While it’s only slight evidence, it feels like a hint that whatever Apple does introduce will have something to do with Thread.
Bringing it all together
Thread is a low-power, wireless mesh networking protocol built to support smart homes. It takes communication between the devices out of the router to create a self-healing mesh network, which means that if one device goes down, the mesh will reconfigure itself. It also cuts contention — competition among devices sharing a connection — on Wi-Fi, and while I imagine wireless network interference may remain a problem, given how crowded these wavelengths have become, particularly in built-up areas, it may make for a more stable networking system.
The other challenge we’ve had with smart home devices concerns resilience. Some smart devices have lifespans measurably shorter than the non-smart devices they replace, and I’ve found some incredibly hard to migrate to new networks if you replaced your old one.