Macworld:

HomeKit, the company’s smart home framework, has been around since 2014, and though it was slow to take off, a few key changes have helped it become more popular as the years have gone on.

That said, there’s a lot of competition in the smart home arena, which can mean extra complications when the field is growing so fast: fragmentation, problems with interoperability, and so on. But, in a rare move for Apple, it seems as though the company is moving to combat those problems head on…by working with others.

Apple still has an opportunity to be a player in the home automation market but “slow and steady” (or “dragging their feet,” depending on your POV) is going to make that a lot more difficult. Luckily, Amazon and Google have the usual privacy and data security issues that slow adoption but Apple needs to move a lot quicker. I had many people asking me about various home automation solutions over the holidays and it was hard to wholeheartedly recommend anything HomeKit-based.