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> Why are three of the most profitable technology companies in the history of mankind unable to come up with better than Google Home, Alexa, and Siri? Because

> Why are three of the most profitable technology companies in the history of mankind unable to come up with better than Google Home, Alexa, and Siri? Because none of those companies are in the business of providing a useful service to end users. Google sells ads, Amazon sells marketplaces, Apple sells consumer entertainment system. None of them went into the smart home business to address the needs or solve the problems of people using the devices. They all intended to use the devices to expand their cores business and make it more profitable.

bgun 4y ago
That's a fair answer but only addresses half of my question. There do exist companies (some large ones) who are in the business of providing useful devices or service to end users; why aren't any of them building smart home devices? Where is Sony? Samsung? Bose? LG? Dell? Is it even possible to make a decent smart home hub and turn a profit?
- artntek 4y ago
  Samsung: https://www.smartthings.com/ https://www.smartthings.com/
- rblatz 4y ago
  There is, it’s all high end and you have to go through a salesman and a whole system design to even get accurate pricing.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yep, here's one, and it's on the lower end: https://www.savant.com/host https://www.savant.com/host ("only $5k to $20k" some site said) - there are others that are so eye-wateringly expensive you can only hear whispers about it, usually in support documents for already high-end equipment like in-window automatic shades. You can mimic one with a lot of work via HomeAssistant and some programming; the secret is you can create virtual switches that you can then use Siri to turn on or off to trigger activities.
    - Animats 4y ago
      The trouble is, the stuff that's any good requires planning, wiring, and installation. Nest's thermostat doesn't even need a separate power source, so it can be sold at Home Depot. As I've pointed out before, home IoT ought to include duct damper controls, vents and fans to the outside, and sensors which measure temperature, humidity, CO2, and maybe other pollutants, both inside and outside the house. Then they can use outside air when appropriate. You can buy all that. It's common in commercial building control. Honeywell and Johnson Controls, old-line building control vendors, sell this stuff. It requires some engineering for each building. That's why it's rarely seen in homes. Some years ago I went to an IoT meeting in the Dogpatch area of San Francisco. The meeting was in a big room on the waterfront, in a refurbished industrial space. The room had skylights with glass vents that could be opened and windows onto the Bay that could be opened. Both were controlled by a manual endless chain, which could have been motorized without too much trouble. There were ceiling fans, and a standard dumb HVAC system. None of this stuff was interconnected. With a big group in there, it should have sensed rising CO2, opened some of the windows, cranked up the fans, and run the room without active HVAC until sunset. Then it should have gradually closed the windows as the room cooled, kept the ceiling fans turning over, and added some heat. Once everyone left, it should have briefly ventilated the room thoroughly, then closed up everything, stopped the fans, and let the room cool down to 60F or so while unoccupied. But no. That's building automation. Hotels go for this stuff, because they have big energy costs and a huge range of occupancy, especially in function rooms.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Yup. "Smart home automation" is basically marketing designed to sell expensive LED bulbs that you amaze your 7 year old with the color changing a few times and then revert to having one or two settings. True automation has to be designed in, and it costs money.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Does that idea of a smart home really appeal outside the HN/Popular Science crowd? Perhaps there's no compelling use to constitute a market worth pursuing? Perhaps the only real customers for the technology are the ones that can buy and sell the profiles collected from the private habits of the end users.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    There are a few actually useful things for a "smart home" but much of it can be replaced by intelligent design during the build. For example, the master bedroom should have four-way light switches [1] such that the lights in the room can be turned off by the switch next to the door, the switch next to the bathroom, and a switch on either side of the bed. Even a "home theater setup" switch can be created by some intelligent lighting choices (turn off main lights but turn on "audience lights" which triggers the screen to drop down, projector to come on, etc). [1] Once at 4-way, you can go to N-way by chaining as many as you want: https://matthews.sites.wfu.edu/courses/p230/switches/SwitchesTut.html https://matthews.sites.wfu.edu/courses/p230/switches/Switche...
  - throwaway173738 4y ago
    I think the problem is that all the products put the user in control of a switch that happens to require wifi and the internet to flick on or off. There’s very little value in replacing light switches. Other players in the space that are successful provide things that are better that switches. Hue, for example, lets you change the color of your lighting. Nest lets you warm up your house before you get home. There’s some interest in better switches. I think the best switch of all is going to be to anticipate the user’s needs and adjust the house to them. It’ll likely be in a range of subtlety between closing the blinds for you when you’re about to walk through your living room naked and giving you a light show if you put dance music on. The reason you probably won’t ever see it is because not everyone wants the same things and it’s difficult to intuit what anyone wants without being told. You have to solve some pretty big social problems with technology to make it seamless for normal people. The most sensible approach might be to somehow clone your consciousness into a machine and let the machine control your house. This would probably make a great Black Mirror episode.
  - 4y ago
- waboremo 4y ago
  You can visit https://csa-iot.org/csa-iot_products/ https://csa-iot.org/csa-iot_products/ and see which devices have already got Matter certification (of the ones you listed, Samsung and LG which makes sense considering they also sell home appliances). Then there's the likes of Ikea, also with their own line of smart home devices doing just fine as well.
nr2x 4y ago
“Apple sells consumer entertainment systems” So you’ve never seen anybody write code on a Mac?
- cratermoon 4y ago
  I write code on a Mac, all day. I still maintain that Apple is primarily a consumer entertainment system provider. The iPhone and iPad drive Apple's revenue. The Mac is to the iPhone and iPad what Visual Studio is to Windows. As Steve Balmer once said, "Developers! Developers! DEVELOPERS!"
  - nr2x 4y ago
    Hard disagree, counter point being Nintendo. They make pure entertainment devices, Apple may also be in that market, but nobody is running Excel on a Switch.
    - cratermoon 4y ago
      For the most recent year I have information, iPhone was 47% of Apple's revenue, services 21%, Mac 13%, wearables and accessories 11%, and iPad 8%. (rounded) Macs are barely more of a revenue generator than wearables and accessories, which is stuff like Apple Watch, iPod, Apple TV, Beats Electronics and Apple-branded and third-party accessories. Services is iTunes Store, the App Store, the Mac App Store, the iBooks Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re... Apple is an entertainment device company that happens to also sell the development platform for iOS, and that platform can also be used for other kinds of development, the kind that supports the backend. A good thing, too, because Apple's cloud services and data centers use Linux and a lot of other non-Mac things necessary for Apple's services to generate revenue.

bgun 4y ago

That's a fair answer but only addresses half of my question. There do exist companies (some large ones) who are in the business of providing useful devices or service to end users; why aren't any of them building smart home devices? Where is Sony? Samsung? Bose? LG? Dell? Is it even possible to make a decent smart home hub and turn a profit?

artntek 4y ago
Samsung: https://www.smartthings.com/ https://www.smartthings.com/
rblatz 4y ago
There is, it’s all high end and you have to go through a salesman and a whole system design to even get accurate pricing.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yep, here's one, and it's on the lower end: https://www.savant.com/host https://www.savant.com/host ("only $5k to $20k" some site said) - there are others that are so eye-wateringly expensive you can only hear whispers about it, usually in support documents for already high-end equipment like in-window automatic shades. You can mimic one with a lot of work via HomeAssistant and some programming; the secret is you can create virtual switches that you can then use Siri to turn on or off to trigger activities.
  - Animats 4y ago
    The trouble is, the stuff that's any good requires planning, wiring, and installation. Nest's thermostat doesn't even need a separate power source, so it can be sold at Home Depot. As I've pointed out before, home IoT ought to include duct damper controls, vents and fans to the outside, and sensors which measure temperature, humidity, CO2, and maybe other pollutants, both inside and outside the house. Then they can use outside air when appropriate. You can buy all that. It's common in commercial building control. Honeywell and Johnson Controls, old-line building control vendors, sell this stuff. It requires some engineering for each building. That's why it's rarely seen in homes. Some years ago I went to an IoT meeting in the Dogpatch area of San Francisco. The meeting was in a big room on the waterfront, in a refurbished industrial space. The room had skylights with glass vents that could be opened and windows onto the Bay that could be opened. Both were controlled by a manual endless chain, which could have been motorized without too much trouble. There were ceiling fans, and a standard dumb HVAC system. None of this stuff was interconnected. With a big group in there, it should have sensed rising CO2, opened some of the windows, cranked up the fans, and run the room without active HVAC until sunset. Then it should have gradually closed the windows as the room cooled, kept the ceiling fans turning over, and added some heat. Once everyone left, it should have briefly ventilated the room thoroughly, then closed up everything, stopped the fans, and let the room cool down to 60F or so while unoccupied. But no. That's building automation. Hotels go for this stuff, because they have big energy costs and a huge range of occupancy, especially in function rooms.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yup. "Smart home automation" is basically marketing designed to sell expensive LED bulbs that you amaze your 7 year old with the color changing a few times and then revert to having one or two settings. True automation has to be designed in, and it costs money.
cratermoon 4y ago
Does that idea of a smart home really appeal outside the HN/Popular Science crowd? Perhaps there's no compelling use to constitute a market worth pursuing? Perhaps the only real customers for the technology are the ones that can buy and sell the profiles collected from the private habits of the end users.
- bombcar 4y ago
  There are a few actually useful things for a "smart home" but much of it can be replaced by intelligent design during the build. For example, the master bedroom should have four-way light switches [1] such that the lights in the room can be turned off by the switch next to the door, the switch next to the bathroom, and a switch on either side of the bed. Even a "home theater setup" switch can be created by some intelligent lighting choices (turn off main lights but turn on "audience lights" which triggers the screen to drop down, projector to come on, etc). [1] Once at 4-way, you can go to N-way by chaining as many as you want: https://matthews.sites.wfu.edu/courses/p230/switches/SwitchesTut.html https://matthews.sites.wfu.edu/courses/p230/switches/Switche...
- throwaway173738 4y ago
  I think the problem is that all the products put the user in control of a switch that happens to require wifi and the internet to flick on or off. There’s very little value in replacing light switches. Other players in the space that are successful provide things that are better that switches. Hue, for example, lets you change the color of your lighting. Nest lets you warm up your house before you get home. There’s some interest in better switches. I think the best switch of all is going to be to anticipate the user’s needs and adjust the house to them. It’ll likely be in a range of subtlety between closing the blinds for you when you’re about to walk through your living room naked and giving you a light show if you put dance music on. The reason you probably won’t ever see it is because not everyone wants the same things and it’s difficult to intuit what anyone wants without being told. You have to solve some pretty big social problems with technology to make it seamless for normal people. The most sensible approach might be to somehow clone your consciousness into a machine and let the machine control your house. This would probably make a great Black Mirror episode.
- 4y ago
waboremo 4y ago
You can visit https://csa-iot.org/csa-iot_products/ https://csa-iot.org/csa-iot_products/ and see which devices have already got Matter certification (of the ones you listed, Samsung and LG which makes sense considering they also sell home appliances). Then there's the likes of Ikea, also with their own line of smart home devices doing just fine as well.

nr2x 4y ago

“Apple sells consumer entertainment systems” So you’ve never seen anybody write code on a Mac?

cratermoon 4y ago
I write code on a Mac, all day. I still maintain that Apple is primarily a consumer entertainment system provider. The iPhone and iPad drive Apple's revenue. The Mac is to the iPhone and iPad what Visual Studio is to Windows. As Steve Balmer once said, "Developers! Developers! DEVELOPERS!"
- nr2x 4y ago
  Hard disagree, counter point being Nintendo. They make pure entertainment devices, Apple may also be in that market, but nobody is running Excel on a Switch.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    For the most recent year I have information, iPhone was 47% of Apple's revenue, services 21%, Mac 13%, wearables and accessories 11%, and iPad 8%. (rounded) Macs are barely more of a revenue generator than wearables and accessories, which is stuff like Apple Watch, iPod, Apple TV, Beats Electronics and Apple-branded and third-party accessories. Services is iTunes Store, the App Store, the Mac App Store, the iBooks Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re... Apple is an entertainment device company that happens to also sell the development platform for iOS, and that platform can also be used for other kinds of development, the kind that supports the backend. A good thing, too, because Apple's cloud services and data centers use Linux and a lot of other non-Mac things necessary for Apple's services to generate revenue.