New Home Collection banner offers Apple-influenced accessories

On Tuesday as a part of its deluge of smart home announcements, Apple has launched something a bit different: a series of products called Apple Home Collection that areβ¦ not quite Apple products, but not not Apple products. Instead, theyβre βdesigned in collaborationβ with partners, in this case LG Electronics and Schneider Electric.
Itβs hard to tell where one company ends and the other begins, but if you carry the weight of a brand like Apple, having Apple stand over the shoulder of some other company and sprinkle in some secret ingredients isnβt the worst approach if you donβt want to actually build and support those products yourself.
According to Apple, each accessory can be set up with one tap from an iPhone, and only requires the Apple Home app. (That describes a lot of products today, tooβitβll be interesting to see if Appleβs added some new tech just for these products or if theyβre largely using standard techniques that other products in the market can offer.)
Now to the products, which will be available starting in December, and all of which share a βclean, minimal aesthetic and premium materials,β which would probably be your first clue that Apple was involved in their design.

LG is offering four cameras, all of which capture 2.5K video and connect directly with iCloud for video via the HomeKit Secure Video specification.1 Thereβs a video doorbell (with chime integrated with HomeView, HomePod, and HomePod mini), a combination camera and floodlight, a standard outdoor camera, and an indoor camera that can tilt down automatically to physically stop monitoring when a family member enters the home.

Apple gets in the smart lock game with LGβs Smart Deadbolt Lock, which uses UWB for automatic unlocking when you approach the door, like the locks released earlier this year by Aqara and Schlage. Itβs also got NFC support for non-UWB devices, a numeric keypad, and a hidden physical key slot.
And then there are the smart thermostats. There are two of these, from LG and Schneider Electric. The two thermostats support external temperature and humidity sensors as well as those built in to HomeView, HomePod, and HomePod mini. Itβs unclear what differences the two products have, but Appleβs press release hints that there might be some different kinds of system compatibility, perhaps for the home heating and cooling systems themselves, though both are described as working βwith a broad range of HVAC systems.β
Every one of the accessories supports Thread, which Apple has been building into its devices for a while now. While it doesnβt seem like thereβs much here that hasnβt been done in other smart home products, Appleβs stamp of approval is important. If you donβt do a lot of research, even today you can end up buying a smart home product that has hidden gotchas. These devices will presumably be as standard and Apple-friendly as they come.
That said, other smart home products also seem to live up to everything Apple is describing with the Home Collection. Until these products ship, it will be hard to determine if thereβs some special stuff Apple is doing with these products thatβs unavailable to other products, but at a glance it doesnβt seem so.
- iCloud+ storage plans support one (50GB), up to five (200GB), or unlimited (2TB) cameras.Β β©