>Smart home living

To her chagrin, Jennifer Phin is newly excited about geofencing

Apple’s wwdc event may have saved my marriage, with the announcement of new developments in geofencing. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type into a Google Doc, but hey, it’s 2017, politics has gone nuts, and apparently you can eat Pop Tarts without toasting them first – so let’s just accept the new reality and move on. My husband loves geofencing.

Loves it. When he leaves the house, all the lights go off. As his car pulls back into the drive at night, a tree of twinkling fairy lights blossoms and welcomes him home. When he climbs into bed and says “Goodnight” to Siri, the house falls into darkness save for a small nightlight in our daughter’s room. Sometimes he talks wistfully of the day that our Eve Motion sensor will inform us of movement in our attic when we’re both out, rather than when I charge up there to chase an overconfident bat. Although why that’s a dream scenario I really have no idea.

This is all fine and dandy, except that our geofencing is tied to his devices. So for the first week after setting it up, and intermittently since, the child and I find ourselves alternately plunged into darkness, confused by a nightlight, or startled by a tree. My nerves are now completely shot.

But hope, like a toddler caught in the dark on a potty, springs. Apple’s WWDC keynote this year announced an update to HomeKit to allow multiuser geofencing. So soon the house will only go dark if both my husband and I are out, and will be lit again when the first of us returns. Hooray! Great news for everyone, except the kid, but hopefully she won’t be leaving the house alone any time soon. Hey, Apple, geofencing for kids, WWDC 2018? See you there!