Interestingly, most of the scrutiny of these early entrants into consumer IoT come from software developers themselves, who are already well aware that "all software is shit." (In the tongue-in-cheek sense of course)
That's one angle. Another one is that people who have enough understanding of how "smart devices" exactly work can see that cloud-dependence is ridiculous engineering, if you look at the product as something designed to provide value to users. The question becomes, whether or not it bothers you that the companies building this stuff are actually user-hostile. Personally, it does bother me - that's why I steer clear of them and warn people about this.
Not many products can claim to be ROI-positive to the consumer. When the payback period is short enough, that's pretty exciting for the analytical part of consumer thinking. Paired with the "looks good on my wall" and the "burns less fossil fuels" triggers on the emotional side, that's pretty appealing to a bunch of people. (Same basic feelings but much cheaper than buying a Tesla.)
No excuse for being buggy though.
The website says stuff like
> The babysitter calls to say she picked up the kids from soccer and they’re heading home. You adjust the temperature from your phone so they’ll be cozy.
..which is a first-world problem if I've ever heard one. Just wear an extra layer for 10 minutes while the heating warms up. Jeez.
>for 10 minutes
Whenever we'd come back from vacation, it would take my house at least 3-4 hours to move from ~40 to ~70. Our house was actually pretty small for the neighborhood. Being able to kick the heating back on from a few hours away in the car would have been amazing. I think you have a hilariously overpowered furnace, a tiny space relative to Midwestern suburbia, or an exceptionally temperate climate.
Personally, I do have interest in a thermostat that can learn how to be more energy efficient for the sake of saving me money. But I don't think that requires Internet connectivity at all.
And it is beyond me why anyone would want or need an Internet connected toaster or coffee maker as well.
1) Peak shaving. The utility pays homeowners to be able to change the temperature slightly during peak electrical load.
2) Short term adjustment. One challenge of integrating large amounts of wind and solar into a grid is that sometimes you get short-term fluctuations in power generation. Smoothing these fluctuations out by turning off a bunch of residential AC units can be very cost effective.
Utilities are willing to pay consumers in both of these situations. And both of these work better with 2-way connectivity.
Looking forward, if electric cars become more popular, it's likely that they'll have smart chargers which will optimize when overnight or at-work charging takes place.