Overheard a guy at the library say his new smart thermostat died because the cloud service shut down

It just made me wonder how long before all our basic home stuff becomes useless because some company decides to pull the plug on an app or server, has anyone else had a gadget just stop working like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

angelarivera27d ago

My smart lightbulbs just turned into fancy paperweights last month when the company went under! One day the app wouldn't connect and that was it, no more color changing or dimming from my phone. Even worse, I had these smart plugs that needed a firmware update through an app that got pulled from the store, so now they just sit in a drawer. Makes you wonder why we bother with all this smart home stuff when regular switches and knobs never stop working. The thermostat thing is actually super scary because that controls your actual heating and cooling costs.

christopherh7927d ago

It's like everything's turning into a subscription or an app these days, even stuff you already bought and paid for. I got a smart scale a couple years back, worked fine for six months, then the company got bought out and the app just stopped syncing my weight to my phone. Now it's just a regular scale that tells me a number, which is basically what a $20 scale from Walmart does. It's kind of crazy how we're all just accepting that things we own can get bricked remotely because some company decides to shut down a server.

paulw5327d ago

Guess it depends on what you expect from a scale or a lightbulb in the first place. Most of those smart features are cool until they break, but a paperweight that still weighs you or a lamp that still turns on with a switch isn't exactly the end of the world. We survived decades without an app for everything, so maybe the real issue is getting too attached to the gimmicks instead of the basic function.