The Verge’s review of Matter’s rollout captures the smart home’s eternal problem: great ambition, messy execution. Matter was supposed to be the universal translator that finally made devices play nicely together. Instead, early adopters are discovering that compatibility depends on which version of which app is talking to which brand’s interpretation of “support.” It’s like watching diplomats negotiate peace while speaking slightly different dialects.
The smart home has always promised convenience but delivered homework. Matter is a step in the right direction, but it exposes how fragmented the ecosystem really is. Manufacturers still want to differentiate on features, lock-in, and ecosystems – three things fundamentally opposed to “one standard to unite them all.” Users just want their lights to turn on without needing to open a subreddit.
If the industry can align around reliability and simplicity, the smart home could go mainstream, not just live in tech-enthusiast households. But that requires brands to stop treating interoperability as a marketing line and start treating it as a responsibility.
How many failed standards does it take before the industry realizes compatibility is the real product? And would consumers tolerate the chaos if smart homes weren’t, ironically, trying to be so “smart”?
Related article: The Verge
