Matter launched 4 years ago
The Matter smart home interoperability standard launched about four years ago, having been first announced in 2018 by Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung.
Snapshot · This Week in Tech (Audio)
TWiT 1090: Flock of SQLs - Apple & Microsoft Grapple With Soaring Hardware Prices
Explore episode
Jun 29, 2026
Where this was said
Matter 1.6, Joint Fabric & the Unify Conference
At 1:46:00 · chapter starts 1:44:00
Jennifer attended the first public Unify conference put on by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and came away genuinely encouraged despite years of watching Matter fail to deliver on its day-one promise of effortless cross-device compatibility. Matter launched about four years ago after being announced in 2018 by Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung — all of whom had competing proprietary ecosystems and were reluctant to give up control. The headline announcement from Matter 1.6 is Joint Fabric: instead of each ecosystem creating its own separate network fabric in your home, there will be a single user-owned fabric that multiple platforms can access but none can own. If you use both Apple Home and Amazon Alexa, they will both interface with your fabric rather than fighting for control of it. Jennifer notes this sounds like a small change but represents a significant philosophical concession from four of the most competitive companies in consumer technology. She spoke directly with engineers rather than PR representatives and found genuine momentum. The caveat: standards being agreed on paper and standards appearing in shipping products are very different things, and the history of Matter is littered with features promised for day one that are still not universally implemented.
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