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I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

321–325 of 325 posts

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#321
post #194

A lot of consumer IoT feels forced. It feels like I am supposed to want these things. What am I? A luddite? It's The Future(tm)! Of course I should want a less reliable, more expensive, shorter life span, more complex security/privacy nightmare in place of a completely reliable long-lived inexpensive device. Complexity is costly in many, many ways. There is zero justification for adding it to anything unless the payo…

I work in the Hotel industry making Apps for reservations and in room entertainment and engagement. Some of your statements make sense but, form the hotels perspective, some of the reasoning for implementing this stuff has little to nothing to do with making the experience better for the guest. We use the data we get from things like the lights, temperature, and other information to find ways to save money and find how to better set up properties for profit. Its a numbers game. We hope that we can use the same tech to drive user engagement and keep them within the apps so they become lifetime guests and book with us for subsequent stays. It is a marketing and management effort. All about the ability to save money while driving engagement.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#322
I think one part of the reason is "good" developers almost never apply for jobs to work on such projects. These projects are not cool or cutting edge, and you won't learn anything new. Also the reason why a lot of outsourcing, which is boring, and tedious 'business software' type work ends up being of average to below average quality.

It happens elsewhere too. Like how poor people get public defenders who are overworked, underpaid and not as good as private lawyers.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#323

So sad. I find the mechanics here really challenging to overcome. The hotel management no doubt wants "really cool tech" for their hotel to show they are up to date etc. And they send out an RFQ which someone bids on, really cheaply. Knowing that by only doing the things the hotel asks for, they can throw something together quickly and cheaply for a big payday. This is exactly the mechanism that gets people in troubl…

I agree with you on all your points, except: > This is exactly the mechanism that gets people in trouble going to China for manufacturing. I keep hearing about the "cheap Chinese tech", even though nowadays a lot of high-quality gadgets are really Chinese. Even Apple's products are mostly from China. And it's not even for the cheap prices, it's because the entire production chain is there[1] The mistake is not going…

There was also a flip back in the 90s where "Made In Japan" denoted a better product where in the past the slogan was thought of as cheap.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#325
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/internetofshit Edit: Here are the greatest hits. http://favstar.fm/users/internetofshit By the way, it seems like extreme product fail on Twitter's part that I have to go to a sketchy third party site to get the top tweets for an account.

> By the way, it seems like extreme product fail Not necessarily. They just decided not to have this specific feature. It is a product design decision.

What do you think the basis of that decision is?
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