Why are new devices dependent on the Internet but made with little forethought?

I grew up in the 80s and have owned several cars from that era. They were significantly less reliable than cars of today. Carburetors were still present (though being phased out) and there were always vacuum hoses that, when they leaked, caused your car to run like crap.

Also, phones: Cellphones were extremely expensive and unreliable. Landlines were extremely unreliable at reaching other humans because as often as not, the recipient wasn't home. Also, I remember all kinds of problems with landline wiring leading to noisy connections. Also, unless you were calling a close neighbor, you paid high per-minute charges.

It's really hard to find something that was better in the pre-internet era. Cars and phones aren't it.

We are getting to the point where we will need an Underwriter Labs-style independent body to say, to anybody selling an internet-connected device, "your device is not secure enough to be sold; you are forbidden to sell it until you get your security house in order".

This wouldn't solve every problem, but it would solve a lot of it, simply because the cost required to pay for good security would cause most IoT devices that don't really need it, to get rid of it, in order to cut cost and reduce time to market. Only if it if really added a lot of value would the maker be willing to pay for good security; that does not include most IoT today.

I see people buying internet-required devices as the same people who buy the registry cleaners. They don’t know enough about computers themselves, and the advertorials/computer magazines don’t do them any favors.

Why do we still ask these questions?

You see "forethought" in devices offered to the public when regulation DEMANDS it: think cars, bridges, medical devices, because (or so it's been rationalized), the public needs accountability (a named, professionally licensed, buck-stops-with-them head to roll) when that product can cause harm.

But software harms TOO!. Think privacy, banking, relationships. Those can be harmed. It's always felt to me like a historical accident that networked devices, really most software in general, slipped past this accountability requirement. Without a specific , named accountable person, security seems to fall into the not-my-problem phenomenon, and continues generates articles like from the OP.

In the imagined future where signoff from professional engineers was required, you'd see pushback against a vendor by the engineer until the implementation was secure, because the engineer's licensure was on the line until it was secure. And the vendor couldn't just "shop" for a favorable signoff, because every engineer would be held to the same ethical standard and penalty.

Maybe one day when all this is actual infrastructure and all that goes with the idea, standards, service entities who will be there, are regulated, etc.

Maybe then, I will reconsider.

And let's be clear. I have no problem with pioneers pioneering. Have fun! I just have different priorities.

I have 3 robot vacuums (one is technically a mop). Two are internet connected, one is not. The two internet connected ones are kept up-to-date and get new capabilities from time to time. And one of these is also accessible from the local network too. This is great. At least I know that, should the company decide to support the product, I'll retain some of the capabilities.

Which is something that happened to my Pebble. The community did step in and provide some missing functionality, but it wasn't a seamless transition.

The biggest issue is the amount of e-waste we are creating by having - otherwise perfectly functional devices - being thrown away because their command and control servers were shutdown.

There should be some mandate that companies are required to support the internet connected product for X number of years, just like cars. If they go out of business they should be required to release the control software.

Early on we had competing visions, best practices were being learned the hard way and regulation was in its infancy.

Later on, with a lot settled, electricity became utilitarian, but not a given still.

My camp trailer fridge works on 110v or propane. The table radio in it works on 110V, 12V or batteries inside the device.

I have (dangerous) gas lighting in that unit as well as electric.

Power isn't a given and the devices from the era are designed to operate under that state of things.

This all seems very early. We lack foresight because people are pioneering. Users of this tech are also pioneering. Someone is gonna do it. Let's hope they do it increasingly well and sooner.

One day, this will all be real infrastructure, with all the girls along with: regulation standards the usual.

Until then it's kind of a wild west.

Play hard, but play eyes wide open too. Or pass and watch as it all forms to be more robust just like people did with electricity.

I'm pretty sure the onboarding experience contributes to poor reviews, so the goal is to make it as easy as possible.

I remember the days where all devices came with a CD/floppy with software you had to install. (I had a device once that had to port scan my home network to find what it needed to connect to.)

Even if you know what you want, and you know it's possible, it's difficult or impossible sometimes (without building it yourself) to find hardware that doesn't rely on internet connectivity and some user account.

Edit: I read the post and it's as guessed. (money)

Also because Google Assistant and Alexa require cloud to cloud communication. Which customers also want.

And cheap WiFi devices such as the esp8266 are very optimized for a single tcp socket.