On the heels of a devastating election, where not only did the electoral college elect Donald Trump, but he also earned the popular vote, I am inclined to write about anything else! And as I sit here, sipping my coffee before work, I am thinking about my smart home.

From May 2010 until October 2022, I was an Android user, exclusively. During that time I owned phones from HTC, Samsung, Google Nexus, Motorola, OnePlus, and Google Pixel (I made a spreadsheet not that long ago, to keep track). And because I was deep in the Google ecosystem (Related: Stadia), Google would give us free Google Home speakers from time-to-time, or one would come with the new Chromecast we just bought, or as a perk for being a YouTube Red subscriber, etc. So our home has more Google Home speakers than we need. Some old ones (pre-Nest) don’t work great, but we still have them. And we have a single Google Home with a screen.

After a recent basement flood, we had a device installed in the pipes that will sound an alarm if there’s a backup into the device. Google Home, and Alexa, can listen for these alarms and send an SMS message if it goes off. And Apple HomePod can do the same thing. The difference between the three is that Alexa and Google Home require you to pay a monthly fee for this privilege, whereas HomePod comes with it. HomePod’s more expensive, but it pays for itself in a year.

So I have a HomePod in the basement, and Google Home’s everywhere, including the basement.

And it’s interesting to me how different they are.

The HomePod is much more polished than the Google Home, but slightly more stupid. The HomePod always understands me (as does Siri on my phone), whereas Google will often remind me “about the blue dangles”, which is so far off what I asked to be reminded about, that I cannot work it out from memory!

We all know their shortcomings. The C-suite people of Google, Apple, and Amazon must have tried their devices. They must know about the specific shortcomings. What baffles me, though, is how little many of them are doing about that. Apple must know that Apple-fans will buy anything they sell. So why not add coffee maker support, or thermostat support, etc. to HomeKit? Why not try to ‘win’ this part of the tech ecosystem? I’m pretty sure some people in Europe would move to Apple (from the there-dominant Android) if the home ecosystem was killer.

People around me who are all-in on Apple – have iPhones, Macs, AppleTVs, etc., have Alexa in their homes. Alexa! Why on Earth people would trust Amazon with the sounds from their homes, I don’t know, but even if you do, why not have the one that works seamlessly with your phone, computer, etc?

My HomePod failed, recently, to report the temperature properly from its internal temperature sensor and so I chatted with Apple support in Messages on my Mac. They had me plug the HomePod into my Mac and do an update. It was such a smooth experience, and one that Google cannot compete with, that I would move over to HomeKit, if they could control my mini splits, my washing machine, a future coffee maker, etc.

So, what’s the situation for me? I think the best solution to that question, is a table:

	Brand
Feature	Apple	Google Home	Samsung SmartThings
Consistently transcribes correctly	Y	N	N/A
AppleTV	Y	N	N
Arlo Cameras	N	Y	Y
August Lock	Y	Y	Y
ChromeCast	N	Y	N
Google Nest	N (HomeBridge: Y)	Y	Y
HomePod	Y	N	N
Hose	N	Y	N
LG Washing Machine	N	Y	Y
Lutron Lights	Fast	Slow	Slow
Minisplits (Cielo)	N	Y	N
Minisplits (Haier)	N	Y	N
Samsung Fridge	N	Y	Y
Smart plugs	Fast	Slow	Y
State Hybrid Hot Water Heater	N	N (App only)	N
TCL Dehumidifier	N	Y	N
Toshiba Microwave	N	Y	N
Velux Blinds	Y	Y	N
Xbox Series X	N	Y	N
Yamaha Amp	Y	Y (Limited)	N
Total (Brands)	6	14	6

As you can see, Google’s connectivity is much better than is Apple’s or Samsung’s. Apple’s is faster, because it doesn’t reach out to the internet to perform tasks, but that’s a matter of up to a second in normal use. Still, a second can feel like an age as you walk downstairs into a dark room.

Both Samsung SmartThings and Apple’s HomeKit connect only with more expensive devices, which probably speaks to quality. You can see the relative quality in the absolutely awful Midea app that the Toshiba microwave uses. To be fair, there’s not really much benefit to a smart microwave; even with our microwave in the basement, out of sight when we’re cooking in the kitchen, we rarely heat anything long enough not to stand and monitor it. The LG washing machine allows you to download bespoke or niche cycles to the machine, but we really only use it to identify when we need to do a tub clean, and when a load of laundry has finished, if we don’t hear the tune it plays.

HomeKit could get much better, though: Paying companies to make Matter bridges for their devices, supporting more categories of device, etc. would all bring products into the fold. When we buy a smart doorbell, it will vehemently be HomeKit compatible for two reasons: Privacy, and the ability to view the stream on our Apple TV.

Unfortunately, my spouse bought our video cameras from a company that promised they were HomeKit compatible when they weren’t. Only the more expensive versions work with HomeKit, and then only with a separate hub.

Until Matter, Thread, and other standards become the norm, and while some categories of smart home product remain unsupported by some platforms, the smart home we all dream of will remain a niche thing that only the nerdiest and wealthiest will bother with.