The company has made major changes to HomeKit that accelerate the standard’s trajectory, making it easier for manufacturers to use while offering a compelling platform for the future of connected devices in the home.
Back when HomeKit was announced, Apple set forth rules that made the standard incredibly onerous for device makers: they had to add a specific Apple-approved authentication chip to their devices, get the device approved by the company, and tell nobody about it. If they were unlucky, maybe Apple would take issue with where it was being manufactured and kill the whole project. Oh, and if you were an Android user, you were shit out of luck.
That position has changed in a big way this year. At WWDC in May, Apple quietly announced that it planned to relax some of those restrictions. The biggest change was the introduction of software-based authentication. In other words, you won’t have to replace your stuff to make it Apple-compatible going forward, and you’ll get HomeKit’s lauded security thrown in for free — provided the device maker actually goes in and implements it.
