What is Matter and why does it, well, matter?
Setting up your smart home will become a whole lot easier soon, here’s everything you need to know
There are numerous concepts in the history of modern tech that sounded way, way more promising than they turned out to be in practice and “the smart home” is definitely among those. It was supposed to be a digital management system for the 21st-century household: an environment of interconnected devices taking care of everything — from lighting and security to heating and ventilation — on behalf of said home’s residents either intelligently, all on its own, or using voice commands and manual control.
Amazingly enough, tech companies accomplished so many other, much more complicated, things during the last 20 years… but managed to really, really screw up the “smart home” concept for everyone. It’s hard to choose devices of this type that work flawlessly with other devices, as only those specifically designed to do so seem to fit the bill. Manufacturers try to lock consumers into their platforms, ecosystems and apps in order to sell more of their own products. All popular voice assistants can work in the context of a smart home but rarely ever do they control competitors’ products as they very well should.