The "Smart" in the post you replied to stands for something else than your examples (which are absolutely valid uses cases!). We could summarize it as "needles

The "Smart" in the post you replied to stands for something else than your examples (which are absolutely valid uses cases!). We could summarize it as "needlessly Internet connected, reporting to some endpoint in the cloud outside of your control, which is now a point of failure". Indeed my dishwasher is likely more reliable, and my fridge can get more efficient with a microcontroller. But the 2017 version is likely to suddenly stop working is someone in Korea forgets to renew a certificate (or worse, become part of a botnet, or act as an breach in the security of your network like the aquarium in Vegas I read about lately). Most of the times, the "added value" of this new dependency is harvesting your data for profit (which won't get passed down to you as a better price, don't worry).