This is true for most Apple protocols in my experience. I’m supposed to be able to control my Homepod from my watch with a tap but it never works. Sometimes I can’t use the Homepod for minutes until it shows up. iMessage regularly fails to show the blue name for contacts, FaceTime is randomly unavailable for certain contacts, Airpods randomly disconnect, Airdrop rarely works. Tethering is also kind of spotty. The watch Walkie-Talkie function is terrible, dropping bits of the message. How they even implemented a working TCP/IP stack is beyond me. Lo and behold the most reliable “protocol” is HomeKit, but even that is randomly unable to persist name changes.
I’ve encountered many of these as well and have always assumed this was somehow the result of trying to make everything “just work”, wherein providing detailed user feedback or error messages would be some kind of admission that it hadn’t “just worked”.
I've seen one of the Bluetooth guys from Google Glass say that it's perfectly normal in the industry to silently restart the Bluetooth stack before every connection attempt.
My experience suggests that this is true for most Apple products. It either works the way Apple has decided it should work, or it fails silently and mysteriously.
I find a lot of the grief with these protocols is driven by which wifi router is in use. When using the old Apple wifi routers I never had trouble with homekit, airdrop, handoff, airplay or any of the zeroconfig network stuff: as soon as I switched to other brands the issues would pop up (including ones that oddly seem to persist even after disconnecting from wifi - but then disappear when using a different user account on the same machine).
Because of this I feel Apple could do a hugely better job in all of their wireless protocols, as it stands the only truly stable networking appears to be between two iphones.
Specifically with Homekit, a wired Apple TV and good quality home networking equipment with wired access points makes a world of difference. I use Aruba Instant On, but I have had good experiences with Orbi at higher prices and Linksys Velop at the lower end from Costco. Also, if you have a lot of Homekit stuff, it is best to use devices that have their own Zwave or Zigbee or whatever hubs that are then connected via ethernet into your network, to cut down on how much chit chat is flying around on WiFi, especially from cheaper quality homekit devices.
I am overall unimpressed with the consistency of wireless technologies, especially since Apple no longer makes the equipment that provides the backbone (the router/access points). You usually have no idea what quality radios and programming various wireless devices are equipped with, so it is just a crapshoot when dealing with it.
I actually have the exact opposite experience. I have tried multiple different brands, all of which work JUST FINE with any other device, Android, internet connected devices, even my iPhones will work in every single room of my house.
Literally nothing I can do can make every HomePod on my network “just work”.
I would pay literally twice the amount of money for a HomePod with a fucking Ethernet port. Siri itself works amazingly well with it: when it can communicate.
The dream is to be able to wirelessly and effortlessly play music throughout my home, but I’m about to just give the fucking HomePods away and just wire speakers to every room in the house, even if it does cost more, it’ll actually fucking WORK.
Many "just works" things on the local network start failing for me when I'm using a VPN. Maybe check whether that's the reason. But yes, generally the reliability is so-so. Also, the feature to use Apple Watch to unlock the Mac or iPhone works mostly, at best.
I don’t use a VPN and I don’t think it’s my network because I don’t have any problems with “old” protocols (UPNP, samba, RDP/VNC, SSH, everything on top of HTTP). I wonder what Apple’s protocols do that makes them so error prone. If it was one or two of those I’d say it’s a bad department but the amount of errors suggests a deeper problem in the way Apple develops these things.
