back. There's just so many different options available now. And that's been one of the biggest changes to me in the smart home. So that's what I want to ask. Informal pool, we have one, two, three, four, five people here. How many people here have, uh, have officially cut the cord and gone off cable completely? It doesn't have to be OTA, but how

many people Jason and I are wanting to note? No, no, Mike, I can't see you shake your head. So are you, are you on a cable still? Well, I still subscribe to cable because I watch Seahawks football on Sundays, and you still can't get Seahawks over the top. Football was a big thing for Jason, I think. I think it took him a long time. Yeah. So, yeah, it was definitely a concern of mine. But, Mike, can't you get it?

So the way that I'm a huge diehard Broncos guy, and by the way, I'm still hurt about that Super Bowl a few years ago. But yeah, we just use Tableau. So we've got an OTA antenna hooked into a Tableau, and it works great. And that's how we pick up all of our local games. The only catch there is when the Broncos play on Monday night footballPN. Uh, I still don't have a solution for that yet, but you know, generally all of the games on Sunday, uh, are going to be on one of the major broadcast networks. So I'm able to pick those up and even time shift them and watch them later. If I need to,

um, if something comes up with the kids, for example, we just use the Tableau and we're able to DVR that. I mean, I get Comcast as a package with, with my, my ESPN and I get the local broadcast video for, for, I mean, it's like I pay whatever it is, 80, a hundred bucks a month. It's worth it for not to have to go through all the inconvenience of Jerry rigging. Yeah. Well, listen, Hey, I think Mike makes a great point, though. And when we—Richard said it earlier—we sort of live in a bubble in terms of people who really sit and pay attention to tech and watch what's available and perhaps are early adopters, although I'm a fairly slow mover as it comes within our bubble. But point being, yeah, cutting the cord hasn't been without its pain points, right? And like, every time our internet goes down, which thankfully hasn't been a lot, but my wife is like, hey, you know, was this the right choice? Right? There's a very,

very low tolerance because for our whole lives, we've had cable. And say what you will about the pricing models and how much it costs, et cetera. Cable and satellite are very, very reliable. And that is, I think the reason that most people stick with it. And we've, we've had our share of issues and, and certainly have had a few challenges in terms of both, not, not just my wife, but myself, getting used to the quirks of using these new services and technologies to watch what we want to watch. But I think that's going to continue to get better. And more and more people are going to continue to sort of finally make that leap. But I totally get it, Mike. And I think there's, you know, traditional pay TV

providers still have a lot of cushion left to work with because of that exact concern. I mean, what's interesting if we compare traditional home security providers with cable TV providers, these are both incumbents. Like 10 years ago, they were both firmly entrenched. But you saw cable TV under attack for the last decade, and they still have been able to hold on largely because of things like video rights for sports, whereas you've seen the ADTs of the world just decimated over the past five years because of the rings of the world. So I just feel like video cable service providers, incumbents have a lot more to kind of hold on to their kind of incumbent position, whereas I feel like in the smart home security providers, incumbents have a lot more to kind of hold on to their kind of incumbent position,

whereas I feel like in the smart home, home security providers, there's nothing. Because it's like, why would I pay for a two-year contract locks me in with a heavy security contract for 100, whatever it is, 60, 70 bucks a month. So that's kind of a tangent, but it's interesting to compare those two worlds. I agree. Rose, I saw you shaking your head. You're still on the cable. No cord has been cut. What's your reasoning behind that?

It's my personality. You guys have read my reviews or watched my videos. So when I go after something, I have to spend weeks spreadsheeting, researching, figuring it all out, and I just haven't had time, honestly. Rose, we're cut from the same cloth. I agree. Definitely. That's big. You know, we continually joke about it on the show. I'm a slow mover and I have to

do my research and it took me a while to make the leap. And I think, you know, what I was saying to Mike a minute ago is one challenge. Certainly people want to just keep that reliability and comfort of cable or satellite and they know how to use it and they know it's always going to work. But there's also that leap that you have to make of researching all of the options and understanding how you're going to navigate all that. What devices are you going to need? Which services are you going to use? What shows are going to be available? How do you make sure that your wife isn't going to miss an episode of General Hospital? Right, Seth? That was a big one for me.

I had to clear that hurdle. So anyways, point being, like, everyone's got their shows that they like to watch and nuances within their household in terms of how people use technology. And I think that cutting the cord as a whole still has some, you know, some work to do there in terms of making that easier. But yeah, the trend this year was remarkable to me nonetheless. And don't be distant on General Hospital, all right? But the other thing that I think is interesting to consider here is, you talked about the reliability and the ease of use. Like, you know, where everything is, like with your cable TV, you just you go to the grid and

you go to the channel that you want. And yeah, if you want to see a movie or you want to see something streaming, you might have to pull up Netflix or you might have to pull up whatever movie service you use, but having to know, okay, now which app has my over the air channels and which app has that subscription to the bundle that I still have to buy because still nobody can give us specific channels one at a time. So so i just i don't think that anybody's been able to figure out that ease of use and frankly that's why we have products like cavo right because they're trying to fix this problem until somebody actually figures out how to fix it at the source right right and for a hundred dollars it's not a bad not a bad option these days um all right so i i remained oddly quiet on that one and i think i think the reason for it is uh

is we move into our last question this is this is uh this is my my thing as i just take what jason just talked about and talk about it myself uh let's see so we we said what what broad theme do we uh we think will define the smart home in 2019 as our, as our last question. And, uh, of course mine is, is, is we're going to stay on streaming. I'm just going to mention it real quick streaming. I think we'll be massive this year. Uh, of course there's a lot of discussion around Apple and Disney. Uh, and, and the big question is, is Apple going to be just on Apple devices? Like their music, I think their music service is going out somewhere else now, like to Amazon. I saw.

Yes, it will work with the Echo. So the thing with the thing with Apple is like they want to be a content provider like Netflix and Netflix got to be Netflix, not because they were, you know, they were a content provider. And you talked about what device you watched Netflix on. They got, they got, they got to be Netflix because you talked about watching house of cards every, you know, binging house of cards and showing up Leary the next day at work saying, Oh my God, this, this was great. Um, I think that Apple, I think it would be interesting to see what Apple does moving into 2019. If, if the Apple TV product, um, product, the Apple TV, like streaming service that we've been talking about shows up on Apple devices and, you know, Roku's maybe or Android

type devices. I don't know. Like I just have an Apple TV, so I don't know what else everybody's using, but maybe TiVo. TiVo is a good, good example. Are we going to have an Apple TV app on TiVo? I would, I just wish they would buy tivo why hasn't that happened yet right well i mean yeah and tivo is getting 4k right so they're going to have three sets of menus now to deal with what is it four sets of menus yeah thank good good going tivo um but yeah i i think streaming is going to be the massive i think streaming it was a big story this year and i i was kind of bored with it when we first started talking about it. And as we kept talking about it and as I see the tea leaves lining up, I think it was a good call by Jason to go ahead and stack the stories up like he did

and bring those in every week because man, it's looking like where everything's going. And as I said at the top, I don't really think about what channel I want to watch my favorite show on. I just think about what service I'm going to watch my favorite. The shows I care about have moved from channels, TV channels, traditional TV channels. They've moved into apps like Hulu and Netflix and Amazon Prime. I'm not at that point. It's still, I think it's still most of my TV watching is on linear television, linear programming. And then there are some special ones on Netflix and other services.

I don't know. And I wonder until we have that CAVO replacement, right? Like what that looks like and how long it takes for you. I mean, I understand that completely because I was kind of like that too. What it takes for people, what the tipping point is to bring you into the cord cutting era. Um, is it, is it a two TiVo that does not have a cable hookup and you just use an app to run, you know, Comcast or Xfinity or whatever you have. Um, it'll be, I think next year will be very interesting um completely very very interesting moving into 2019 to see what happens to um streaming tv and and traditional tv so that's

that's where i'm gonna kind of like hang my hat and say uh you know i'm not gonna be as bold as to say richard will cut the cord in 2019 because it doesn't sound like that's gonna happen no it's that is so not happening. I have all the cords. I have phone cords. Wow. We're going to have to talk, Richard. But I'm going to leave it there. I think we probably talked about streaming too much, streaming and Amazon a little bit too much on the show. Let's go ahead and jump over to you, Mike. What do you think 2019 is going to bring to the smart home? I'll start with Amazon and then move on. I mean, I think they, they rolled out with that big September release, this, this idea of Amazon hunches. So that was their first move into what I

would call anticipatory computing, which is something that Google has been doing for the past like seven, eight years. So this idea that your smart home contextually understands what you want to do and suggests it for you. So if you're going to bed and your lights are on on outside, Alexa now with Amazon Hutchins will say, hey, you left the lights on. Do you want me to turn them off for you? This is something I think that Google has been doing or moving towards

with their anticipatory computing for a while. I think this is something that just generally as a macro trend is really interesting. You mentioned that Apple is doing that too with Siri.

Yeah, so I think it's, I mean, the idea of smart home is smart, right? So like, not only is it like, okay, we could turn lights on and off and create routines. It's like your home starts to think for you. And so I think that the big platform players are building this into their platforms and they're going to anticipate your life's problems with contextual understanding what's going on and take care of it for you, either through a suggestion or just doing it outright. And I think that'll continue to be a big trend next year. That was something I had thought about as a trend too, but I ended up thinking maybe in 2020 that will happen. I honestly don't feel like we have a smart home yet. There isn't really an intelligent link between device and action unless the user creates that link between the two. But I think contextual data, that would be fantastic. What you're talking about, that's so dreamy. I do hope it happens. Let's put it up there as a pipe dream. What you just said, Rose, about not being a link unless you create that, that is so true. That is the problem right now. You have to anticipate, when would I want

this to happen? You have to say, if this happens, then I want to do that. Oh, but not in these cases. And most mortals don't think that way. Right, right. Yeah, that's very true. That's a brilliant way to put it. I totally agree. I mean, anticipatory competing is happening with your Google phone, right? So if you have Google, like it's saying, do you want to go this way or that? Or maybe this is where you parked your car.

Do you want me to kind of mark it? I think Google hunches will be fairly obvious in 2019. They'll say, Alexa will say, I left the lights on. Do you want me to turn it off? So I don't think it's a pipe dream. I think it's being built into the platforms,

whether or not like consumers like grab onto it. It's yet to be seen, but I think it's there. Yep. Yeah, I want to say that either Google or Apple just bought some smart home player within the last week or two that was doing something like this. I can't remember their name right off the top of my head, but it feels like that's a great prediction. I think that's something that, you know, Jason and I have talked about for a while on the show.

Conscious home. Yeah, the conscious home. Like, what would prevent me? I always talked about doing what we called living programming, or I forget what I actually called it, because I haven't done this type of programming in a long time. You live in your house. You know what you want to have happen, and I don't. So I can barely even set up a lighting scene for you correctly.

So as an integrator, it was very frustrating. We go out, we program a lighting system, we hit save, and that is, for years, just hard coded into the system. Uh, and it had been barely that, that surface on the, the integration side has barely been scratched as to, to, uh, what, you know, letting end users actually customize a lighting scene that they live with every single day. If they don't like it, you know, tough cookies, they'll have to wait for the interview to come back out, reprogram the system and upload it and save it again. And, you know, if it's a percentage off, it doesn't help. So I would, I, that's a great thing.

And I would hope that we, we get to see that soon. One of these days. Me too. I love that one. Richard, let's go ahead and toss it over to you. What would you like to see? This isn't necessarily what I want to see. These are predictions, right? Predictions. My prediction is a softball. It's a pure softball.

Siri and the HomePod are going to continue to suck and not matter. You're setting yourself up for an A next year? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what? I mean, in all honesty, I challenge Apple to prove me wrong. Like, I don't get it. I don't understand why they're so bad at this. One of the things that everybody said

was that Siri has to get much, much, much better if the HomePod is going to be successful. Siri got better, didn't get much, much, much better. What I don't remember who it was, what one of you said earlier, where Siri may or may not answer you,

that's exactly right, right? I mean, I just, what is wrong with this system that it can't live up to its successors, those who came after it trying to do the same thing. I just don't understand. So this is really frustrating to me. And, you know, I was, I was a no on the HomePod from day one and I'm an Apple fan boy, but it was poorly priced. It was poorly targeted. And I don't know what they were thinking with that thing. It was a me too product from the beginning. So they tried to differentiate, but they did it wrong.

So I, I hope that they see their way and come up with a corrective path, but I don't know what that path looks like. What's the mystery. I mean, they've been sucking it up smart home for like the past five years. Like, I feel like they're stuck in time. Like, what is what? I mean, it's like we don't understand why Apple can do it. Like, it's pretty obvious.

They're like the Microsoft of like 10 years ago. They just can't get their act together. I don't think you're right there. I don't think they do suck at smart home. I think their smart home ecosystem. They're still stuck in a hardware framework. They're still trying to sell tons of iPhones. They really.

Well, they do a pretty good job at that. Yeah, but that's not a modern mentality. That's their business, right? Their business is hardware and services. They're not selling content. They're selling hardware. But they've been left behind by Apple. They've been left behind by the new Microsoft.

They've been left behind by Google. Like they're still stuck in an old mindset. What's so surprising? Wow. You really pulled the Microsoft just pulled ahead of them in the last two weeks? Hold on. Let me put my Cortana up. We haven't even mentioned Cortana. I've mentioned

Microsoft. Microsoft is a modern company. They're not consumer focused. They don't care about consumers. As a company, they've turned themselves around and i think apple's still kind of stuck in time yeah yeah i don't know i i don't disagree with that but yeah that's it's the biggest ship they've got to turn though i mean out of all all those companies you mentioned they're they're they're the ones with the most money i I mean, I love Apple. I have Apple all over my house.

I'm talking to you on a Mac. I think they're really smart. And I think they could turn it around. But I just feel like they're a little bit stuck in time. Yeah, I think what sticks them in time is that mentality of using. I hear this all the time in the Apple press. Oh, they have small teams that do this. One or two guys works on this one thing.

I'm like, you're multi-billion. You're the richest company on the face of the planet. Hire some people, like do whatever you have to do. Hire them outside of Cupertino. Like do what you have to do to get this ball rolling. I mean, it'll be one thing and it's great that they have an Apple TV service that you can get next year. But yeah if homepod and siri don't have like massive improvements i i'll agree with you mike they're they're stuck in the past on those things i still think that the hardware is amazing i mean absolutely amazing it is uh but the soft the software side and and quite frankly the company side like you're saying are are definitely stuck it looks like from the outside observer that they're not moving and moving fast enough.

I don't know. I don't know that they need to move fast, but when they do move, they need to introduce something a little bit better than the HomePod. And I think that's what you're getting. The problem is they they know how to produce good product. But stuff like HomePod and Siri, they just can't seem to get it. And HomePod in particular, you know, I said this earlier, it was a Me Too product. They had to come out with something because everybody else had something and everyone expected them to come out with a competitor. What disappoints me is that I wanted them to do something completely different.

Throw it on its ear. Don't just put Siri in a can. Think of a different way of putting voice control everywhere. And they didn't. There's a company that was similar named to Apple that had the same slogan as that in the past. I can't remember putting my name on. What the name of that? Oh, yeah, it was Apple. Think different?

Oh, right. Yep. That one, thanks, Rose. That one fell flat. So, Rose, now that you spoke up, let's head on over to you. Oh, no. I'm feeling really insecure about my prediction after. I don't know.

But, okay, I'm going to go for it. I feel like device makers right now are playing a very reactive game. There's security issues detected within the device, and then they fix it. And I know we already said there weren't a lot of security issues talked about this year, but I do think that consumers, this is heavy on their mind, I do think that they're thinking about it. And I think that they are going to drive demand through their dollars for more devices that offer at least a

little bit of local processing, even if that's a hybrid device that processes, let's use a camera as an example, that the camera sees something and it processes locally what it's seen before deciding if that information needs to go to the cloud. And I think we've already seen some of that. I talked about Lighthouse earlier. That would be a really good example, but the price on that was just too high. But already doing my CES research, I'm seeing that with like SimCam and HipCam that I think that's really their names are the same. Wait, you're already prepping for CES? I already told you, spreadsheets and research. I don't want to miss anything. I like it. Yeah.

I think this is right on. I hear this from so many guests on my show where they're really thinking about local control and what they can do to offer consumers the comfort of not having to depend on the cloud. And obviously, my dog Koda agrees. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm not sure how much traction it will get this year, but I do agree that it's going to be a growing trend, sort of like what's old is new again. This idea of local processing, and, you know, everything has been on the cloud. And, you know, just just this, the increased awareness of cybersecurity threats and personal data being breached. And I think that when you start to talk about, you know, devices in your home, like that's a very, it's your number one personal space. And

so to, you know, just to echo on what you were saying, Rose, I agree. The product that jumps to mind here, I was having to Google it as I was talking, is Curio. And Mike, I think you interviewed, or they were on a panel that you conducted, I think out at, I want to say it was a GeekWire conference or something. And if I recall correctly, they're one of these products that's really sort of staking their claim on keeping smart home control in the home, right? And I do think that over time, we're going to see more of that. I don't know if that'll be next year or the year after, but I do think that this idea of local processing will sort of come back into vogue at some point. Well, and it is new. It's called the Edge now.

Right. It's been rebranded. Oh, Curio has? No, no, no. Local control is now called edge computing. Yeah, right on the edge of the cloud there. Interesting. We used to call that client, we used to call the smart clients, but now it's edge computing. Right. I think besides security, you also get the advantage of latency. Because with a local device,

instead of waiting that 100 milliseconds for Amazon to go out, fetch some information from a server, come back, fetch another information, those little milliseconds, they add up. And when you get down to under 10 milliseconds for a response, the entire home automation system is pretty amazing. Right.

It almost works like a light switch. It almost works like a light switch. It almost works like a light switch. Exactly. Yeah. That's kind of what I like about HomeKit. I mean, I kind of hit on that a little bit, but it's a local server that when I yell at Siri to do something, it happens as fast as I hang up there. Sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes it's pretty dang impressive

how fast it turns on the Christmas tree lights. Let's see, Jason, we've got you for your prediction for 2019. Yeah, so I think as far as a prediction, you've got platform land grabs. I think I'm not gonna hit on this for too long. I think Richard hit the nail on the head in terms of Apple and Mike as well, in terms

of Apple sort of continuing to get left behind and the gap widening between Google and Amazon and everyone else as it relates to the broader ecosystem of consumers and I guess your mere mortals or everyday users. Google and Amazon continue to battle it out. Apple is going to get left behind. Facebook and Samsung, nowhere near probably either of them. I just don't know what Samsung is doing. We haven't even talked about Samsung at all, other than just some half, you know, some joking remarks about Bixby, but they've got, they bought smart things, like, let's not forget about that. And we haven't seen much movement there. So I do think Google and Amazon will continue to pull ahead of

the pack. And just this, this continual sort of land grab and battle for, for ownership of the smart home will continue. And then, you know, I don't want to make a prediction here, not just because I don't want to be a doomsdayer, but I, you know, we, I don't want to prognosticate about the economy. I have no idea what's going to happen there. But in terms of the way we framed this question, you know, what trend will define the smart home in 2019? On the professional side, I wanted to mention one specifically. I think, what will the economy and housing market do? Stepping outside of technology a little bit, the professional market that, Seth, you and I come from, and that more traditional Cedia channel is very, very tied to the housing market and new construction.

And it's been through plenty of corrections in the past, and I'm certainly not predicting any sort of doomsday scenarios here. But if I own an integration business or am deeply invested in that space in any sense, that's one of the trends that I'm keeping a very close eye on is what is the economy and new build market going to do? And I think that'll be a, you know, that'll be a very telling sign of how that market will do in 2019. One of the biggest stories I think that has not, I mean, it's getting political play, like if you follow politics, any, is these tariffs that have come in to play. I mean, it's, and I think we've heard some, like, I've heard a couple podcasts talk about it, but nobody's really talking about it. And I think,'ve heard some, like, I've heard a couple podcasts talk about it, but nobody's really talking about it. And I think, Jason, you're going to have to get me on his name, Hagar, Access Networks.

Hagai. Hagai, there we go. He was really hammering on it because he OEMs a lot of stuff from China. And he's saying, look, these prices are going up. I'm on the wholesale side of business. Last week, over the course of three days, we had five price sheets from one manufacturer on pricing changes. And they were significant pricing changes

that were coming into play for their products. Their products are shipping in from China. And that's where everything's made. So we're talking 25% in some aspects, which is not insignificant if you're a custom integrator and you've sold a job and like me in the past have waited to buy the product to the last minute. Like you might not want to do that right now. That's going to be a doomsday scenario if you're looking at 25% more to pay for a product for your company. So keep that in mind, guys, when you're

buying things. Also, I've been noticing like this hasn't hit consumers yet either. So I don't think it's been a big story, but as I was looking through all the stories, they were talking about thermostats are getting hit hard. Um, like some smart thermostats, uh, video cameras, uh, are going to get hit pretty hard and a home automation stuff. There was one company and I can't remember it was in a verge article. They, they were a Kickstarter. They're going to launch at $249 and they had, they were going to get hit by an $80 tariff on each product and they had to raise their price. I think they ended up eating a little bit of it. They raised their price to $299, uh, as a, as a start. So these, these tariffs are going to come into play towards the beginning of the year. I think, um, they're, we're already

seeing them on the wholesale side where we're raising our prices and getting those notices out, but I don't think it's hit the consumer side because I think we're going to see that on the other side of the holiday when new equipment starts coming in and rolling in and we see, you know, Jason, if you need a $650 TV, now may be the time to buy it.

Can someone please end us on a high note? I'll pull the trigger. No, I do think that... Why did I kick him last? Yeah, that was a really bad choice. But again, I'm not... We've been, as an economy,

we've been on a really good run for a long time and there may be a small correction. And again, if I'm an owner of an integration company, these are typically small companies, maybe 10 employees and the stakes are high when you're talking about projects that can go anywhere from $10,000 to a quarter million dollars. And so, you know, these and higher, frankly, you know, that's something that I think will be, it could potentially be a definitive trend. And again, I'm not going to peg this to a specific prediction, but I'm simply going to say it's something to keep an eye on. Ending on a higher note, I truly believe that there are strategies and that the smart professional companies out there are shoring up service

strategies and recurring revenue and retrofit markets and going into existing homes and getting better at doing those smaller, quicker upgrades and things of that nature. And so even if the market does correct, there are plenty of ways to stay healthy, but I think that's gonna be a big trend. And I can tell you in my interactions with integrators all over the country on a regular basis,

it's heavy on people's minds. And I think it's just strictly a function of timing. We all know that markets move in cycles and things have been pretty good for pretty long. And so people are just starting to wonder how long that's going to last. And only time will tell. Right. Right. Well, on that note, everybody take a drink and we'll go ahead and close out the show. Sorry to end as such a downer, guys. I feel like we need to go out with a song or something. We should have planned that better. I don't know about that.

You're the one with the karaoke machine. I'm not so much into karaoke. We didn't have sound effects this year. Seth, what were the sound effects? Well, you know, I kind of got in trouble for sound effects this year. Funny about that. I had to pull back. So, yeah, the sound effects are no more.

Although I might be able to play something on the way out here, but let's see. Let's put them on post-production. Yeah. We'll put them in post. It's always in post. In all seriousness, though, I think 2018 has been a fantastic year for consumers of the smart home. And we've talked about lowering prices and increased options. And I expect that to continue.

And I think we all would echo that. And so all of the stuff that we're talking about is all of the details of how that's all going to shape out. But I think we would all agree that for those people out there who are into the smart home and maybe even for those who are interested in a smart home and might not even know it yet, right? Like it's only going to get better. There's only going to be more options. The amount of products and services are going to continue to grow. And that's obviously going to be a trend that continues well into 2019 and beyond. All right.

Thank you for turning it around. Pulled that out. Yeah, you're just trying to make up for that dour comment earlier. Yeah. Yeah. How'd I do? Raise the vibrations for sure. Okay, good.

All right. Thanks, guys. This has been great. Yep. So let's go ahead and go around the room one more time. Everybody, you know, let's go ahead and start with you, Rose. Thanks so much for joining us this year, hanging out and talking with us crazy people

about the smart home. It's an honor. Well, thank you very much. And go ahead and tell people where they can find you if they want to see what you do or get in touch with you. Well, you can find me at homealarmreport.com or if you're a YouTube person,

my channel is called It's Rose. Excellent. We'll put links to everybody's thing in the show notes. Richard, where can people find you? I host the show Home On, which is in all the places and hopefully soon in Pandora. All right. Apparently people think that's cool. And I just want to make sure that everybody recognizes that Mike won tonight. Mike said my Amazon assistant's name more times than anyone else.

Wait, were you keeping score? Were you keeping score? Oh, my God. We're not throwing in roses. Rose was spelling it, so we're not counting those. Of course not. I think she only said it twice. That's a secret.

That's funny. All right. Well, I'm going to hop in here before we go out, and I'm going to say my name is Seth Johnson. You can catch me on Twitter at SethPJohnson if you want to see what I do there. And you guys made fun of me for last year, made it the whole year, 2018. No political tweets at all. I was way impressed. Really?

No. No. You're such a liar. Oh, wait. I get it. You're lying. It seems to be the theme. So let's go ahead.

I'm co-host on the Home Tech Podcast with Jason. Jason, where can they find about what you do with me? And where can they get in touch with you? Yeah, not Twitter. I'm terrible at Twitter. Not Twitter. The show's at hometech.fm or as Richard said, in all the places, all the major podcast directories, just search for Home Tech Podcast. If you want to connect with me personally, just LinkedIn is probably the

best way or Jason at hometech.fm. And definitely if you're tuned in and haven't checked out our show, we'd love to have you. Always love this opportunity to hop on the Fireside Chat with some other folks and do a crossotion and get out to other channels. And I know we all bring different, very valuable perspectives to the smart home. I always enjoy listening to what everyone else on this show does in terms of content and hope people will come check us out.

So again, that's hometech.fm. Yep, and last but not least, Mike, where can people find out what you're doing these days, which is frankly all over the world. I see you in Japan. I see you in Europe out what you're doing these days, which is, frankly, all over the world. I see you in Japan. I see you in Europe. Like, you're all over.

So how can people get in touch with you? Yeah. I mean, mainly spending time nowadays focusing on our kitchen stuff. So we have an editorial site called The Spoon, which is doing pretty well. Go to thespoon.tech and then just go to smartkitchensummit.com to check out our events. Excellent. Yep. And they, those are, those are great events. If you haven't seen the smart kitchen, like, Holy cow. I,

I every time I see those come up, I'm just blown away about what you guys are doing over there. So congrats on that. And with that, I think we'll close out the fourth annual uh technology.fm fireside chat thanks everybody for coming on thank you cheers and happy holidays happy holidays