Will Matter finally be able to do what it should have always done?

Matter, the smart home interoperability standard, might finally get a feature that should have been there from day one: a single shared Matter network managed by multiple ecosystems. With this feature, called Joint Fabric, smart devices added to the network will be controllable by any authorized platform — Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and the rest. No need to “share” your smart light between apps; set it up once, and control it everywhere. It’s like your smart home is a joint bank account and your platforms of choice all have signing authority. Joint Fabric is part of the new Matter 1.6 spec announced this week at Unify , the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s inaugural conference, in Austin, Texas. While there are no new device types in the spec, there are a few quality-of-life updates. There’s now support for full NFC setup, which eliminates the need to scan the QR code and lets you just tap to pair. With this, you can also pair a device before powering it on — which could be useful when installing smart bulbs or a wired smart switch. Also new is Thermostat Suggestions, a standardized way for these devices to communicate across ecosystems. It allows an ecosystem to send a time-based “recommendation” that the thermostat can defer or adopt based on input from other platforms. The idea here is that if you manually change the temperature on one platform, the thermostat will ignore an automated request that arrives a few moments later. …