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Re:Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals by tinus_hn on Friday January 06, 2017 @02:02PM (#13339155)
The Homebridge project provides HomeKit compatibility without Apple authorization. I don't know if Apple controls this using patents or trademarks but you don't technically need Apples authorization.
Re:Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals by stonesam92 on Friday January 06, 2017 @02:38PM (#13339456)
I'm pretty sure that when you register a Homebridge instance to your Apple device though you get a message about the accessory being in test mode.

Homebridge is presumably making use of some debug mode that you wouldn't use in a shipping product - and if you did, Apple wouldn't let you advertise it as officially compatible with HomeKit.

Re:Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals by artimaeis on Friday January 06, 2017 @02:30PM (#13339403)
From what I can tell from Homebridge they provide HomeKit emulation - not compatibility. You're running a local Node server to emulate the Homekit API.

Still neat - but hardly the sort of thing that implies you can ship a product utilizing Homekit without following the MFi spec.

Re:Apple cuts Tim Cook's pay 15% for missing sales goals by eridius on Friday January 06, 2017 @02:40PM (#13339481)
To emulate the iOS HomeKit API, meaning you can write plugins for it to provide support for non-HomeKit-enabled devices. But presumably Homebridge itself must still vend itself as a HomeKit-enabled device on the network or else you wouldn't be able to control it.