What you do not want instead is :
- being mandatory
- requiring a proprietary application
- expecting the app to force onto you services
- expecting the setup to fail and making the hardware unusable over time
because honestly when it does work, it's great. It's really not the features that are problematic, it's the predatory surveillance and locking down way to provide them that is absolutely horrible.
No, I rather know I do not.
> It's quite amazing to receive a notification from your dryer that it finished its cycle.
It’s really quite useless to me.
What I may want is an ODB so I can plug in whatever external observation and possibly control plane I wish, were I so inclined (I am not), and could make my device smart. Hell for a dryer you could probably have a plug or panel feeding into HA and send an alert based on load.
Anything that’s “smart” out of the box is rife for abuse and will eventually sink into that.
So yes I insist you do want those, just not in the way it's been currently forced. IMHO you are right to reject this as it is but wrong to reject the possibilities when done right.
We are just so disgusted by the way it's currently done that we reject the entire possibly. Quite sad really.
Edit: I have been using HA daily for years now. Smart plugs work and are useful but it's rarely enough. You can infer the device state based on instant consumption but you can't convenient control back.
How do you know that your dryer won't lock onto an open wifi? How do you know that your smart TV won't download malware? You don't.
Contrarily, if you accept that you only hear the dryer "DONE!" bell if you are within 20' or so, you can be certain that the dryer is yours and yours alone.
And I think their point is that, even with strong legislation, giving every device unlimited internet connectivity is a siren song for the corporations which will always be incentivized to shoehorn their interests into the product you own. Things like control through external connectors, on-device modifiable configurations, only local connectivity or flashable firmware would not qualify as 'smart' but would go a long way to do the things you're looking for without giving them the physical possibility of future abuse.
This false dichotomy is precisely the problem. I DO want to program my hardware, even ones with actuators, but I do NOT want for this to happen to rely on the infrastructure of the manufacturer if I don't explicit ask for it.
I do like "smart" lights that are based on presence, and various sensors and "smart" automatic irrigation, but don't see much point in home appliances being connected to my phone/network.