The Verge’s reporting on the 2020 smart home boom makes perfect sense – lock people inside long enough, and suddenly automating everything becomes very appealing. Lights, thermostats, cameras, vacuums… if it plugs in, someone tried to make it smarter this year. The problem, as always, is that the smarter the home gets, the more complicated it becomes to keep everything working together.
Consumers are upgrading out of necessity, not novelty. They want reliability, not another app they have to troubleshoot at 9 p.m. The industry still hasn’t cracked a universal standard, which leaves most households juggling ecosystems like a reluctant tech support agent.
Companies are racing to simplify things, but the real breakthrough will come when devices stop trying to recruit you into their platform and start cooperating like they live in the same house.
If the smart home is truly the future, why does setting it up still feel like onboarding a small IT department? And what needs to change for these devices to feel like helpers instead of hobbies?
Related article: The Verge
