My Consumer Report: Do not fall for hardware backed by software that costs the seller money to keep running.
I saw a lot of humble and dedicated engineers get laid off in the first round and it was a lot of people who put systems stability over their own promo. There used to be a place for those people, which is part of what made Google a decent place. That’s gone now, things will continue to break as long as fixers take the brunt of lay offs.
Over time, the value given to maintenance and smooth operations decreased in reviews, esp for 'non core' services, which inevitably led to engineers doing the rational thing and prioritizing launching features, getting credit and moving on before they got saddled with pesky things like maintenance.
This also had the unintended consequence of politicizing work assignments quite a bit with more savvy political operators getting the most opportunities to launch featu ... er 'deliver impact'.
The idea that I can't work out because of an internet outage upsets me greatly. Also their recent updates have added more ads into the gym interface which I am not a fan of, so I might just never have it connect to their servers ever again if I get my workaround working.
but those shouldn't be mandatory features that prevent you from working out.
Wish I went with a TP-Link solution instead
I used it as wired until I moved, and my current house I started using it wireless. That's when I discovered a bug in the wireless mesh that requires me to basically restart the network every couple days.
I also wish I didn't need to app to connect to it. I really don't understand why I can't manage it directly from my PC or phone via IP Address like every other system I've used. I regret it, but it is better than having an upstairs and downstairs network I needed to keep switching between with my netgear routers I had before.
After all these years, my devices still are split across the Nest and Home apps, and the Home app is still missing features Nest had from day one. Oh yeah and presence sensing doesn’t work since switching to the Google app [0].
I bought an iPhone last year and have been de-Googling since.
Also, their AI photo effects never really worked any good for me but I do not own a pro model.
So even the very simple use cases that we know work, aren't solid.
Then there's the massive disappointment when you just have a quick think about the types of interactions that it could do very well if google cared at all. Honestly, the failure to follow through on what could have been a house hold changing device is just sad to ponder.
Why they haven't rigged it up to gemini yet baffles me.