Any smartphone from the past few years + an internet connection lets people file their taxes, watch videos, communicate by text/audio/video with pretty much anyone in the world, read online encyclopedia, order pretty much any physical good to their door, listen to music, translate languages, read books, take high resolution videos, and so much more.
How do you even beat that? And what do you offer beyond that?
It feels like we're reaching the flat part of the logarithmic progress curve (a much more appropriate curve for progress than the hockey stick curve) when it comes to what personal computing is going to bring to the daily lives of consumers.
Of course, there are still many areas not explored by computing. Computer aided medical procedures and diagnoses, monitoring and upkeep of crops, and so many more fields will grow in the years and decades to come. And improvements to personal transportation, through i.e. self driving cars, is arguably a consumer technology.
But the whole IoT movement is just a parody of itself. The vast majority of people do not want internet connected water cups or juicers or microwave ovens; and those who do soon get frustrated by the real world logistics that come with these things (higher costs, more frequent failures, lack of interoperability, etc.). I had Philips Hue bulbs for a while, and the girlfriend I lived with at the time hated them with a passion - for understandable reasons. When it comes to turning lights on and off, you can't beat a light switch, and the same logic applies to every single item we interact with daily. For instance, the Nest we had in our apartment would randomly start on and off, or suddenly stop being visible to the app, etc.
I'm sure that the idea of the Nest thermostat is noble, but they just work like shit. The one in our office cannot maintain a reliable temperature, and flakes out constantly. We had a fun week where someone went on vacation, and, apparently because their phone app was synced with it, the AC schedule started running in European time, rather than US Eastern...
At some point, you really just want to rip the thing out, slap the old fashioned, bimetal thermostat back in, and hit the Nest with a high-powered electromagnet.
> For instance, the Nest we had in our apartment would randomly start on and off, or suddenly stop being visible to the app, etc.
My own smart thermostat — from another company — has mostly been very good, but it randomly wants me to re-enter my (high-entropy, unmemorisable) password in their site to use it. Why can't I just connect to my thermostat and set up the authentication I want? Why can't I use a client certificate, or an SSH key, or just have a $&% token which lasts approximately forever?
It's my* device; I should be able to do whatever I want with it. Give it (not the vendor's site) a clean API, and I can do anything.
There are certainly areas where remote connectivity is useful. Cameras is one case (although I would be skeptical of the security of most of them).
HVAC is certainly enhanced by the ability to control it remotely, first, because of the potential effort savings in being able to control it from anywhere in your house without having to seek out your control thing or remote, and second, because you can adjust the temperature remotely, which is good for those of use who don't want the house at 18 C all day long when we're not home, you can set the temperature to your desired temperature when you head home from work, which may not be a set time.
I could see cases where connected toasters could be useful. It'd be a marginal amount of added value, but it would be there.
The problem is that in the current context, almost any IOT device has an additional negative value attached to whatever positive value its features give, because basically every company doing it makes overcomplicated crap.
In a perfect world, you might be able to plug in an IOT toaster and have it automatically connect to your Amazon/Google/Apple/whatever hub (with a simple "I found <yourname>'s hub, is this correct?" interface). At that point the hub would track the toaster status and the household context, and then do stuff like say, via your phone or a set of discreet speakers throughout the house, "The toast was burning, so I stopped the heat" or "You left your toaster on when nobody was home, so I turned it off".
None of this would be impossible to implement today, but it would require thinking about long-term holistic benefits instead of being able to slap "IoT device" on something to try and sell more to nerds.
> But how do you leave a toaster on when nobody's home?
Start toast, go and grab the mail, get distracted by a neighbor, forget about the toast, go over to look at their new riding lawnmower.
> And it's possible for a toaster to detect burning without requiring an internet connection.
Nothing about the scenarios I described would require an internet connection for anything but communicating outside the house (e.g. phone notifications).
I think the point of the comment you replied to was that almost every toaster automatically shuts off after an adjustable time. Unless you have drastically misadjusted your toaster settings the worst case for a toaster is burnt toast (or perhaps some smoke if you really didn't get it right).
I see your point, but haven't we already had timed thermostats for decades? That would arguably accomplish the same thing with a lower part count and less security or manufacturer support issues.
Timed thermostats have the issue that you have to know what time you're going to be there.
Some days I'm home at 1800, other days I won't get home until 2200, and I often won't know until sometime during the day.
Now, I don't use heating, so it's not an issue for me, but I could foresee it being an issue.
The ability to use your phone as a universal remote is alluring as well. Being able to control the lights, TV, and heating all with one device is pretty cool.
Temote control hvac for vacation homes is a killer feature. Just being able to check the temp in your ski house to do things like see if the furnace is out, lower it if you forgot before leaving, bump it if the weather is particularly cold to protect your pipes, etc are definitely worth money. Otherwise, you're asking a friend to drive there or paying your handyman to go look.
How do you even beat that? And what do you offer beyond that?
It feels like we're reaching the flat part of the logarithmic progress curve (a much more appropriate curve for progress than the hockey stick curve) when it comes to what personal computing is going to bring to the daily lives of consumers.
Of course, there are still many areas not explored by computing. Computer aided medical procedures and diagnoses, monitoring and upkeep of crops, and so many more fields will grow in the years and decades to come. And improvements to personal transportation, through i.e. self driving cars, is arguably a consumer technology.
But the whole IoT movement is just a parody of itself. The vast majority of people do not want internet connected water cups or juicers or microwave ovens; and those who do soon get frustrated by the real world logistics that come with these things (higher costs, more frequent failures, lack of interoperability, etc.). I had Philips Hue bulbs for a while, and the girlfriend I lived with at the time hated them with a passion - for understandable reasons. When it comes to turning lights on and off, you can't beat a light switch, and the same logic applies to every single item we interact with daily. For instance, the Nest we had in our apartment would randomly start on and off, or suddenly stop being visible to the app, etc.