The one I don't quite know how to solve is when I'm tapping a device to connect to -- whether a WiFi router or an AirPlay speaker or whatever -- and I swear to god, half the time my intended device slides out from under me a newly discovered device enters above and pushes it down. Or sometimes devices disappear and pull it up. Maybe it's because I live in an apartment building with lots of devices.
I've seen this solved in prototypes by always adding new devices at the bottom, and graying out when one disappears, with a floating "resort" button so you can find what you're looking for alphabetically. But it's so clunky -- nobody wants a resort button. And you can't use a UX delay on every update or you'd never be able to tap anything at all for the first five seconds.
Maybe ensuring there's always 3 seconds of no changes, then gray out everything for 0.5 seconds while sliding in all new devices discovered from the past 3.5 seconds, then re-enabling? I've never seen anything like that attempted.