Oh wow, I can see how that could be convenient for certain cases (such as yours) but as a general consumer device that sounds like a phenomenally bad idea.
Why does it have to be all or nothing? I don't think for most consumers there is that much economy of scale that their secondary devices would need to be the same.
Maybe if you're only using devices from one type of brand. But what if you wanna access those things on a Mac and Google Pixel and an Amazon Kindle. Sure, might not be that much of a mix, but I imagine a decent amount of people have at least one device from a different brand.
My question was about using that many devices. And I'll quote myself here fully:
> Out of curiosity, how do you even manage to use more than five devices for private use at once? Even just owning that many is unlikely.
One sentence is a question, the other is a statement which I consider to be true (and explains how I arrived at that question).
Also it was quite clear from my argument that I was talking about people singular, and you responded pretending I was saying that an entire family owning more than 5 devices is unlikely.
I can't imagine why you'd be arguing like this, I just hope it's not on purpose.
It seems possible to create separate tiny devices for different applications and sell them prepackaged. The installation process would look like plugging it into electrical outlet and connecting to your local Wi-Fi. Redundancy can be achieved using close friends and family devices of the same class.
Well yes, but this is a much cheaper option. Instead of having many smart gadgets you only need one. The mobile phone or some other microphone but that is the most obvious option.
Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for all these gadgets that have to be charged and kept safe you can buy cheap variants and still have basically the same benefits.
Sure-- $50 per "connected device" I want to keep working on my terms. There's also the cost of "care and feeding" labor for the then-dedicated mobile device. There's battery hygiene. There's certificates expiring and rigging the clocks to keep things working. There's firewalling and proxying the devices against the inevitable vulnerabilities making them unsafe to have even on my home network.
That's assuming it's even possible to keep things running, too. If the manufacturer needlessly brings a "cloud service" into the mix my "connected device" stops working when the plug is pulled on a service I can't self-host and can't pay to keep going.
For any one device it's probably no big deal. If my time is worthless it's no big deal. If my familiarity and comfort-with-routine with a particular device's workflow is worthless then it's no big deal.
When it's a multiple of devices in your life, when you place a high value on your time, and when you derive tremendous personal value out of muscle memory and personal routine then I think it adds up to a bill-of-goods.
The general nature of the market for "connected devices" is demoralizing and draining. I don't want to throw all my shit away every couple of years based on the aggregate of various manufacturers. I don't want to change my routine because some marketing plan dictates I no longer get to use something I've incorporated into my life.
It's massively frustrating that "the future" has arrived for so many things, except nobody will sell it to me on terms I can accept. I don't have enough time in my life to build the stuff myself. I'm a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a mainstream market so nobody will ever create what I want.
I can think of a decent number of "connected" devices I'd love to but, except they don't exist in a form that respects me. They exist in forms made to serve manufacturer's needs to sell me the same thing again in a few years, to build the lowest cost, most disposable devices for the maximization of profit with no regard for the environment, and to have the lowest long-term maintenance cost for software (by way of just throwing it all out and re-spinning every few years).
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