Apple plans to unveil its “Smart Home” plans at the forthcoming WWDC in San Francisco, the Financial Times is reporting. Unsurprisingly, the Cook & Co. are looking to place the iPhone and iPad in the center of your home, allowing you to control things around the house with a touchscreen on your smartphone or tablet.
The specifics are still unknown but we’re hearing that among the things users will be able to control are security system, lights and TV (which would be connected to the Apple TV). The system will also be able to detect whether there’s your iPhone or iPad around to automatically adjust the settings around the home. For instance, when it detects that the iPhone is nowhere to be found, it will turn off the lights and possibly even lock the home if you forgot to do that.
Aside from Apple’s own products, the Smart Home will support devices made by third-party manufacturers as long as they comply with the “Made for iPhone” scheme. The upcoming iOS 8 will likely include some changes to accommodate the new platform.
As that’s usually the case with Apple, nothing is official until it’s official. The WWDC will kick off on June 2nd when we hope to learn all other details. At that point, we’ll see whether the Cupertino giant has what it takes to compete with LG, Samsung and Google which have already invested resources in their own smart home systems.