Is the Internet of Things (IoT) a cumbersome way of addressing a non-problem? Over the past 20 years companies have poured billions of dollars into the IoT and, yet, in 2024, the Internet of Things still isn’t a thing.
Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg News:
Manufacturer surveys suggest that fewer than half of internet-capable devices are connected to the internet. Companies such as LG Electronics Inc. and Whirlpool Corp. have responded to these dismal figures by sinking yet more money into the IoT. But many customers remain indifferent.
The consumer benefit of attaching your household devices to the internet is often small. How do you benefit by connecting your dishwasher to the internet? You might be able to start it remotely (after you’ve used your thumb to activate your phone, found the app, clicked on the app, and debated all the other things you could or should be doing on your phone). But you still must be there to load it. What is the benefit of being able to control the temperature of your fridge remotely? Fridge-freaks might revel in this power, but most of us just set the fridge to the right temperature and forget about it…
If the benefits are often small, or indeed nonexistent, the set-up tax is high. You must download a different app for every manufacturer. You must make sure the device is connected to the internet (washers and driers are often kept in out-of-the-way places where the internet signal is poor). Setting up an iPhone or an iPad can be taxing enough even though the benefits are obvious, and the devices come equipped with keypads. But keying complicated instructions into an oven is a chore of a different magnitude…
The final worry about the IoT is that it turns everything around you into a spy. People are belatedly fretting about giving so much information about themselves to their computers and phones. Do those of us finally beginning to worry about baring our lives to our iPhones want to add our washing machines or ovens or cars to the list of listening devices? And could we trust the makers of washing machines or ovens to guard our information with the same expertise that they trust Google or Apple? The more information we put onto the IoT, the more danger there is for it to leak out or find its way into the wrong hands.
MacDailyNews Take: Wooldridge is right about IoT, the benefits so far seem too small to matter. (For example, we have a Wi-Fi-capable fridge which we set up when it was delivered. Then it lost its connection at some point. We haven’t cared enough to reenable it.) But, Wooldridge is certainly wrong to equate Apple and Google when it comes to privacy. Apple is great on privacy, especially compared to Google which is awful. We wonder, how many non-techie consumers think the same way, trusting Apple and Google equally, when one, Apple, deserves trust and the other, Google, most certainly does not?
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The problem is these devices become outdated and the capabilities of them to do something useful goes away. Almost not worth messing with.
The biggest benefit would be some kind of warning like with cars when there’s a problem that needs to be fixed before it’s a catastrophe, but then again many of these warnings are either false alarms, upsells for unnecessary service or part of added electrical complexity that in itself causes problems. With the rapid trend to cheap out on material quality everywhere and dropping standards of workmanship it’s best to stick to the simplest machines you can find and avoid all the bells and whistles.
The idea most people have of IoT right now tends to be of large groups of them, like drones or sensors spread across a wide area. The home user on the other hand might be best marketed to concerning IoT with the idea of ‘peripherals’ that can be added to the smart home. When a device becomes outdated, get an upgrade just for that device. At the same time make sure that the IoT for a smart home has a high level of security so as to reduce the possibility of misuse from outside ‘bad actors’.
Do I REALLY need a furnace filter connected to the internet?