> Over engineering and not talking to customers is really at the crux of this post. Is it? I expect that a substantial portion of unnecessarily complicated Io

> Over engineering and not talking to customers is really at the crux of this post. Is it? I expect that a substantial portion of unnecessarily complicated IoT devices aren't really about pleasing the person who buys the device, but rather about establishing a foothold in someone's house to achieve some other business objective. For instance, it's hard to find a plain TV these days that doesn't have a network connection. Maybe dumb TVs don't sell, but it's also possible that smart TVs are actually cheaper to make because the "smart" part is subsidized by whoever stands to make the most money from its pre-installed apps.