Hi, I'm your nobody. I'm constantly running out of soap and shampoo and other trivial home goods because I always forget that I need them until the moment I get back home. Why wouldn't I want a feature like that?
Not techy enough for ya? Think of it as preserving state and passing it across time from "the you who knows" (senses a need) to "the you who does" (is at the store). Or as asynchronous communication with yourself.
I mean, seriously, I know what soap I want to buy when I'm shopping. It might be a different one every week. And I definitely don't want my automated solutions to vendor-lock me.
But if its just making a list, then what's the point? I can write on the slip of paper on the fridge anyway.
Also, why not just have this automated instead?
A backup bottle means you never are out - if you remember any time during the 2-month period it takes to use up a bottle. Or have an automated system.
Or hell, when you are at 50/25/10%, order another.
And if you are uncomfortable with it ordering it for you, it could just add it to a shopping list for you.
This requires developing two habits: 1) adding a thing to the shopping list when you fetch the backup item, and 2) actually using a shopping list.
Now I sympathize with the fact that different people have problems with different habits, so if it really doesn't work for you, then I guess you need something else :). But the benefit of this trick (or "life hack") is that it's free to use, doesn't require any purchase to set up, and doesn't tie you to any vendor.
I have noticed that we pay more over the longer term however as we miss sales/discounts/etc that you'd get by ordering in singles. Don't love that.
But when there is a technology that can make things better for us, allowing us to have to remember less and do less, why not?
I buy a specific brand of cat litter, laundry detergent, paper towels, and toilet paper. And all of them I often forget I'm low on until it's too late, and I need to run to the store for a single thing.
You can give me all the "solutions" in the world and i've probably tried them, this has happened my whole life.
But then a technology comes along and takes care of this for me, and people are upset that it exists!?
Yeah, the retailer the automation buys from could jack up the prices, if they do that I'll stop using it. Yeah, it could end up costing me slightly more for the convenience, i'm okay with that. Yeah, there are other solutions that work well for other people, they don't for me.
And besides, there are tons of other uses for this kind of thing. The software doesn't need to automatically order it if you don't want to, it could just make a list for you if you'd prefer.
That said, I think people - myself included - complain about this example usage because of all the uses one can come up in 30 seconds, this one is the least generally useful, and most ridiculous one, and this is the one that the authors decided to run their story with. For me, frankly, it's a bit pathetic.
It strongly reminds me of another example - BLE beacons. There are plenty of useful applications that are also obvious when you understand what it is, but what was that the companies (I won't name a particularly well-known brand from my area[0]) decided to run with? Pushing ads into peoples' phones when they're shopping.
It's as if people are purposefully trying to not use technology for good, and instead focus on the worst parts of our culture - greed, consumerism and exploiting others.
--
[0] - There is also another, lesser-known BLE beacon brand in my area, which started their copy with industrial and medical uses. Well, after the success of the retail-oriented brand, they too decided to go with retail instead.
If this ever gets to the point where I can buy filament for it and print stuff myself, the first thing I'll be doing with it is hacking something together to order stuff as it runs out.
Just look at it from my perspective. To me it's like people saying they can use BLE for medical and industrial purposes, and everyone is shouting about how useless and anti-consumer it is...
I could also know what I needed to buy for cooking meals that week. It would be super efficient.