A fresh round of 2024 reviews on Matter – the standard that was supposed to finally unify the smart home – reads a bit like performance feedback for a promising intern: great potential, not quite ready to be left alone with anything important. Devices “sort of” work together, depending on which app, which version, and which vendor’s interpretation of “standard” you happen to be using.
The promise was simple: buy what you want, plug it in, and let Matter handle the translation layer. Instead, we’ve added Matter as yet another thing to troubleshoot when the lights don’t turn on. The average homeowner didn’t ask for a protocol lesson; they just want the dimmer to dim without filing a support ticket.
What this really exposes is how hard true interoperability is when every company still wants to own the experience. You can’t standardize your way around misaligned incentives.
If the “unifying” standard still requires Reddit threads and flowcharts, how close are we really to a mainstream smart home? And how many half-fixes will people tolerate before deciding that dumb switches weren’t so bad?
Related article: The Verge
