I get them not just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. And I get not having a ton of devices supported in ver 0.5 or even ver 1.0.
But to not have things like power reporting in an outlet is pretty dumb absurd. There are some very odd oversights here.
What the article stated was that device manufacturers, who want to stick an “Apple Home” logo on their packaging, are using Matter to do so. This is because it is much simpler for them to just support Matter, instead of building and certifying Apple “HomeKit” compatible devices. Amazon, Google, and SmartThings all have had their own, proprietary solutions/APIs that device manufacturers have had to write custom code for, in order for their devices to work with those platforms. Apple HomeKit was the exact same way. Early on, HomeKit certified devices actually required special hardware chips to be onboard. Apple relaxed this requirement years ago, and as a result, many more companies have been able to get their devices to work with HomeKit.
However, now that Matter has arrived, device manufacturers only need to write code to support one unified standard that Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, plus many other companies all helped to design. This will greatly simplify and lower the costs to bring a new device to market. But…it is still going to take a while to see this dream come to fruition. Everyone is still trying to work out bugs in their implementations of Matter and Matter over Thread. Based on what data I have seen to date, it appears that Apple is actually doing the best at implementing Matter Onboarding, Matter Controller and Matter Thread Border Router functionality. Apple also makes it pretty easy for Matter devices to be shared with other Matter Controllers like Hubitat.
Thus, I really don’t see why you are seeing Apple as the “bad guy” with respect to Matter? Apple Home (and HomeKit) has always supported multiple Apple Home “Hub” devices on one’s home network. Apple Home uses iCloud to provide a seamless and secure remote control solution when away from home. Apple has been adding new functionality to Apple Home consistently over the years. It has been a slow and deliberate pace to maintain security and quality for the end-users. Is Apple Home to be all, end all solution to home automation? Absolutely not (at least not for me!). But it has made steady progress over the years, and Apple does appear to be very supportive of Matter - which helps to open up the platform to a lot more device manufacturers without the complexity of locking them into the older HomeKit platform.
My bigger concern is that I don't have Apple products, I don't want Apple products.
I'm concerned about ANY trend that would make something purposefully more difficult or impossible without an Apple product(s).
Not to mention, it seems almost certain, that there is a steep cost to be licensed to add that "Apple Home" note to one's packaging. I ALSO don't have any desire to be stuck enriching Apple for something I expressly don't want. 
We know who doesn’t own any AAPL shares. 
Zero requirement to have any Apple products in order to use Matter devices. All Matter functionality is available to any Matter controller. Including Hubitat. To use a turn of the century phrase the article was FUD.
My only annoyance in this whole matter is thread border routers / thread networks.
Because there's no way to get and share Apple credentials on Android, those with both Apple and Android are mostly screwed - unless they set up everything on Apple.
Setup everything up on Android, and get an Apple TV or other thread border router Apple device later? Tough s***, separate thread network. That was completely a decision Apple, and Apple alone, made And I think it's fine to be annoyed with them for that.
That said thread interoperability issues are not 100% unique to Apple. I had four Google TBR and then added two Amazon hubs that can act as TBR, and the Amazon ones decided to make a separate thread network too even though they weren't supposed to...
As everyone has already pointed out, it is early days for matter. Maybe the thread network side will become more interoperable between vendors in the future.
Imho The rollout is a disaster and to me that's very surprising considering all the huge major players involved in creating this mess. they really hype this thing up and it feels like they've fallen flat on their face especially considering all the billions of resources these gigantic companies have, I think it's funny.
This all sounds so much simpler than setting up and managing a Z-type mesh network... 
I saw that coming years ago when they announced this new protocol, but almost everyone dismissed my prediction like I was some type of unhinged nutjob. Granted I am a nutjob, but I was a lot more right than wrong about how lousy the initial rollout of Matter would be.
You can't be shocked when 3 mega companies with very disparate interests say they are going to work together for the betterment of the consumer. That should be red flag #1.
This is all not a surprise when you consider Google being one of the primary players. They have a pretty terrible track record of working for the end user, they are more interested in data harvesting and ad revenue than anything else. Their list of half-baked and discontinued products is pretty staggering when you consider they haven't been around all that long, relatively speaking.
That is what I don't get. You aren't really saving any steps with Matter over pairing with a hub.
People like to point out that "you don't need a hub with Matter". But what is a Thread border router or Matter Coordinator if not a version of a hub, albeit maybe lite version of one? Or "you can easily share with Matter", except I now can share my Hubitat with Google, Alexa, IFTTT, and any number of other services.
This is the key right here, if you think of it as a transition from traditional Wi-Fi devices to Matter (over Wifi or Thread). Previously they would make the device which would talk to their own system, usually via cloud connection. They need cloud servers and software for the cloud connection. Then they need a mobile app, both iOS and Android. Then to integrate with other systems they all need their own skill/integration, So Amazon, Google Home, Smart Things, etc... Then on top of that, they may need to have a separate device sku/hardware, if they want to have Apple HK certification, and then that hardware may only work on HK. That all makes it really hard to enter the market with wide support.
Now with Matter, they could get by with just making the hardware and firmware conform to Matter standards and that's it, done, launch the product. They would need zero other software.
Sound familiar? Yeah, just like Z-Wave and Zigbee (sometimes). That's why people (us) already using Z-Wave and Zigbee networks are not very impressed with Matter.
Hopefully what we get in the end is all the goodness of Z-wave, all the good from Zigbee, combined together with none of the issues from either. I think that's direction they were trying to go.
I have said this before, but a good reason to bring Matter to HE will be for users who start out with Matter devices on any other "basic" hub platform. They outgrow that platforms limitations with automations and control, they want something more powerful but not too complicated. Something supporting Matter devices like HE or ST would be a logical next step.
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Download the Hubitat app
