Why do this "smart home hub" thing reminds me of Apple's attempt at making the Mac the hub of our digital lives, only to get nowhere?
It's not just that all these vendors want to be the hub, something has to do the communication.
Of course it still makes sense to many here to run their own gateway for reasons of privacy and control, but perhaps the market at large could go for city-wide third-party networks, or something. Of course not everyone lives in cities, but perhaps shared networks might work in more rural settings, too.
This "hub" is for IoT devices.
Seems pretty different to me too.
Jobs hub was not iTunes, it was the Macintosh sitting in the livingroom corner.