cg27

nubus said:

Current HomePod mini is known for getting bricked (as was the original HomePod). My last mini stopped working (restart, connect to Mac,... no connection for days) earlier this week and there is no repair program. Hard to recommend any HomePod given that the quality issues are all over the net with some users reporting to have seen several units die. I only used this one as a HomeKit hub. Apple will need to address these quality issues. 

dewme said:

I have high hopes that Apple takes a leading role on home automation. There are still way too many fiefdoms and silos tied to individual product manufacturers or technology specific consortiums. The promise of Matter is to reduce the number of silos or at least formalize the interoperability between the existing ones while expanding the notion of a common system standard. My decades of trying to do the exact same thing in the industrial networking and device management domain reminds me that what Matter is trying to do is not easy at all. It is difficult at many levels due to inertia and the loss of total control that occurs when moving from proprietary standards to open standards. The path to a common standard must include ways to aggregate existing proprietary, closed, and semi-closed standards into the new common standard. It's not a step function, it's a slowly rising change that will take several years to reach critical adoption levels.

I'm not speaking in derogatory terms at all when I say that Apple is part of the problem. So is the Z-Wave consortium and several other not-really-open standards tied to Amazon, Google, Hue, and a whole lot of products using raw Ethernet based methodologies. If Matter is to matter,  the majority of these players must sign-up to creating a path from where they are to where Matter wants them to be. Quite a few of them have already started, like Zigbee, Amazon, Apple, and other device makers that have already added Matter support to their existing product lines. The Matter consortium has put the watering hole in place and paved the path that others can get to it. It's now up the device vendors to make their move.

More importantly, in my opinion, is that some key and highly influential players like Apple must assume a role as Matter system builders and integrators. The only way I see this happening is for Apple to be in a position to deliver some level of turnkey systems that buyers can immediately put in place to give them a functioning home automation system. Even a limited turnkey system or "starter kit" that has all the essential pieces would be good enough, even if there are non-Apple components in the kit. But Apple needs to put itself in a position to be one of the central hubs at the center of a integrated system. This includes providing a visual rendering or virtual model of the user's home, not a simple grid of boxes or a network topological view. The current Home app just doesn't cut it. Hosting the visualization piece on a Mac, iPad, or iPhone is not bad, but hosting it on the Apple Vision Pro as a premium option would be the most immersive, realistic, and engaging way to navigate, manage, and specialize the system for individual installations.

Apple can do this. With HomeKit Apple assumed "If you spec it out, they will come," assuming all of the third party pieces would fall into place to allow users to put together a system like stacking Legos. Didn't work. Where it is moving at all it's doing so at a glacial pace for all but the most dedicated users. Apple needs to deliver a complete solution, even one that's a minimally viable one but still a functioning and working system that delivers value. Users need to experience home automation as a system so they can fully appreciate it and later adapt it to to their specific needs with additional hardware and software elements supplied by various vendors who've signed up to support Matter.

hexclock said:

They just take turns diving into a swimming pool filled with $100 bills. Cannon balls off the roof. 

jblongz said:

Tim's smile is also a frown.  Intriguing