From the Editor’s Desk: Will AI Finally Make the Smart Home … Smart? ⭐

Smart home tech is a rat’s nest of incompatibility, complexity, and cost, and now it’s getting an AI upgrade. The excitement I see about this shift is disconcerting and perplexing. Will we ever learn?

Probably not.
? Hope springs eternal
I don’t know how anyone else discovers or consumes the news that comes out of our ridiculous industry, but my tech feeds have devolved into a sea of advertising masquerading as news, temporary excitement over the bauble of the day before moving on instantly to the next thing, ignorance, and other stupidity.

This is depressing, but I vaguely accept that it’s inevitable. What I don’t quite understand, and maybe never will given that I find myself falling into this trap sometimes too, is the misplaced hopefulness. Maybe, just maybe, that thing that has never worked right and has done nothing but disappoint me will finally fulfill its empty promises and make our lives whole again.

Case in point, the coverage I see in the wake of recent Amazon and Google smart home announcements. And this silliness will wind up once again later this month, or in November, whenever Apple announces a new HomePod Mini.

It’s happening!

It’s not happening. But we pretend that it is. Maybe self-delusion is part of the human condition, a biological survival mode of sorts in which hope, however impossible, gets us through the tough times mentally. I don’t know. What I do know is that we need to get past that and be more realistic. And heck, perhaps we’ll save some money and time in the process.

Amazon, Apple, and Google have pushed smart home hardware, software, services, and, more recently, even standards-based interoperability, for years. In Amazon’s case, this has generally resulted in a tsunami of announcements each Fall, followed by the quiet cancellation of approximately one-third of the products it just announced. In Apple’s and Google’s cases, we see occasional signs of life followed by literally years of flat-lining silence with no meaningful announcements or upgrades.
? It’s all about trust
Why would anyone trust any of these companies?

Let’s say you’re an Apple fan. You’re firmly immersed in the ecosystem, like a tick on a dog’s back, happily feeding Apple hundreds of dollars every month for Apple One and iCloud, and happily forking over thousands of dollars every year on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Apple has rewarded your obedience with the Apple TV, HomePod, and HomePod Mini on the hardware front, which were last updated in 2022, 2023, and 2023/2024, respectively. There’s a HomeKit something something that predates the standards Apple mostly now supports too. It offers a Home app for managing smart home equipment, just like the other companies, but not on Apple TV for some reason. Oh, and there’s always Siri, which I think we all understand to be ... lackluster. I’m trying to be kind here. But Siri did delay Apple’s smart display ambitions.

Google is even worse. This company ignores its own products...