John Ternus will be Apple’s next CEO

On Monday, Apple officially confirmed what was rumored to happen for a while. John Ternus will become the next Apple CEO on September 1st. It’s hard to argue with Apple’s amazing hardware track record, and I think Ternus is an excellent choice to run the company.

Many rumors point to Apple making new smart home products, and hopefully in 15 years we will look back at smart home as a major category John Ternus grew at Apple. I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of everyone pinning their personal hopes and dreams on a new person in charge at Apple. I just want to finally see that new smart home display this fall.

Aqara Soft Sensor

You can combine multiple Aqara sensors with local AI to appear in Apple Home or other Matter systems as a single sensor to say whether a room is occupied or not. Aqara first showed me this concept at IFA Berlin last year, and it’s been trickling out recently before being demoed on Aqara’s YouTube channel this week. It’s now here and explains why Aqara shipped a super powerful M3 hub. It’s necessary for this kind of processing. Like Philips Hue Motion Aware, this is a groundbreaking technical feature that requires many devices to actually accomplish it. As a result, those steep requirements don’t make it practical for most rooms in your home.

Google confirms Gemini-powered Apple models

In the Google Cloud Next keynote, Google Cloud’s chief Thomas Kurian confirmed that they are working closely with Apple on new foundational models to power a more personalized Siri. We use Gemini all the time at my job, and I have to say it’s very impressive. Google’s Gemini is rarely the AI platform to make big headlines with new products, but what they do ship is very good, especially in managing information like a more personal Siri would likely have to do. I think this could finally be the missing piece to make Siri be what we want it to be.

The schedule

Yesterday I published a new YouTube video showing you around the smart home and Mac automations I use in my office. I also had a live stream on Friday with special guest Stephen Robles.

More videos coming next week!

I hope you have a great rest of your Sunday,

Eric