![]() My frustration is that this is the lazy way out. What can we actually do? Pay, or lose access. For those that already bought in, features that we already paid for are being taken away. My frustration is that this is retro-active. My frustration isn’t the $2/month ($17.99/year) fee. In this case, the company can decide to start charging a fee for something that was normally bundled with my original purchase price, and I have no recourse. We can get comfortable using them and when the server owners decide they no longer want to support, they can just pull the plug and we are left without any recourse. This is a big concern whenever we purchase devices that are controlled using someone else’s servers (or what people call, The Cloud). Why? According to the FAQ that was in the email, they say: Why is Skydrop now needing to charge a monthly fee? The very reason to have a smart controller is now being taken away. ![]() Reading through the email, the folks at Skydrop are essentially saying that they can no longer afford to let me use the app to control my sprinkler controller. The email proceeded to tell me, very professionally, that I now must pay a monthly fee for what I’ve already paid for when purchasing my controller. ![]() The title was “Introducing Skydrop Plus”. Again, this should all come from the Matter community, but Apple can certainly help fund some of it.A few days ago, I received an email from Skydrop, my smart sprinkler controller, that I almost glossed over. App Store issues, sure.Īnother area that can jump start adoption of new standards like Matter is the development of toolkits that include reference and sample implementations of the most common functional implementations for both client and server side, testing guidance, protocol sniffers, tracing/logging tools, verification tools, conformance requirements, etc. Third parties shouldn’t need to be knocking on Apple’s lab doors to deal with Swift issues. This is really no different than how Apple handles the relationship between Swift, which is an open standard, and Apple’s app and platform level integration and ecosystem. Apple will still retain total control over HomeKit and offer significant third part opportunities, but the technical basis for connectivity and integration should be around Matter. Again the goal is to form a broad knowledge base around the Matter standard rather than just HomeKit. These types of investments can occur across the academic spectrum, from trade schools and vocational programs up through college and graduate levels. Part of this heavy lifting should include forming and at least partially funding alliances with academic institutions to promote Matter within that community, both on the technology side as well as the conformance side. Ideally the primary technical challenges for HomeKit adopters should be delegated to Matter experts rather than to Apple. To improve HomeKit adoption Apple really needs to go all-in on Matter even if it means they are doing some of the heavy lifting that could be delegated to others and are being careful not to impose too much proprietary influence over smaller adopters. In my opinion the future success of HomeKit hinges on how well Apple and other vendors support the Matter standard. This is an unfortunate scenario but hopefully an isolated one.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |