Apple Homekit – the Long Con
Key topics
The author criticizes Apple's recent changes to HomeKit, feeling that it undermines ownership and privacy, sparking a debate among commenters about the trade-offs between convenience, privacy, and control in smart home ecosystems.
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50m
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Based on 26 loaded comments
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- 01Story posted
Sep 30, 2025 at 7:29 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Sep 30, 2025 at 8:20 AM EDT
50m after posting
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16 comments in 1-2h
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 30, 2025 at 7:06 PM EDT
3 months ago
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In that case why not use an open solution like home assistant?
> Back in 2019, I started my journey of self-hosting iCloud and disconnecting from Apple services. Despite a few inconveniences, I am quite content with the level of customization, privacy, and ownership my self-hosted services provide. At the time I was happy that HomeKit, unlike all the alternatives such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa, did not require iCloud or the need to round-trip to their servers. ... Apple now wants to lock down your HomeKit devices to an iCloud account.
Right now, I’m typing this on my iPhone in Safari, and the dark keyboard overlay has a rounded edge which is different to the rounded edge of the light grey background (and of the phone screen itself). It looks like amateur hour. I see no evidence of pride in anything Apple has made recently.
Then you never really owned them.
Some people prefer to default allow and then they come up against a problem, decide to deny or continue allow.
Some people prefer default deny and when they come up against a problem, decide to allow or continue deny.
Start off using iCloud, become aware of problem, make a decision to try and self-host. Default allow, IMO.
(I run homebridge and hack my own HomeKit devices, FWIW)
What has happened is that iCloud is now required for syncing settings across devices _and_ being able to tunnel back to your Apple TV/HomePod (whatever is your home hub) and control things remotely - which is not quite how the article puts it.
And this does nothing to the hub support for third party devices. They'll work on V2 just the same as V1. All V2 does is update how the iCloud specific data is synced between devices and it's format to support larger homes better.
https://pimylifeup.com/home-assistant-homekit/
Did you not read the article?
HomeKit devices do not lock you into Apple in any way. This is just apparently a change in the Home app, which is not a requirement to use HomeKit devices.
Not because my surname is stallman but rather if I’m going through the hassle of DIY then it needs to be durable and independent
It's coming, and lots of HN commenters are gonna be confused with Apples hypocrisy.
It seems like we’d do better to positively support products like that though, rather than not buy them and then only complain when they rework their products and get rid of the privacy features the market doesn’t seem to care about.
(I realize I’m conflating the OP and the market at large a bit here, but from Apple’s perspective they’re both just “the market.” I think he should have the ability to downgrade his equipment to a version that doesn’t require iCloud, though.)
Personally, I use HomeKit with Home Assistant as the "backend" and it's working fine. HomeKit can see and act on exactly what I need it to.
Easy to check if you own any device, flash your own OS/firmware into it. ;-)