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comment by Isherwood
Isherwood  ·  3109 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Consumers Prepare For An Internet Of Very Pointless Things

In my example, it's more about all the parts of the home working together and "just working". Yes these things have been on the market for a long time, but they either require and intimidating amount of programming (that is, some programming) or they don't have perceived intelligence (my thermostat schedule doesn't adjust to my sick days).

I think if someone could create an affordable smart home suite that "just worked" it would be more enticing than the other current solutions. I also think this is what nest is working towards.





kleinbl00  ·  3109 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Here's my objection:

You say, "It would be great if it worked like this."

I say "It does work like this. Has done for decades. Nobody cares."

You say "But it doesn't work like this."

This is the part where I say

Look. The difference between a Nest and this is $230 worth of hipster bullshit. I say this having hated on how primitive and stupid thermostats are for going on 20 years. I actually rigged one very similar to this example to act as a dayparting timer for background music in a large chain of restaurants - the cheapest way for me to switch between two sources in over 2,000 restaurants was rigging the thermostat Macgyver style to do what I needed it to do. Its not that they're really versatile, it's that they're really fucking simple.

But hipsters are scared of things involving screwdrivers, and in love with things involving wifi, so yay. $250 thermostat. It doesn't "just work", it has to "learn" your behavior. Fuck you, Nest. Turn on when I tell you, turn off when I tell you, and go for the temperatures I decide. See, that's the part they don't really explain - you have to fuck with a Nest for about two weeks before it does its magic, while my $20 buddy is in the zone within ten minutes of me slapping it on the wall. And remember - three wires. Same three wires the Nest needs.

You wanna see innovative? here's innovative. Fuck your thermostat, I wanna know what all the power in the house is doing, and I want to know from everywhere.

Except that isn't innovative either. I think TED is a 3rd or 4th generation whole-house monitor. But since it's basically a scaled-down industrial energy monitor, rather than "the Internet of Things", and since you need to know how to change out a circuit breaker to use it, the hipsters aren't eating it up.

"Just working" means "but I want bells and whistles!" or "but there isn't enough hype!" THAT is what separates Nest from its competition - bullshit Kickstarter eMasturbation "sentiment."

And again - we do this every ten years.

Isherwood  ·  3109 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, there is a market of people who don't want to change their circuit breaker and still want the benefits of controlling their home energy. You can dismiss them but they aren't going away, and they seem to have cash in hand for more energy efficient homes.

So companies can go in, in our simplified universe, one of two ways. The first tact is yelling "fuck you you hipster piece of shit, we built what you're talking about 20 years ago and if you really wanted what you're talking about you'd bring yourself to my level." The second tact is building the thing that people seem to be asking for.

I know that all of these things exist and work. I know that this is nothing new to you. But if I'm making these devices then fuck you, you're not my target market anyway. Instead, I'm going to focus on those hipster pieces of shit. I'm going to build a "learning thermostat" that your program to your actions. That has a motion detector that can tell if you're home and the house should be heated or cooled off schedule. That looks futuristic and cool, because even if they don't want to admit it, that matters.

And when I have that product built, I'm going to build lights that can use those motion detectors to turn off if no one's in the house. That can not use the water heater, when someone wants to save money without going tankless. That can Know when an outlet should be drawing power and when it shouldn't be.

Yeah, you can do these things because you give enough of a shit to go out and learn it. Everyone else can't say the same thing. That's who they're building for.

kleinbl00  ·  3109 days ago  ·  link  ·  

And again, here's my objection:

those people don't exist.

"Energy efficient homes" is a mature market segment. You'll find that most power districts will throw incentives at you like they're made out of money for going energy-efficient. City of Seattle will pay half of a front-loading washer, for example. Need new windows? Have a tax credit. Wanna go tankless? Have a 40% cash rebate. Not to mention all the CCFLs distributed by every power company under the sun. That shit's super easy and it's completely seamless to the consumer.

Not only that, but you're either selling to people who are comfortable going to Home Depot or you aren't. If you aren't comfortable going to Home Depot, sure, buy your Nest off Amazon. Lookithat. They got 'em prime. Right next to them, of course, they've got the Honeywell for $100 less, and it includes that all-important picture of a female hand model holding an iPhone with graphix comped in.

If you are comfortable going to Home Depot...

And thus the problem. Home Depot will absolutely sell you a Nest. They'll sell you a Honeywell. They'll sell you cheap chinese blister-packed thermostats for $19. And if you're comfortable going to Home Depot, you're comfortable asking Home Depot "hey, how hard are these things to put in?" and Home Depot will say "easier than a light switch because you don't even need to turn off your breaker. Do you have HVAC? no? Then there's literally two wires and the polarity doesn't even matter."

Yeah - the Nest is a darling of the tech industry right now. Yeah - it's a lot less ugly than that which came before. And yeah - it's going to have a lasting impact on the market. Just like when the iPhone came out: all of a sudden it wasn't cool to have your phone be ugly as fuck. Gizmodo called it "the Jesus phone" and they were right (even though it didn't have copy and paste) and it radically changed the landscape for handsets.

But the iPhone also changed the functionality of phones. Multitouch was a big deal, and allowed you to actually use the thing with your thumb. An App Store that didn't suck was a revelation. A handset you didn't have to spend the weekend doing registry hacks on in order to use? Marvelous.

The Nest is a thermostat. It even looks like an antique Honeywell.

Talk about skeuomorphism - the design of the gadget above is a consequence of bimetallic strips and mercury switches. The Nest adds what, exactly, besides that non-denominational "fuzziness" of its programming and an app for that?

Which isn't a problem except that once you've put in a magic thermostat, you've let the magic out. Your comprehension of its cleverness is predicated on your lack of understanding.

So your market segment is basically

- people with money

- who don't understand technology

- but are attracted to it

- and are interested in home improvement

- but not so interested that they'll visit a home improvement store.

My whole house monitor? Sold through the exact same channels as X-10 shit. Home hobbyists have been dinking with this stuff for decades and that's not going to change. The difference is, Wall Street is going to forget about them (again, for the nth time) when the "Internet of Things" doesn't translate into revenues.

thx1138  ·  3106 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You're really over-complicating the market segment description. It's simply people with money who are attracted to technology. And they certainly don't consider a thermostat swap as a "home improvement project". Home improvement projects to them are putting in a hardwood floor, new countertops, or painting the walls.

Like it or not, understand it or not, agree with it or not, there is a whole class of consumer that will happily fork over $250 for the ability to turn the heat on without getting out of bed, and more importantly to them have guests comment on the "cool looking gadget on the wall". Hell, some of them might even be programmers (loud GASP!). Say it isn't so, Joe. Understanding technology has nothing to do with it.

If those people don't exist then who the hell did Nest sell al their devices to? What you are missing is that there is absolutely a class of consumer that wants all of the bells and whistles you and I don't value. They don't give a shit that there are cheaper altenatives available with the same core features and same easy installation process. They are likely very aware they are simply throwing their dollars at the aesthetics of the product. I wish I had disposable income for this kind of stuff. My furniture collection and wall art would be quite different I assure you.

Besides, the Honeywell Smart thermostat is a better bells and whistles match to the Nest than the base programmable you linked to, so with an honest comparison it's really only $70 worth of hipster bullshit not $230.

kleinbl00  ·  3106 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How many Nests have you seen? I've seen one. It belonged to a team manager at Space X. You missed the fact that this 'class of consumer' precludes the individuals doing stuff like this for the past 20 years without needing to spend $230 on a Honeywell analog.

You've got your opinion, I've got mine; mine wasn't delivered with immediate, condescending snark. So the next time you try to have a conversation with me, you'll know why you can't.