"I agree with the author, but there is one point he seems to have overlooked; brand." That's exactly what I was thinking. Users have to learn, through repeated

"I agree with the author, but there is one point he seems to have overlooked; brand." That's exactly what I was thinking. Users have to learn, through repeated use, to trust automation. They might take a chance and buy an intelligent sensor-equipped washing machine, but only if they can control it manually if the intelligence turns out to suck. This is one reason why they appear to prefer complex products. But there's a way around that: get a reputation for really good automation. (Yes, it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but I'm sure it's doable for consumer electronics.) Where users are confident that automation will work well, I predict we'll find that "users prefer complex products" is less true.