The Matter Protocol could finally fix the smart home

Apple and Google and Amazon are actually working together so soon. Everything in your smart home will be able to talk to everything else. Here's why the matter Alliance matters. I think that you [MUSIC] Here's the word finally too much, but allow me this one. Finally, imagine your Apple home pod being able to control your nest thermostat. Imagine your Amazon Echo being able to control Samsung SmartThings devices. Wait, that one's been true for a while, but that's the point. Right now everything in the Smart Home is so jumbled and confusing. Imagine walking into a hardware store and buying a smart plug. It will probably work with the smart speaker and smart bulbs you already have. Maybe Amazon and Google work with plenty of stuff. Apple not so much. So if you want to use your iPhone instead of your smart speaker Here are several extra hoops to jump through. Enter the Matter Alliance. Let's talk about what it is and where it came from, the steps we're seeing so far, and best and worst case scenarios in terms of what comes next. Technically the Matter Alliance is a connectivity standard, but it's more fun to think of it like a high-powered, superhero team up Like the Avengers of the smart home, dope and entirely accurate analogies aside, the matter Alliance party has huge names onboard. The most important trio are obviously Apple, Amazon, Google. These three make the smart speakers and the phones that allow most people to control their smart homes. They're the entry points for a lot of people into connected home stuff. The goal of matter is to make it so that every smart home device can talk to every other smart home device. So if you're shopping for that smart plug, you won't need to worry what it works with you'll just be able to see the matter logo and know that it will work with your Amazon Echo or your Nest Hub or your Apple home pod mini. Better yet you won't actually have to worry about maintaining those connections. If you have a lot of smart home stuff now, you might have noticed that after an update your lightbulbs stop talking to your smart speaker and you need to resync them. That shouldn't happen with matter. It'll be easier for consumers by also making it easier for manufacturers. I mentioned the big three, but think about a tech startup. They'll be able to focus more on the nuts and bolts of the The actual product, they don't need to add compatibility and jump through hoops for each of those major platforms. They can just add matter compatibility and they're done and they don't need to worry about alienating huge swathes of their potential fanbase. It can also make it easier for startups by letting them skip the part where they make an app. You should be able to set up matter compatible products using your platform of choice. So you don't need to download a dozen different apps and fill your phone with bloat. Use that Amazon app that you use to set up your Echo. To also set up your Smart Lock, Mater Alliance is open source so it's easy for programmers to access and use the code. It's been in the works for a little while now. It used to be called the connected home over IP or chip. Well, we all love an acronym Mater Alliance is definitely a better name. And that new name debuted just a couple of months ago as it officially launched. The conductivity standards Alliance is on board to make sure the different devices can talk to each other. That Alliance also used to go by a different name ZigBee If you recognize that name, it's because zigbee is already built into a bunch of small, smart home, sensors and plugs, because zigbee takes a lot less power than Wi-Fi. Aside from the big three and zigbees new look alliance. Here's a handful of other names already on board. Smart things Huawei, Comcast, IKEA and Kroger. For some reason, the grand some feet signify so quite a few names covering retail and internet service providers in areas of the smartphone. Shortly after matter went public we saw the first big concrete steps at Google and Apple's respective developer conferences. At Google i o the search giant said that you'll be able to control your nest learning thermostat using Apple's homekit Smart Home platform. So you can use your Apple home pod Had to change the temperature of your Nest, which is pretty cool. And Google said that you'll be able to use their smart displays and smart speakers to control all matter products. So they're both in terms of giving and receiving commands from that. intern at Apple's WWDC They announced that matter will be built into iOS 15, which is the upcoming operating system for iPhones. And they also showed that you'll be able to give commands to Siri using an eagleby thermostat. And supposedly he could be it's just the first third party device that you'll be able to use to talk to Siri Now you still are going to need to have a home pod nearby to make that work. Apple's always had a bit of a walled garden approach to the smart home. But at least we're taking baby steps in the right direction And I admire their dedication to privacy here. They're sending commands to home pod so that they can process those commands locally. Hopefully Amazon is up next and then we'll really be rolling To make this work matter requires widespread adoption they're doing and saying the right things to make that possible. And if it's spread out, we could see a more seamless, smart home that requires less thought on the part of consumers and less committed resource on the part of startup developers. But the flipside happens if this doesn't keep gaining momentum and adoption, there's a well known webcomic that talks about how many communication standards there are and how confusing it all is. So they decide to fix the problem by creating one to rule them all. And the end result is just another one added to the pile. Thanks XKCD. It is early days for matter, but there are a lot of great signs already. Not only are the big three on board, but they're using their own megaphones to talk about it. So I'm hopeful maybe even by the end of the year, the smart home could be a more serious Place and have everything working together and rainbows and unicorns and happy dances and yeah, it's a sweet dream, and it could all evaporate, but there's legit reason to think it might actually happen this time. So let me know what you think. Is this actually going to live up to the hype? Is it going to be more or less satisfying then Infinity War and Endgame? Comment below. 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