And the option is what, buy a Zigbee dongle and a raspberry pi run some code written by unpaid enthusiasts? 3D print a case for it and mount it on the wall, running updates and fixing it ever few months when some package update breaks it?
I like the concept of lights that run from an app. I don’t have any of the physical Hue switches for my system and it’s fine. But I do not want an app that abuses me, and I do not want to maintain some fragile project made from slapped together code. I want robust open hardware with open source software.
I’m convinced that we can achieve this, but it won’t be with the current model of business and engineering we have today.
Plenty of companies do this. I'd wager most of the world economy consists of steady-state Mittelstand-esque firms that put out a good product with pride.
The problem is Silicon Valley's growth mindset was emulated broadly at a time when business history familiarity fell. (In part due to lower-level folks in Silicon Valley having a knee-jerk reaction to MBAs. In part due to said MBA programs deciding studying cases from a hundred years ago wasn't cutting edge.)
Growth is good. But trying to whip a business–that on its own will grow 2 or 3% a year and, with effort, 5 or 6%–to do 10 or 20% top-line YoY ruins it. The same way taking a growth business that could grow at 5 or 6% with effort, and instead committing to cutting its costs at 5% a year (the way one would do with a business that is in structural decline at a rate of 3 to 4% p.a.), is terrible strategy.
This is garbage management. It's bad for customers. It's bad for shareholders. It's bad for the societies whose technical knowledge is being eroded. It's good for a set of managers whose behavior veers between stupid and corrupt. I don't know the solution. But it's not as radical as overhauling corporate America in its entirety.