coolingnestJeff Robbin and Tony Fadell were the co-leads behind the development of the original iPod. Now, 10 years past the iPod's introduction, Jeff Robbin is reportedly in charge of Apple's effort to remake the television. But what of Tony Fadell? He promised Steve Jobs that he wouldn't make anything that would compete with Apple products and instead started a new company, Nest Labs, to remake the thermostat.

From TechCrunch's post introducing Nest's Learning Thermostat:

Fadell got the idea designing his green home in Tahoe. He was shocked there wasn’t a single attractive thermostat on the market so he decided to build his own. The size of the market and the potential impact on the planet convinced him it was a great business. And if he didn’t do it, who would? The unit uses the guts of a smart phone and required someone who knows how to build drop-dead-easy user experiences.


The Nest Learning Thermostat is connected to Wi-Fi and can be remotely controlled by a iPhone app or a laptop. The thermostat will retail for $249 when it goes on sale in mid-November.

Top Rated Comments

CBJammin103 Avatar
179 months ago

The Nest Learning Thermostat is connected to Wi-Fi and can be remotely controlled by a iPhone app or a laptop.

Come on people think a little bigger - how about home-devices combined with the [presently hypothetical] Siri third party API?

"Siri, it's a little warm in here"
"Siri, set the living room to 70 degrees whenever I'm home."
"Siri, when I leave for work set the house to 78 degrees for 6 hours."
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MR-Law Avatar
179 months ago
The interviewer is so aggrivating. She does the "mmm, hmm" about 500 times. It was so distracting and all I did was focus on it.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rdlink Avatar
179 months ago
If you watch the promo videos, and the installation support videos on the nest website you'll see that this a pretty amazing product. In fact, I've been waiting for something like this for years. I'll be ordering one as soon as it's available.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
reden Avatar
179 months ago
This guy just gets no love! Remember when the iPod came out? No one thought it would be successful. You could literally replace the words in some of the above comments with iPod, and we're back in 2001. This guy's going to make a ton a money on this, definitely one of those markets people thought didn't need change.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
UltimaKilo Avatar
179 months ago
The woman in the video is so damn annoying! "mhmm...mhmm...mhmm"
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TeamMojo Avatar
179 months ago
The problem I see is that it will learn from people in the house adjusting the thermostat, which at least in my house will NOT be the optimal settings for energy savings. With an "old fashioned" adjustable thermostat I set it up for energy savings and it stays that way. Even if my kids turn up the heat, it is only for the current time segment. The Nest will learn that it should be warmer during that time slot and adjust its settings, thereby eroding the energy savings. That being said, Honeywell could learn a lot about the thermostat interface from the folks at Nest.

Right, but it also learns via presence when you are not there, and turns the heat down. So the point is to make it comfortable when you want it, and then to save energy when you are not there. All automatically.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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