Why Smart Gadgets Are a Dumb Idea

If you're a technophile, you probably have several smart gadgets - most likely a television with all sorts of apps, maybe an internet-connected doorbell camera, a thermostat, or smart speakers. That's great when they're new, but what happens three or four years down the line when the manufacture isn't updating them or providing security updates, or maybe even has gone out of business? Or heaven forbid, your internet connection goes down?

That's the subject of this distinctly sanguine article from Gizmodo. If you're a gadget freak, you might want to give it a good close read.

This is the conundrum with the Internet of Things. You, the consumer, only buy appliances when they crap out on you. If you shell out for an advanced gadget, the last thing you want is for it to break like a cheap piece of trash. You also don’t want a device that’s going to promise the moon, only to get discontinued because the company went out of business or the product line wasn’t profitable enough.

The most recent public example of this is Sonos. Back in January, the company announced that its oldest products would be effectively retired and rebranded as “legacy products.” The backlash was fierce and immediate. It didn’t help that Sonos said 92 percent of all the gadgets it had ever shipped were still in use. While the company probably meant that statistic to emphasize it had put effort into building quality products, some users claimed the move was a cynical cash grab. Users had simply held onto their devices too long, and Sonos stood accused of sunsetting, or intentionally phasing out, perfectly usable products to drive up profit margins. To be fair, ten years is a long time for any consumer electronic and as Sonos pointed out, the limitations of 10-year-old processors as newer streaming technologies emerge are very real. But as many audiophiles will tell you, a good pair of speakers can sometimes last you twenty years with regular maintenance. To many consumers, speakers, like appliances, are a long-term investment.