Cupertino starts selling Tony Fadell’s “learning” thermostat

May 30, 2012 14:20 GMT  ·  By

After almost a whole day of downtime, Apple’s online store is back up featuring the one and only Nest learning thermostat, a product by startup Nest founded by the grandfather of the iPod, Tony Fadell.

A former Apple employee, Fadell started his own company the minute he left Apple, leaving his empty spot for Mark Papermaster. Things didn’t turn out too great for Papermaster, but they did for Fadell, apparently.

The guy has kicked off sales of his elusive new product which has some Apple DNA in it, as fanboys will agree. Best of all, Apple is featuring it on the virtual shelves of its online store across the United States.

Apple retail stores are also set to carry the hardware.

“The Nest Learning Thermostat helps you stop wasting energy, while providing control using your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac,” says Nest.

“Consider that your thermostat controls about half your energy bill—more than TV, appliances, and lighting combined. But it's wasting energy every time it turns on the heating or cooling system in an empty house. The Nest Learning Thermostat solves this problem by programming itself, turning itself down when you're away, and keeping track of your energy use,” Nest explains.

The key features of the product include its ability to remember preferred temperatures or create a personalized schedule; it can turn itself down when your house is empty, it uses Airwave to automatically lower cooling costs, takes commands from the iPhone, iPad, or even your Mac, shows a log of when heating or cooling was on and shows a graph of what causes you to waste energy.

You’ll need to shell out $249.95 (€200) for this nifty little gizmo, and Nest has you covered with instructions on how to install it, complete with a video demonstration on how to determine if it’s compatible with your house.