Google has bought Nest Labs, the hot startup co-founded by the father of the original iPod, Tony Fadell, for a hefty $3.2 billion. Nest has been making forward-thinking gadgets for the home, like its popular thermostat, since 2011. The Nest Protect smoke detector was just announced in October of 2013.
Interestingly, Google has promised that Nest will remain its own distinct brand and operate under the leadership of Fadell.
LAS VEGAS — Walking the long, dusty road between the Encore Hotel and the CES Convention Center, I was approached by two guys. They offered to give me a ride. I know I should never accept rides from strangers but their offer was to good to pass up. It was the most creative and original marketing ploy I’ve seen at CES.
Tony Fadell, father of the original iPod and creator of the Nest home thermostat, sparked all kinds of speculation earlier this week after appearing in photos posted to Twitter alongside Jony Ive’s (RED) Mac Pro and rose gold Earpods, which were recently sold at a Sotheby’s charity auction for just under $1.5 million.
It seemed as though Fadell has snapped up both items himself, but he has today confirmed that he is the owner of neither.
Nest Labs, the company that was founded by “father of the iPod” Tony Fadell, is famous for reinventing the home thermostat with the pretty little Nest device launched in 2011. But now the company is hoping to expand its presence in your home with a new, $130 smoke and carbon monoxide detector called Nest Protect.
Instead of just beeping at you, Nest Protect provides vocal alerts that will inform you just how dangerous the conditions in your home may be. And if it goes off accidentally — as ours often does when my wife is cooking — you can silence it just by waving at it.
The Nest thermostat isn’t just an incredible next-gen thermostat that allows you to change and program your house’s heating or cooling via an iPhone or iPad: it’s also designed and created by Tony Fadell, the so-called father of the iPod.
It’s also expensive like an iPod, usually retailing for $249.99. But right now, the first-gen model is on sale at Amazon for just $179.00.
If you want to heat your house like a spaceman, get going!
Source: Amazon
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Even though she can barely understand me, Siri can do some pretty cool stuff. She can find the answers to movie trivia and tell me if it’s raining, but she still can’t do really useful things yet, like turning off the lights or adjust my thermostat, even though home automation is going to be Apple’s next big thing.
A YouTube user by the name of Elvis Impersonator decided it’s time to take Siri to the next level, and make her a truly great personal assistant. So thanks to a Raspberry Pi, Siri can now open and close his garage door, turn off his house alarm, change his TV channel and so much more.
Here’s a video of this awesome Siri home automation hack in action:
CES 2013, the world’s biggest cornucopia of cutting-edge gadgetry, kicks off in Las Vegas in under a week, and as always, Cult of Mac’s team of writers will be at all the booths, announcements and parties that matter, getting you the scoop on what’s coming up in the world of tech.
There’s a lot for any Apple fan to get excited about in the run-up to CES, but this year, we think you want to pay a lot of attention to what’s coming out of Las Vegas in relation to home automation. Chances are, everything from your oven to your lights to your thermostat are going to be controlled by your iPhone in just a few years time… and even Apple wants in on the action.
The second-generation Nest thermostat has begun reaching Apple retail stores across the United States and Canada just in time for Christmas. Designed by Tony Fadell, a former Apple employee who’s often referred to as the father of the iPod, the Nest thermostat is an intelligent device that learns exactly how warm or how cool you like your home to be at different times during the day. It can also be controlled remotely via your computer or iOS device.
Before the touchscreen iPhone was revealed at MacWorld in 2007, Apple had a team of engineers working on a click-wheel phone that was kind of like a mashup of an iPod and a phone. It was never released, but the work that went into it is pretty fascinating.
In an interview with TechCrunch, former Apple engineer and Nest co-founder Matt Rogers talks about what it was like to work on the click-wheel iPhone when no one else at the company even knew Apple was developing a phone.
“Father of the iPod” Tony Fadell’s company Nest has released version 2.0 of its Apple-like thermostat. And like any good Apple update, the Nest 2.0 is thinner, better and good-looking-er.
https://youtu.be/B9qCLs8txBo
The Apple online store went down for just under seven hours this morning, and many of us were hoping that it would reappear with new the MacBook Pro in tow. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, but there was one new product: the Nest Learning Thermostat that was invented by former Apple engineer and the “father of the iPod” Tony Fadell.
Tony Fadell is often referred to as the ‘father of the iPod’. He’s a former Apple engineer who helped develop Apple’s first portable music player along with Jeff Robbin, and he’s just announced a new 100-person startup called Nest Labs.
Having been a former DJ and overseeing 18 iterations of the iPod and the three generations of the iPhone, we’ve been keen to find out what Fadell and his company have been working on. But it isn’t a revolutionary new music player or communication device. It’s a thermostat.
