All Apple All Day

It's been a really long process, but we're finally done. Today is the Grand Opening of our newly-finished basement! Ultimately, this was less of a DIY project than we would have liked. But it turned out a lot better than I'd hoped. And a lot better than I was capable of doing on my own.

As we all know, HomeKit will finally get an official Apple app with iOS 10. It's shocking that it took this long.  And frankly, it's shocking that anyone made HomeKit-compatible devices with no centralized way to control them.  Well, the past is past.... and finally, we can move forward with our iOS home.  But who wants to wait until fall? Let's jump the gun, and get our HomeKit ecosystem started early....

Our last basement update was titled "Entering the Home Stretch".  We're even closer to the finish line now. 

Finally. It's been 2 years. TWO YEARS. But that wait is over. Today, Apple announced that iOS 10 will have a dedicated HomeKit app, called "Home". This isn't the huge step forward that we may have been hoping for. We'll have to wait for that Alexa-style Apple speaker. But it's the first tangible step we've seen from Apple on the HomeKit front since... well, since HomeKit was announced. Home will act as a single controller for all of your HomeKit devices. You'll be able to set scenes, and use proximity triggers for those scenes. For instance, the lights will turn on when my wife pulls into the garage at night. Time will tell - but this should kick HomeKit into high gear. With guaranteed real-estate on every iPhone, developers will be more likely to support Apple's ecosystem. Adding channels to tvOS just got better. The other huge takeaway from WWDC? Single sign-on for all tvOS apps. Today, adding a tvOS app is an almost hila

It's that time of year again - the Apple Keynote at the WorldWide Developers Conference.

New Columns! And all the furniture in a huge pile! The basement is a construction zone again - and as the Official Floor Installer, I'm just trying to stay ahead of the contractors.

This NuCore flooring review will also function as a Basement Update: We're finally, officially moving forward on the Phase 2 finish work.

It's June - which means it's almost WWDC Keynote time.  A mere 11 days from now, we'll get some answers about what Apple has planned for us. 

Thanks to everyone who reads AAAD! We recently blew past 500,000 pageviews.

It's May 12, which means that we're almost exactly one month to the next Apple keynote - the WWDC event on June 13. And finally - FINALLY - we may see some movement on HomeKit. But is it too little, too late?

We're moving into Basement Phase 2! That means we'll be taking the space from a roughed-in, usable-but-spartan basement, to a fully-finished living space.

Well, that was easy. It turns out that the in-wall wires WERE the issue.

Day 2 of our Ethernet project. At the very least, we've isolated the problem.

We finally got started on an Original AAAD project last night - wired Ethernet. I've been thinking about this one for years. 

This review is probably coming a bit late for most early adopters - Sony's 2016 4K HDTVs are already in stores. But for bargain shoppers like AAAD, the 65X830C 4K TV absolutely gets the job done. And it's a 4K TV set that can be found for under $2,000.