While there are reasons for concern, I don't really blame Philips (Signify) for this. They released the v1 hub quite early in the smart home space. It wasn't co

While there are reasons for concern, I don't really blame Philips (Signify) for this. They released the v1 hub quite early in the smart home space. It wasn't compatible with Apple Homekit features when they were released due to hardware limitations for reasons they presumably couldn't have predicted (unless they made it a more capable and expensive device in the hopes it would support unknown requirements). They made all v1 owners an offer to get a new hub "free" with a colour changing bulb, though it's not good value if you don't want the colour changing bulb or find it on sale and don't care about the hub. The old hub will continue to work, just not remotely. After eight years, I think it's a responsible and fair response within the parameters of consumer gear. The only way it could be better would be if the hub weren't required at all, or it was more easily interoperable with other controllers, but from the start that would have meant a more complicated experience. I was an early adopter of Hue, even though it's kind of expensive I enjoy the capability to change the colour and mood of room lighting. $400 worth of lighting hardware for a house over 15 years is less than the comparable effect of painting a single room. From the start it has good support for local-only implementations with good open source libraries.