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In an ideal marketplace the best product is selected on it's merit.

Brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, financial leverage, etc. are all attempts to interfere with free market, to prevent a consumer moving to a competitor.

There is also no reason you can't have integration between different vendors, in fact thats what standards are for. Apple, etc. are notorious for refusing to integrate to protect their advantage.

The have the right to do that to some, limited, extent, but to advocate it as good for the consumer is just self-delusion.

> In an ideal marketplace the best product is selected on it's merit.

> Brand loyalty, vendor lock-in, financial leverage, etc. are all attempts to interfere with free market, to prevent a consumer moving to a competitor

As I understand it, the only way to prevent vendor lock-in is regulation. Regulation is considered anathema to a “free market”. Subsequently, I’ve come to expect that a free market _guarantees_ that vendors will attempt to lock their customers in.

I suspect your “ideal market” is not merely an idealised fantasy but also self-contradictory and thus impossible.

I’d love it if you could explain otherwise because it’ll probably help me understand basic economics better.

Without regulation you don't have a market at all, you have war, where the best and cheapest way to beat your competitors is to murder them. Even the Mafia found it was better to establish a council to work out beefs and reduce inter-family violence. Market law goes back to the Middle Ages in Western Europe, where it was international in scope and enforced by private courts paid for by the merchants themselves.

We don't have actual war yet. But we do have a world of duopolies, in which two (or three or four) control almost all of the business between them. That's not good for customers or suppliers or retailers; it's only good for the rent-seekers who own those companies.

Unfortunately, the U.S. has for several administrations now basically not enforced the antitrust laws unless a short-term rise in prices is visible. Long-time rises in prices, as well as knock-on effects like reduction in quality, are simply ignored.

My take is this:

Ideal market is certainly a fantasy, we have an entire branch of behavioural economics dedicated to irrational behaviour.

On regulation, general consensus is that at least some regulation is needed to enable fair market to exist at all.

In most countries in a state of disorder you get market manipulation, Pump&dump schemes, monopolies, cartels, financial pyramids, snake oil salesmen, etc. That's not conductive to economic growth.

Obviously it is hotly disputed where is the line between ensuring fair competition or, on the contrary, stifling the market.

Cosider car repair - is it the manufacturer's right to decide who they sell parts to, or are they leveraging a position in market A (selling cars) to secure an unfair advantage in market B (car repair)

> 4. Brand loyalty, in fact, gives substantial benefits to the consumer, contrary to your assertion. Greater integration of devices and ease of use is the most obvious one.

No, it's the other way around. I don't get updates on my 3 year old phone because I'm loyal to Apple, I'm loyal to Apple because I get updates on my 3 year old phone.

Dare I say it can be both? Some things are "virtuous cycles." You get updates, and in your experience those updates add value, which increases your expectation of value should you stick with this phone and possibly replace it with another of the same brand.

That IS brand loyalty, generated by delivering value, not just fancy advertising. And conversely, the experience customers have with their phone gives them certain expectations should they buy the matching AirPods rather than Bose or even B&O.

When it turns out that the AirPods have special integration with their iPhone, it sets up positive expectations for buying an iPad. And on and on.

The value creates brand loyalty, and the brand loyalty leads consumers to buy more products from the same brand, which increases their value because of the integration within the ecosystem.

When the brand is actually delivering the value, it's a virtuous cycle: value -> brand loyalty -> more value -> more brand loyalty.

Apple products are a bit special in that the integration has always been a huge part of their value.

And that goes back to Macintosh 128K.

Obviously, Apple stole mice and bitmapped graphics and GUIs from Xerox Parc. But a huge part of their pitch for MacOS in the early days was integration between apps on the platform.

Consistency of UX meant that there was lower friction for adopting new apps. Integration between apps such as being able to copy and paste text between apps from different vendors was a revelation by the consumer microcomputer standards of the day.

With open standards i have no problem integrating anything cross-brands.

The only really hostile brands are preventing it to be honest(apple comes to the mind and so does nintendo).

Brand loyalty mattered in the past, where it was the only reliable way to judge new products in relation to each other. It only works to the merit of consumer if you were already subject to vendor lock in.

There are plenty of alternate input modes that work like that too - back in the 90s i had lightswitch that could change intensity of the light dynamically - no need to even utter a word so even less risk of waking your wife up. you can add module to AC and control it via smartphone/webpage, without risk of voice recognition getting it wrong. you can get lights that automatically turn on to 10% brightness when someone walks etc.

not to mention various privacy concerns for your guests - you did agree for amazon to collect the data, but did they agree too?

Speakers sold is kinda a bad metric - active users/usage would be much more interesting - as i wonder how many of them ended up in attic, or thrown somewhere because they were useless.

Wow! Who are these people using these microphones? I think I know only one person with one and he is an early adopter tech geek who typically buys every gadget. And he just uses it to set timers. I’m shocked to learn that millions of these things have been sold. They don’t solve a single problem I have, but instead introduce more problems.

How many millions are sitting in closets or junked? At least one over here. Occasionally my daughter plugged it in as a speaker, but rarely and not in the last year.

I would never turn my lights on while trying to use the restroom at night. I explicitly don't want to turn them on because it wakes me up fully. As for your A/C suggestion, that's what thermostats are for. Those have been automated for years now.

I agree with the poster you're responding to. The only true automation that hasn't been done in the home are those that are unimportant. I certainly don't need Alexa to open my garage door, regulate the temperature of my house, and so forth. If I really really want to be able to turn lights on and off without walking over to the light switch, I've had options for that for over 20 years now.

Between 9pm and 9am, when I press my bathroom light button, it turns on at 10%. Not something I thought I needed, but now its nice having a light switch that knows what time it is.

oh wow, that's a really good idea.

For the most part, having lights you can only talk to is kind of annoying. Having lights only on a dumb switch gets kind of annoying. Having smart lights on a dumb switch is kind of annoying. But having smart switches or smart lights with coordinated smart switches is great. Consistency and simplicity is key. You can get the best of both worlds. Being able to turn of 3, 5, 10 switches at once. Being able to change brightness with your voice is something I use way more often than turning the lights on or off with my voice. Turning off the closet or bathroom light once already laying in bed. Alexa and Google exist to let you mix and match brands. You can have 6 brands of lights, best in breed for each purpose or cost point (cheaper lights is lesser rooms) and nobody besides the person maintaining the system needs to even know.

The software and wifi connecting has sort of been trash, but the WeMo Smart Dimmer and WeMo Three Way are GREAT pieces of hardware as far as being a LIGHT SWITCH is concerned. It's the apple of switch design. A single button for on or off. Slide your finger up the track for brightness. Long press to control other switches on the network (glitchier.)

https://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F7C059/ https://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-WLS0403/

The Philips ecosystem has a wide range of accessories, including smart dimmer knobs to control smart lights. https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontro... LIFX now has a switch, but I've never actually seen it in stock so it may be vaporware. https://www.lifx.com/products/lifx-switch

It can be annoying when it glitches out, but overall its a positive change. Don't knock it until youve really given it a serious try.