Apple loses head of Home Services
There is still plenty to improve on HomeKit, but Jadallah won't live to see it. He left the company last week. He announced his departure on LinkedIn, where he emphasized that it had been a privilege to be an entrepreneur within Apple and to create products for the mass market. He is also grateful for the friendships he will continue to cherish after his departure and the fact that he has been given the opportunity to develop new things for homes worldwide.
Jadallah previously worked at Microsoft and joined Apple in 2019. Before that, he was involved with a small manufacturer of luxury door locks, Otto. According to the man's tweets, he mainly worked on digital keys, for example to control HomeKit door locks via the Wallet app.
Jadallah's arrival in 2019 gave the impression that Apple would go the extra mile in the smart home field, especially when it comes to speakers. Apple does have the HomeKit protocol, but it lags behind companies such as Amazon and Google in terms of offerings. In the meantime, new steps have been taken, such as support for Thread and the creation of Matter, a cross-platform smart home protocol, together with other companies.
The new HomeKit Secure Video feature also appeared while Jadallah was at Apple, although we suspect that this was already in development before the man signed his employment contract in 2019. The function dates back to 2019. Adaptive lighting and a Siri API for third parties are developments that came later.
Slow developments in some products
Meanwhile, we don't yet have our own HomeKit accessories from Apple and there has been little expansion of product categories. Some applications are still impossible because Apple determines which products can be controlled. And things are sometimes difficult in the 22 supported product categories, as is apparent from the mediocre supply of doorbells and door locks. For example, we have been waiting for a HomeKit lock from Netatmo for almost two years and there is really only one lock that can receive the approval of users: that of Nuki. As far as doorbells are concerned, you are mainly dependent on Ring bells, where privacy is less well regulated.
The Netatmo door lock we're still waiting for.
Jadallah hasn't specified why he's leaving Apple and what he's doing going to do now. He talks about going back to the ‘Silicon Valley ecosystem’ and from now on calls itself an ‘investor and independent director’.
Jadallah gone, where is HomeKit going?
Apple seems to want to put some different accents but is not communicating about this to the outside world. It is rumored that Apple would like to merge the HomePod and Apple TV into one device for your smart home devices, entertainment and communication. At the same time, there are rumors that Apple does not really know what they want to do with hardware and in the field of Apple TV, developments have come to a standstill for a few years: minimal updates appear for tvOS and the TV box itself also receives few innovations compared to other providers such as Amazon and Roku.