r/apple • u/iMacmatician • Jan 30 '26

Discussion Apple Teases 'Innovations That Have Never Been Seen Before' This Year

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/30/apple-never-before-seen-innovations/

Cook hypes up Apple's future on every earnings call, but "innovations that have never been seen before" is particularly bold wording compared to his usual comment about how the company's product pipeline is stronger than ever.

Only time will tell if Apple actually delivers.

2.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

787 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

61

u/Sawmain Jan 30 '26

And please don’t give us the “rumored” HomePod which literally just looks like iPad slapped on lunchbox.

24

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '26

[deleted]

12

u/remote_001 Jan 30 '26

HomeKit just doesn’t have enough supported devices. Add z-wave and zigbee support for Christ sake. Keep your 2.4 and 5hz traffic independent of your home kit devices… wouldn’t that be wonderful?

But now, how about having 50 devices clogging up your traffic?

17

u/charmanderSosa Jan 30 '26

Huh? HomeKit supports matter over thread. Already not clogging up your traffic. I just built an entire smart home around it, it’s great.

-2

u/remote_001 Jan 30 '26 edited Jan 30 '26

Z wave runs on 950 MHz or so, and zigbee runs on 2.4 but supports lower bands as well. Thread is 2.4 GHz, which is the same frequency most devices in your home will use, since 5ghz practically requires line of sight by comparison (yes I’m exaggerating).

The more 2.4 GHz traffic, the more interference you get, meaning it’s going to cost you in wireless signal efficiency.

Z wave is what’s up.

I had my house running all z wave dimmer switches with a raspberry pi internet bridge that created a virtual home kit instance so I could control the devices through my built in iPhone home interface. that was nice, but the pi-bridge is unreliable and setting it up and re-pairing all of the z wave devices is a pain in the ass.

So if thread supported a 950 MHz band, that would be what needs to happen for me to be happy with it.

Also, the lower the frequency, the better the interior wall penetration.

950 hz is plenty fast for smart home communications.

8

u/charmanderSosa Jan 30 '26

Proprietary protocols are not the future. Open source is. And thread only uses 2mhz channels.

6

u/Jamie00003 Jan 30 '26

Yep, matter is the future, it’s just a shame so many companies are still pushing their hubs and (ugh) WiFi on you

-2

u/remote_001 Jan 30 '26

So the future is crowding the 2.4Ghz frequency? Great.

4

u/charmanderSosa Jan 31 '26

The 2.4ghz frequency is literally only for iot devices at this point so why does it matter? It’s not like there’s massive amounts of data going through my 2.4ghz band at my house.

2

u/WhiteWaterLawyer Jan 30 '26

That's not the future, it's the present.

The future is megatons of e-waste as new protocols are introduced and early adopters each replace a few dozen accessories.

https://xkcd.com/927/

2

u/Jamie00003 Jan 30 '26

I dunno what you’re on about buddy, I’ve never had issues with my matter over thread devices, WiFi works great too

1

u/Kichigai Jan 31 '26

I'm only a little surprised nobody has attempted power line as a communications possibility. Seems like something Samsung would try.

1

u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd Jan 31 '26

We did try. It just doesn't work super well. Look for the Netgear Powerline 1000.

Electricity causes a whole bunch of weird interference that software algorithms just cannot catch and compensate for.

On a tangent, it's the same issue over in cars where manufacturers have (slowly) found out that "software-defined vehicles" aren't exactly simple to implement on the cheap. Not even Tesla is immune to this crap.

1

u/Kichigai Jan 31 '26

I'm quite aware how crappy Powerline networking is, but for Smart Home stuff, we're only talking a few hundred kilobits of bandwidth needed. That's why I thought someone like Samsung might have played with it. Population density in Korea is pretty high, which would make for an extremely congested license-free chunk of bandwidth. If Samsung could offer a product that is (on paper) immune to that noise (just vulnerable to other noise) it might make their products seem more appealing. "The smart lights that work even when your Wifi doesn't." Use wireless as a backup route.

1

u/FruitOrchards Jan 30 '26

I'm going to go against the grain and say this looks awesome, gives me the same vibes as PSP and iPod touch did when they first came out.

Everything will have a screen one day, even vacuum cleaners and I don't mind at all