CES 2018: The Best of Pepcom With LaCie, Zagg, August, Ring and More

I feel old enough to remember Steve Jobs' media event stealing the spotlight from the drab CES carousel of TVs and appliances. Good times. Look at CES 2018 ('https://twitter.com/hashtag/CES2018?src=hash') now, all jam packed with goodies while Apple has turned into a bored rich recluse that endlessly rehashes its 5 year old heyday designs. :(

Cnet shows that Apple’s heydays are over. What, who is Siri?

We kinda knew that before CNET turned it into a clickbait article.

Just look at each one of Apple's media events of the past years. It's like watching a TV show that's been bad for three seasons hoping this is the episode where it all turns around.

With CNET I meant CES (autocorrection is like SIRI, most of the time it doesn’t understand)

Ah ok. Well, Apple used to trounce CES in its absence. Now it's both absent and irrelevant.

You thing these are "goodies"? Yes, Apple's Jan event usually offer a lot more exciting stuff than CES, but different times. Now Apple is equally boring, not flipped with CES not being exciting... unless getting notifications from your dishwasher excites you. Everything I've seen as "best of" CES so far has been a rehash of another company's product or a marginal upgrade to their existing product. For me I have stuff like it or it really doesn't interest me. Another Wi-Fi security cam or Apple Watch band. Flip a coin to which one is more cutting edge.

I wouldn't dismiss them that easily. There's always the iterative part, sure, some kitsch robots, and the home appliance-notification center fodder. Then there's also hand-calling, voxels, rollable TVs, sub-screen fingerprint scanners and so forth. It's not that they'll become mainstream or even catch on. But it sure is refreshing to see other players trying to push the envelope while Apple is milking its same-ol' SKU collection that has become so incoherent it reminds of Sculley's days.

I feel old enough to remember Steve Jobs' media event stealing the spotlight from the drab CES carousel of TVs and appliances. Good times. Look at CES 2018 ('https://twitter.com/hashtag/CES2018?src=hash') now, all jam packed with goodies while Apple has turned into a bored rich recluse that endlessly rehashes its 5 year old heyday designs. :(

You think these are "goodies"? Yes, Apple's Jan event usually offer a lot more exciting stuff than CES, but different times. Now Apple is equally boring, not flipped with CES not being exciting... unless getting notifications from your dishwasher excites you. Everything I've seen as "best of" CES so far has been a rehash of another company's product or a marginal upgrade to their existing product. For me I have stuff like it or it really doesn't interest me. Another Wi-Fi security cam or Apple Watch band. Flip a coin to which one is more cutting edge.

I spoke with Ring Tech Support yesterday and they said that the Apple Watch is only partly compatible with Ring right now but that they expect to have it fully compatible (Where you can watch video on the apple watch of what the ring camera recorded) by mid 2018.

I also asked about HomeKit support for the Ring Doorbell Pro and they told me they were excited to finally be allowed to officially announce that support would be added for Homekit this year (no specific date of course) but good to know that they are still onboard with doing that.

Just thought I would pass along the information!

EDIT: They also told me they had a mailing list for people to be notified when Homekit support would be made available so I asked to be added to that list as well. In the event some of you also would like to do this I would suggest contacting them. Otherwise I'm sure it will be pretty big news and you will hear about it pretty soon afterwards anyway.

For me I’ve got the feeling history repeats. There was a time Apple support was a no brainer. Today it’s like the mid nineties where all novelties happens on Android, Alexa first and maybe a future support for über priced Apple products where the possibilities will be crippled and minimal compared to the competition.