'Smart Devices Are Turning Out To Be a Poor Investment' (androidpolice.com) 155
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police, written by Dhruv Bhutani: As someone who is an early adopter of all things smart and has invested a significant amount of money in building a fancy smart home, it saddens me to say that I feel cheated by the thousands of dollars I've spent on smart devices. And it's not a one-off. Amazon's recent move to block off local ADB connections on Fire TV devices is the latest example in a long line of grievances. A brand busy wrestling away control from the consumer after they've bought the product, the software update gimps a feature that has been present on the hardware ever since it launched back in 2014. ADB-based commands let users take deep control of the hardware, and in the case of the Fire TV hardware, it can drastically improve the user experience. [...] A few years ago, I decided to invest in the NVIDIA Shield. The premium streamer was marketed as a utopia for streaming online and offline sources with the ability to plug in hard drives, connect to NAS drives, and more. At launch, it did precisely that while presenting a beautiful, clean interface that was a joy to interact with. However, subsequent updates have converted what was otherwise a clean and elegant solution to an ad-infested overlay that I zoom past to jump into my streaming app of choice. This problem isn't restricted to just the Shield. Even my Google TV running Chromecast has a home screen that's more of an advertising space for Google than an easy way to get to my content.
But why stop at streaming boxes? Google's Nest Hubs are equal victims of feature deterioration. I've spent hundreds of dollars on Nest Hubs and outfitted them in most of my rooms and washrooms. However, Google's consistent degradation of the user experience means I use these speakers for little more than casting music from the Spotify app. The voice recognition barely works on the best of days, and when it does, the answers tend to be wildly inconsistent. It wasn't always the case. In fact, at launch, Google's Nest speakers were some of the best smart home interfaces you could buy. You'd imagine that the experience would only improve from there. That's decidedly not the case. I had high hopes that the Fuchsia update would fix the broken command detection, but that's also not the case. And good luck to you if you decided to invest in Google Assistant-compatible displays. Google's announcement that it would no longer issue software or security updates to third-party displays like the excellent Lenovo Smart Display, right after killing the built-in web browser, is pretty wild. It boggles my mind that a company can get away with such behavior.
Now imagine the plight of Nest Secure owners. A home security system isn't something one expects to switch out for many many years. And yet, Google decided to kill the Nest Secure home monitoring solution merely three years after launching the product range. While I made an initial investment in the Nest ecosystem, I've since switched over to a completely local solution that is entirely under my control, stores data locally, and won't be going out of action because of bad decision-making by another company. "It's clear to me that smart home devices, as they stand, are proving to be very poor investments for consumers," Bhutani writes in closing. "Suffice it to say that I've paused any future investments in smart devices, and I'll be taking a long and hard look at a company's treatment of its current portfolio before splurging out more cash. I'd recommend you do the same."
But why stop at streaming boxes? Google's Nest Hubs are equal victims of feature deterioration. I've spent hundreds of dollars on Nest Hubs and outfitted them in most of my rooms and washrooms. However, Google's consistent degradation of the user experience means I use these speakers for little more than casting music from the Spotify app. The voice recognition barely works on the best of days, and when it does, the answers tend to be wildly inconsistent. It wasn't always the case. In fact, at launch, Google's Nest speakers were some of the best smart home interfaces you could buy. You'd imagine that the experience would only improve from there. That's decidedly not the case. I had high hopes that the Fuchsia update would fix the broken command detection, but that's also not the case. And good luck to you if you decided to invest in Google Assistant-compatible displays. Google's announcement that it would no longer issue software or security updates to third-party displays like the excellent Lenovo Smart Display, right after killing the built-in web browser, is pretty wild. It boggles my mind that a company can get away with such behavior.
Now imagine the plight of Nest Secure owners. A home security system isn't something one expects to switch out for many many years. And yet, Google decided to kill the Nest Secure home monitoring solution merely three years after launching the product range. While I made an initial investment in the Nest ecosystem, I've since switched over to a completely local solution that is entirely under my control, stores data locally, and won't be going out of action because of bad decision-making by another company. "It's clear to me that smart home devices, as they stand, are proving to be very poor investments for consumers," Bhutani writes in closing. "Suffice it to say that I've paused any future investments in smart devices, and I'll be taking a long and hard look at a company's treatment of its current portfolio before splurging out more cash. I'd recommend you do the same."
Key words (Score:5, Insightful)
"As someone who is an early adopter"
Everything after that is going to be "the thing I adopted don't work well, aren't supported any more, failed and got discontinued entirely etc".
Don't be a sucker. I'm sorry, "early adopter". Don't be that.
Re:Key words (Score:5, Insightful)
It should have been obvious to everyone from the beginning that smart devices were a bad investment.
1. They give big corporations another opportunity to spy on you (obviously bad)
2. They insert big corporations in between you and your hardware, so the corporations can shut down if they find reason to (obviously bad)
3. They create new opportunities for updates to introduce breaking bugs (obviously bad)
4. They create new opportunities for hackers to gain control of your hardware (obviously bad)
5. Last but not least, they don't add any real value to what the hardware already does (net neutral, though if you pay more for this non-value-add its obviously bad).
Why would any rational person choose this?
Re:Key words (Score:5, Insightful)
It should have been obvious to everyone from the beginning that smart devices were a bad investment.
Gladly enough, it seems obvious to him now as well.
Re: Key words (Score:5, Interesting)
All of this will never go obsolete. Because HomeKit doesnt have a dependency on the cloud. I even made a disrtinct VLAN and WiFi for the IOT network which canâ(TM)t talk to the internet. Only the Apple Hubs can. Sometimes I remove the firewall block to run updates on things, but generally only if I am having trouble or there is a new feature I want. Otherwise, no thank you.
Re: Key words (Score:4, Insightful)
An alternative is to adopt the rule "if you can't control it with HA (Home Assistant), don't buy it". That way no corporation can take control over your whatever away from you, and the data from your whatever never leaves your home.
Downside is that this doesn't work for non-techies, who won't even know HA exists let alone how to set it up.
Re: Key words (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like you are locked into Apple's revenue farm, and you aren't the farmer.
Personally I only buy smart home stuff, or TV boxes and the like, when they can run open source software and be compatible with open protocols like Matter and Home Assistant. Zigbee is okay too as you can gateway that into HA easily enough. Neither Zigbee nor Matter require any cloud access, they work 100% locally.
Most of my stuff runs Tasmota or my own custom firmware. All support updating locally, no need to open any firewalls.
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this is really a case against the author's poor choices for smart devices.
setting things through Apple's HomeKit is one way to guarantee you won't be locked away by the brand.
It creates a single point of failure, but one that will hardly ever be discontinued.
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It should have been obvious to everyone from the beginning that smart devices were a bad investment.
So you say, but I've been looking for a light switch that is less reliable and won't work if the internet is out.
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> Why would any rational person choose this?
Because they were promised "better". They were told that, yes, sure, the vendor has inserted themselves into lots of things, but that vendor was super keen to make sure it all worked out really well and that things would be great as a result. They were going to make everything talk to everything, and it was all going to be easily controlled and managed.
You might fall for all this as a rational person. As a cynic, you never would. Some people aren't that cynical
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Ya, the only that that consistently works are dumb, but expensive devices on isolated serial networks running mod-bus and custom code on a PLC.
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everyone with a basic understanding of the IT industry
Describes a society not in evidence.
/., but that same knowledge doesn't apply to the general public. Especially, in the USA. The conclusion from the TFS is correct and sound advice. The chastising responses from /. commenters are not.
Yes, It may be "easily foretold" to the average commenters on
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You're not an early adopter, you're a gambler. You're gambling that the company that makes the device will still be around next month, that even if it's a big company the device itself will still be around next month, that it won't be discontinued, that they won't DRM the crap out of it, that all the features they promised but didn't ship in the 1.0 product will eventually appear, that ...
A certain amount of gambling is necessary, and I've had some luck on Kickstarter and similar, but also funded some com
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In fact there was an outcome that turned out great, and many of us predicted it.
Many smart devices uses the same SoCs. One of the most popular is the ESP32 family. Almost all of them can have their firmware replaced with the open source Tasmota, thus freeing them from any reliance on the cloud or the manufacturer.
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We can't all be late adopters. It's logically impossible. Somebody has to be the early adopter in order to write the bad reviews and get the product fixed so us late adopters can then start using it.
So, I encourage people to be early adopters. It works out better for me that way.
But just as ffkom said, in this case, there was no reason to adopt at all. The idea was fundamentally flawed, and that should have been obvious.
Re: Key words (Score:3)
Products get fixed?
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However devices which rely on the parent company providing servers - these are far more dangerous.
It's OK to be an early adopter of smart home tech that has a very long service life without repair and talks using open-source protocols, integrating to a standard smart-home system.
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I don't really consider myself to be an early adopter in smart home tech, because I bought my Google home stuff when they discounted the price of it around 2018.
By then, the 2nd generation products were already out and they should have been relatively bug free. Little did I know that Google had no real plans to continue supporting the platform after 2020, leading to the slow enshittification of the service. We're getting to the point now where the devices fail to properly respond to the simplest of voice co
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The worst is stopping a timer. You have to scream "STOP!!!" ... like six times in a row ... just to turn the damn timer off!
I know understanding human speech is hard, but come on you piece of trash Google device: you literally just announced the timer ending two seconds ago, so you don't have to even understand *what* I'm saying ... you just have to understand that I spoke at you! And it can't even handle that.
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My favorite interaction is Me: "Hey Google, reduce timer 2 by 3 minutes" Google: "Ok, resetting all timers" Me: "FUCK YOU!"
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By then, the 2nd generation products were already out and they should have been relatively bug free. Little did I know that Google had no real plans to continue supporting the platform after 2020
I mean... it's google. Their product lifecycle goes as prelease, alpha, beta, deprecated, closed. There's a mythical case between beta and deprecated that they use for search, but I get the feeling it's only there since it was grandfathered in before the whole process started.
Yes, yes, hyperbole I know, but everyone
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Re:Key words (Score:5, Insightful)
The article isn't about failed and discontinued products though is it. It's about the level of control the corporates have over the already purchased products to remove perfectly good features and ruin what was a perfect good product.
It's about the future of such behaviour. Like how inkjet printers have similarly faded into obscurity. Not because there wasn't any demand.
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The article isn't about failed and discontinued products though is it. It's about the level of control the corporates have over the already purchased products to remove perfectly good features and ruin what was a perfect good product.
It's about the future of such behaviour. Like how inkjet printers have similarly faded into obscurity. Not because there wasn't any demand.
So it's like electronic "books" where some unseen face can add, remove, or change wording on a whim, or even remove the entire book from your possession after you purchased it. Unlike a real book.
Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss
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It's about the level of control the corporates have over the already purchased products to remove perfectly good features and ruin what was a perfect good produc
Once I saw that they demanded all your data is uploaded to "their cloud", I knew none of those devices would be worthwhile. My horizon is generally about 20 years. None of those devices looked like they would last 5 years. Maybe because the cloud was shut down or maybe because they altered the code on your devices, but a short horizon was inevitable... so I never participated.
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Without early adopters, though, ALL new tech will see exactly zero sales and thus be discontinued due to a lack of interest.
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When companies repeatedly shaft early adopters, then there will be no early adopters left at some point and the company fails.That's what pre-2010 non-clown-world was.
But our current times have enough idiots to always by the latest and greatest, so companies don't need to try anymore. Marketing has fully superseded engineering.
Look at Boeing, if you doubt that.
Read TFS, not just key words. (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats, you win today's Slashdot award for not reading TFS. He's not complaining about things he adopted early. Quite the opposite, he's saying that things he bought used to work better when he first jumped in. He's complaining about a decade of enshitification.
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Why would he complain about enshittification? It was obvious from the get-go how this was all going to play out. That is why I never participated. It was going to be a waste of money and time along with the added spice of frustration. Why even start when it is so obvious? (the fact that you had to have a connection to the manufacturer told you ALL you needed to know. that connection is utterly unnecessary for the end user)
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To be fair, if you're getting into 'home automation' after Nest came to market, you're not really an early adopter. There've been home automation standards for decades at this point, over every communication medium you can think of. This is hardly something "new".
The expectation was that Google and Amazon, being big multinational tech companies, would be able to build a cohesive ecosystem and put the resources behind the idea to make it maintainable over the long term - you know, on the scale you typically
Re: Key words (Score:3)
Even late adopters are going to get boned, so long as cloud connected rules.
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I mean, the person got what they wanted: A toy to play with at the time.
Something tells me that this was neither the first nor will be the last "investment" in this hobby/entertainment avenue.
I used to waste thousands of dollars a year "upgrading" my gaming PC for no real technical reason.
Yes, this is very true (Score:5, Interesting)
Old fart here, no stranger to IoT devices as I'm a nerd for life, but as you - I've noticed this trend for years.
It's in the nature of startups, they usually come with some brilliant idea, and they get greedy and want the consumer to depend on their services, so they will tie their new gadgets to their servers and services, making it near impossible for the user to "free themselves" of their infrastructure.
This is all good and well until two things happens:
1) The device isn't a success, the company decides to no longer produce it, and discontinue its services, hence rendering your smart gaget - not so smart anymore, essentially useless.
2) The device becomes a huge success - and the company decides to gauge the prices untill it reaches a pain-point where it's almost unbearable, but you still use it because it's so mainstream. You're now locked in to their infrastructure of devices, and often forced to purcase devices that comes from their partners or them only, rendering it impossible for you to get creative.
This is sadly a new trend growing with the recent techification of all cars as well, subscription models to simple things like using your remote-keys with a license to turn on/off your car or open your doors even, even basic things like heated seats... you need to subscribe to (looking at you BMW), imagine paying subscription fees for basic functionality?
That's the world now - but you can fight back, ditch the products with these draconian demands, and vote with your money, it really is that simple.
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You can also go for FOSS and hope that enough people will stay interested to keep things maintained. Often that is not the case and often even critical things depend on a single maintainer (see the xz attack from a few days back). On the plus-side, 100 competent nerds can easily keep such a project going for a long time.
Software as a/the service simply sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Investing in soft features that require a third party service is a fool's errand. You invest in hardware; but connected software is never an investment since you have to hope it will continue working, you have to hope the company's servers are still working, you have to hope the company doesn't brick it because they think you should upgrade, you have to hope some goofball in a cave doesn't use the hard coded backdoor and start closing your garage door on your cat.
Re: Software as a/the service simply sucks. (Score:2)
Actually, X-10 works MUCH better today than it did 10-20 years ago.
Why? CFL finally died.
CFL fundamentally broke all consumer X-10 modules. Triac-based light modules couldn't safely/reliably be used with CFL. Even nominally-dimmable ones didn't work properly. Relay-based appliance modules got false-triggered and spontaneously turned themselves on unless you plugged an extension cord into the module, then plugged *both* the CFL's fixture *and* an incandescent (and 'on') night light into it.
From what I've rea
Re: Software as a/the service simply sucks. (Score:2)
It isn't just CFLs. Many LEDs interfere as well. Anything with a powerline modem is liable to do so as well. For example, the 70 Enphase micro-inverters on my roof. /29 subnet is up to .167. Over 1000 entities in HA.
I finally got rid of all my X-10 gear last year. It wasn't easy.
I now use Home Assistant with a mix of about 45 Z-wave devices, 50 Kasa smartplugs, and many others. My
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Z-Wave and Zigbee work very nicely, thanks.
Makes X10 look like the pioneering, yet clunky, standard that it was.
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Sadly, even self-hosted software isn't immune from the exact same problems as connected apps. You have a degree of control with something self-hosted, but once it's got a couple of CVEs against it, you're going to need to upgrade - and then you get the bloat and enshitification.
I don't know what the answer is - keeping away from Silicon Valley is probably a good idea, and open source is an option I suppose. Buying from companies that aren't going to IPO any time in the next 5 years or more, perhaps?
FWIW, I
IT does not have the maturity (Score:2)
It does not make sense to put IT, which has a lifetime measured in low single-digit years, into a house, which has a lifespan measured in multiple decades. Quite obviously so. Also, quite obviously, there are always easy victims ("early adopters", for example) for things like this and there are always plenty of assholes willing to run such a scam.
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And yet, it should have been possible, if not relatively easy. There are standard protocols for these technologies which are used in buildings - houses and corporate buildings, industrial installations - which run IoT type wired and wireless technologies for decades without anyone touching them for updates.
A sensor dies, you replace it and code it/wire it back into the system.
My household thermostat, which I use as a dumb thermometer, is actually IoT capable (Z-Wave), but I just use it as a dumb device. It
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Every "smart device" i have (air purifier, lights, smart switches, humidifier) has local cloudless connectivity as a feature.... with a different fucking protocol.
Fortunately, if you're a bit clever you can whip up plugins in something like HomeBridge with very little work.
I've got Zigbee devices, Zigbee LL devices (yes, they're different)
Wifi UPNP (via SSDP)
Bluetooth.
One hub has a neat JSONRPC interface.
My humidifier uses some obscure fucking protocol from
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A house doesn't have a lifespan measured in multiple decades without maintenance. IT can last multiple decades with maintenance. Sure you may think highly of your mercury switch thermostat, but my Nest paid for itself in lowered gas usage alone and has no sign of not working.
Smart home, and IT doesn't mean obsolescence. You know what happens to my smart lights which I can control remotely via my phone over the internet when the internet connection dies? Nothing. They work just fine locally, and if a switch
Choose carefully (Score:2)
I only buy components that adhere to a standard that makes them interoperable with other vendor's software, and that do not require a connection to an Internet server to function.
Do that, and if something fails you just pick up whatever has replaced it.
Re:Choose carefully (Score:5, Interesting)
I went one step further and my house is mostly FOSS IoT with two exceptions:
1) some smart plugs from xiaomi i haven't bothered to change yet
2) the Philips Hue lights that work just too well
3) a xiaomi air purifier
the rest of my smart devices are all DIY, based on ESP8266 and ESP32, running ESPHome via Home Assistant. I have CO2, humidity, motion sensors and a ton of relays to control lots of stuff around the house.
In fact, I just learned that the xiaomi air purifier has a ESP for wifi that can be reflashed so I'm tempted to do it.
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Home Assistant for the win. That's what I use. I heavily favour Zigbee and 433MHz devices, though I have used a few WiFi switches which I block from the Internet. My cameras are all ONVIF, and I'm in the process of adding some Atom Echos for smart speakers with local processing.
I've reflashed a couple of devices, but I really like just opening the box and having it work, you know?
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My cameras are all either ESP32CAM ($6) or Raspberry Pi Zero 2W with camera modules, all connected to Zoneminder for recording (running on a Pi 5), and displayed in HA. I even set it up so i can long-tap the camera images and turn a nearby light on haha
I have a Zigbee network at home too but it's very problematic. It just doesn't work right. Some devices work fine, others will randomly drop or the connection will be flaky. The Hue zigbee network has been solid though.
I heard Z-Wave on 900mhz works much bett
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I've been pretty happy with the reliability of its mesh networking.
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I have had some dud Zigbee devices that won't stay registered with HA, but the majority just work and just keep on working.
The most fun bits have had nothing to do with local sensors - scripting morning messages based on weather and traffic reports plus pre-determined schedules using iCAL and sending them to our phones for TTS output. My wife and I have also started using the shopping list integration so we no longer return from the grocery store to realize we forgot something.
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I really just like that they're all wirelessly controlled, low power, and reliable (at least mine have been)
I like being able to set the lights on for the pets when my wife and I are going to be gone into the evening, etc.
On the lighting front, it's pretty great being able to change the temperature or color, and brightness of your bulbs whenever you want without having to get up or look for t
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Well, that is the risk of being an early adopter (Score:3)
The hope is that you're getting in early on something cool or life-changing. But, frequently, the reality is you end up putting in a lot of wasted time and money into something that's not really worth it.
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TFA and TFS have nothing to do with being early adopters or the risks of it. They are literally talking about how devices used to be better when first adopted. TFS is talking about enshittification and you're no better off waiting for later - in fact you're significantly worse off having never had the device when it was actually deemed "worth it".
protect (Score:2)
Googone (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that Google has market ADHD, and yanks products at the drop of a hat.
Pick a vendor that's been in the domain (business) a while, because they are more likely to want to stay in business a while. If they F too many customers, word ge
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Just wait until they remove webp from chrome one day.
Early adopter blues (Score:3)
Forever Connect = Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart home devices were pretty good up until cloud obsession took over and you needed to contact twenty-seven servers in eighteen different countries before the switch could activate that's across the room. Like most computing devices, they've been assimilated into the suck that is modern computing. EVERYTHING has to be reporting back to the mothership and her clones. Type a character, wait for the response until everything is updated in the cloud!
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Smart home devices were pretty good up until cloud obsession took over
If you bought a smart device that needed a cloud connection out of the box you did something very wrong. Most of my house is full of smart devices. Literally all of them are local with cloud as not only an optional extra, but often requiring you to buy additional hardware (some kind of bridge) to do so.
The cloud is a reasonable expectation for a device designed to be controlled from your phone, forced upon us by decades of IT nerds saying IPv6 is not important and breaking end-to-end connectivity of the int
Numbingly predictable (Score:2)
Your IoT/"smart" crap doesn't work a few years later? And you are somehow surprised by this, after story after story of DRM servers getting turned off, force "upgrades" on "software as a service" garbage, "the cloud" scam, and every possible indication that these are fly-by-night, short-attention-span entities?
I'm sorry, but I don't have a lot of sympathy. You jumped on the hype bandwagon despite every possible indication that you would only going to be burned, and now, you got
Platform Decay (Score:2)
Cory Doctorow coined a word for this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification. Companies exist to make money, and their nifty technology will get worse as the need for the company to extract more value from the users experiences.
Clashing life spans (Score:2)
Another issue which is a significant problem for consumers is the wildly clashing life spans of smart devices.
Smart device interfaces are essentially tablets, similar hardware and technology. Most tablets aren't expected to last more than three years, developers issue a new product each year. Issues such as a lack of security updates and software incompatibilities rapidly increase after three years.
Fridges typically last about ten years, older ones are common but generally a replacement is suggested at the
Skeptics knew this long ago (Score:2)
It was one of the easiest predictions my crystal balls ever made
Maybe the problem... (Score:5, Informative)
I see zero ads on my Apple TV 4k. Zero. (I do see promotions for Arcade games and Apple TV shows when I hover over those apps, but since I subscribe to both those are not advertisements per se and you can easily avoid them by not hovering over those apps.)
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is investing in Google / Nest products? A company that makes its profit from selling advertising?
If you think the problem is just Google, then KoolAid must have really rotted your brain. Google isn't even the first company talked about in TFS. TFS is fundamentally about enshittification. Apple isn't immune to that, heck their products have over time presented worse and worse bang for buck as you're slowly locked down to the one way of doing things, the one ecosystem granted to you by your corporate overlord.
Incidentally, that's what the TFS is about, you should read it.
Apple will own all (Score:2)
No one else has the matching incentives and long term income to build brand in the same way in the age of ecosystem. Google being build on advertising and way too loose licensing for Android couldn't build a high end ecosystem if they tried at this point and they clearly aren't trying. Microsoft isn't even playing.
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Here's a starting point... (Score:2)
"It's clear to me that smart home devices, as they stand, are proving to be very poor investments for consumers
Step 1: Download app before purchasing the product.
Step 2: Attempt to get to the "add new device" page without creating an account.
If Step 2 fails, the device is a poor investment. If it succeeds, it's probably safER to purchase (yes, I'm still salty that the new Kasa app mandates account creation when that wasn't a requirement at the time of purchase).
But really, smart home equipment is still in the experimental phase and should be treated as such. If the goal really is long-term usage, start with HomeAssi
They didn't take away... (Score:2)
You gave away when you installed the firmware update.
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Ding!
Why people allow updates to run on their consumer devices I will never know.
"But the security updates!"
In my case I am a residential house behind my own firewall that no one else in the world cares about. I'll take my chances.
"What about new features?"
When was the last time any of these companies added an actual useful new feature without making you pay for it?
The Nvidia Shield quoted in the article is a great example. I stopped updates 2+ years ago. There's no ad bullshit on my home screen. Grante
A fool and his money. (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel cheated by the thousands of dollars I've spent on smart devices
There were warning signs everywhere and you ignored them. You haven't been cheated, you have merely lived in blissful ignorance.
Anyone contemplated the behavior of publicly traded companies understands that they have no interest in supporting devices that don't provide them profit because that costs them money. They will drop support for a product just as soon as the amount of money expended exceeds the backlash/PR fallout that they will suffer. Publicly traded companies exist only to maximize their own profitability.
Clumsy Devices - No Wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
I've gone the circular route. I had Philips Hue lights that would come on in non-white colours and stop responding. They couldn't do the single most basic job of simply being dependable light bulbs, so I fired them. I had a Dot echo with the LED display for an alarm clock. Every couple of days it would stop responding to voice commands until I pulled the plug to reset it. I fired it, too, and now I've got a traditional alarm clock. When I replaced all of my HVAC two years ago, I installed traditional furnace/AC controls.
My electronics graveyard has a bunch of smart devices that I've abandoned. And for most, it was for the simplest reasons... they failed to be the thing they were trying to be "smart" versions of.
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I'm soon to try out some new "smart" devices. They are definitely smarter than the existing ones I have but their use case is narrow, well specified and so we shall see.
I've got the traditional UK heating system: gas boiler with water filled radiators. There's no zoned heating, though I do have thermostatic radiator valves, the boiler and pump is controlled by a single centrally placed thermostat.
I'm going to try out the smart valves, they are thermostatic as before, but they are electronic not mechanically
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When I replaced all of my HVAC two years ago, I installed traditional furnace/AC controls.
I was partially with you (my Hue lights have been going strong for half a decade without problem) until you mentioned furnace / AC controls. Smart thermostats don't just give you tech-boners, they are active money savers. If I had to throw out and by a new Google Nest every 2 years it would still be cheaper than just living with a dumb thermostat.
Actually I threw out my Nest 2 years ago when the invasion started and replaced it with a smart zone controlled system for the entire house. It cost 3x as much as
Dude, you bought GOOGLE hardware (Score:2)
More generally, smart home hardware isn’t even out of it’s diapers. You honestly identify yourself as an early adopter, and now you have the early adopter blues. If you can’t handle your technology getting thrashed back and forth like a dog’s chewtoy, don’t adopt early.
Re: (Score:2)
Right? At this point I have no sympathy for anyone who hitches their wagon to a Google product. We know what is going to happen, it's only a matter of time. The only conclusion I can draw is these people are masochists and just downright like the abuse from Daddy Google.
Don't blame an entire industry for poor choices (Score:3)
I'm gonna lose a lot of karma for this comment, but it just has to be said.
Your poor choices of technology is on you. You bought into these things with ideals that they would all play nice together and not use enshittification to "enrich" your experience. You can't blame an entire (sub)industry for your poor choices.
I've invested in many, many devices in the HomeKit ecosystem and can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that they work well, provide value, and have experienced none of the enshittification. Many of you will say that it's less capable, and that's fine by me. The devices do what I need, when I need them, and I don't have to worry about the company spying on me or taking features away. In the many years I've had these products I've experienced precisely none of what this author describes.
I'll also say that it strikes me that this hellscape is what the EU envisions as a consumer benefit. No thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
Your poor choices of technology is on you. You bought into these things with ideals that they would all play nice together and not use enshittification to "enrich" your experience.
You deserve to loose karma. Enshittification is a relatively recent thing. He is talking about device he bought a decade ago. There was zero expectations that some of the things he is complaining about would happen.
It's funny you think Apple is immune to this.
I'll also say that it strikes me that this hellscape is what the EU envisions as a consumer benefit. No thanks.
I'm genuinely curious what you think the "EU" is or what is has to do with any of this, other than you making a senseless rant.
No shit, Seymour (Score:2)
Problem is lock in and control (Score:3)
There is NO reason at all to give a third party access to your smart devices. They want it because of the history of privacy stealing on the internet, but you get no benefit for this kind of thing.
You want to make a smart home? Make sure everything you buy is:
1) Hardware NOT directly connected to the internet. It should connect to a local network, not given permission to go outside your IP address. Have the software hosted on your devices, nothing else.
2) Be controllable via simple, publicized API commands. Then you buy/create INDEPENDENT software, not controlled by the hardware manufacturer, that you may (or may not) connect to the internet, installed on separate devices(computers0.
Those devices all have one thing in common (Score:2)
It's absolutely ridiculous to claim these anecdotes mean computers suck.
These computers which initially worked and then turned against their owners all had one thing in common: they run proprietary software, made to serve the manufacturer's interests at the expense of the owners' interests.
So stop saying "smart devices are bad." The obvious conclusion is that "proprietary smart devices are bad."
Re: (Score:2)
If you are a developer, and the system is simple enough that not only can it be simply understood but also if you have to maintain it then it's not a big nightmare, great. Otherwise having it be Open in some or even all the ways doesn't necessarily help you.
The obvious solution is for all of this stuff to terminate someplace where wires can be hooked to wires to connect it, and for devices to support a wide range of input voltages. Then you can cross-connect equipment to your heart's content. Wireless is ju
Local Control - Cloud Secondary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Local Control - Cloud Secondary (Score:2)
I second this.
My smart devices all still work because I chose devices that aren't "cloud" connected, which is all just code for locking the consumer into that vendor.
It means pretty much always going for "off brand", because all the big brands with marketing and influence are pushing cloud connected at all times.
Re: (Score:2)
Whenever I buy a "smart" device, I make sure it has a local API and is compatible with homeassistant.
Congrats on not being immune from what TFS is talking about. TFS is specifically talking about features like this being removed over time. In fact the very first example in TFS would directly affect you since in order to use Homeassistant with the Firestick you need ADB enabled, precisely the feature which was removed with an update and which the author is whining about.
There's other examples too. People who do a lot of research into device such a Eufy cameras which can use local APIs to work with Homeassis
Re: (Score:2)
False Advertising or Bait and Switch - stealing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Boo Hoo! (Score:3)
The author's bio blurb on Android Police says that he "has been writing about consumer technology since 2008" and that he "started building radios when I was five, fixing consoles for pocket money when I was ten, and hacking iPod firmwares when I was fifteen".
I'm sorry, but anyone with that kind and length of experience in tech, who says with a straight face that "I feel cheated by the thousands of dollars I've spent on smart devices", has ZERO credibility. If he didn't see this coming then he needs to turn in his geek card and get a job in some other sector - preferably one in which extrapolation based on past performance and behaviours doesn't play a key role.
The answer is local control (Home assistant) (Score:2)
Re: The answer is local control (Home assistant) (Score:2)
Same. I don't but smart devices that require a cloud connection to operate. Anything like that is on a clock. I've integrated Home Assistant, buy locally controlled hardware, and love where I'm currently at with my Smart Home. I have exactly two smart plugs I bought on short notice before I had HA that require a cloud connection, but if and when that service goes belly up, I'll just replace them with locally controlled smart plugs and oil only be out like $15.
No, just *remotely hosted* smart devices (Score:2)
You don't own anything (Score:2)
Repeat after me... (Score:2)
Never trust Google.
If you do, you'll learn this the hard way.
Guess what? (Score:2)
Way back in the 3rd century B.C., Epicurus identified advertising as one of the features best avoided for a healthy, pleasant life. Adv
Smart == dumb (Score:3)
You take it home and sure, for a time they all work as advertised. Then the free subscriptions run out. Then the TV get a forced OTA update and loses a few features. Then the streaming apps mysteriously can't connect any more.
And long before the warranty expires (which only covers the hardware, not all the services that were prominently advertised) the TV is nothing more than a dumb panel with maybe a terrestrial aerial connection and some HDMI ports.
And happy with my dumb house... (Score:2)
Purchased not invested (Score:2)
The author imagines he has been investing. He hasn't. He has been purchasing products which are worth less the second he opens the box, and continue to devalue. That they also become less useful is his complaint. Replacing the words buy or purchase with invest is pure marketing deceit, intended to make spending money of non-essentials or luxury goods seem wise, but it seems like everyone has absorbed the lie.
Investing vs consumption (Score:2)
Which is it? Invested or spent? And how did you get cheated? Sounds like you made some purchases you now regret. Did you expect smart technology to appreciate in value? Your home probably appreciated, but technology (toys, mostly) are just like a new car--they begin depreciating as soon as you unbox them. That's why the stingiest bastards you know bu