
Nest was supposed to lead the next computing revolution. Its looking like a bust - tdrnd
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/7/11378904/nest-tony-fadell-struggling
======
iamleppert
Honestly, the only stroke of genius at Nest wasn't the self-learning aspect of
the thermostat, or the fact you could set pre-programmed times, or control it
from your phone. There had been other products on the market that did this,
albeit somewhat poorly.

I'm convinced it was the industrial design, of making something that normally
is a beige box sexy and nice to look at. Something you put on your wall, that
is a necessity is now a piece of high-tech artwork that you can admire.

This is evidenced by the fact their smoke alarms, if their "connected home"
story were to hold true, haven't done nearly as well. People could care less
if their smoke alarms are smart, because you rarely look at your ceiling. You
often see your thermostat every day, with most being located on the wall when
you walk into your house or apartment.

Evidence: I have many non-tech friends and family who own a nest. They do not
use any of the advanced features, maybe rarely. They all say the same thing:
they bought it because it looked cool and wanted a "finishing touch" on their
house. Maybe did so after a kitchen remodel or something else they did to
their house, indicating it was more an emotional purchase fueled by aesthetics
and ego.

Based upon this, it is now unsurprising the hype hasn't scaled. The business
was kind of a one hit wonder and it's not shocking the company is floundering.

------
carsongross
Nest, to me, was never about a computing revolution.

It was that someone was finally taking Apple-level industrial design and
applying it to common household goods. That made me very excited, and happy to
pay more for it. Finally, a common product was getting better aesthetically,
rather than worse.

All the rest was noise, mainly for investors. Unfortunately, it appears that
the noise may destroy what matters.

~~~
sp332
This would have happened a long time ago if Honeywell didn't have all the
patents on good thermostat design. They have three lawsuits currently going on
and have settled with Intellectual Ventures.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs#Litigation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_Labs#Litigation)
That's crazy expensive and it would put almost any other company out of
business very quickly.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Wow - what Honeywell sells is "good thermostat design"? All those horrible
buttons and opaque modes? There's lots of room for improvement.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
That's the problem with modern patents. What you're seeing is their
implementation of their patents. Another company might make a massively better
design, but tread on their overly broad patent that is vaguely written for
just that reason.

------
jbob2000
If anything, Nest is a comment about how growing a company via investments
doesn't work. If Nest could focus on working out the technical issues without
the investors breathing down their neck, I'm sure the product would do much
better.

Not only that, but I already have a thermostat. It works _perfectly_. I've
never said to myself, "Gee, I wish I could adjust my home temperature from
work, I need an exact 23.5 degrees when I get home". It doesn't do enough for
me to justify messing with my HVAC system, that whole "if it ain't broke,
don't fix it" adage comes to mind.

~~~
raldi
And I bet your VCR never flashed 12:00, either. You are not a representative
user.

There are hundreds of millions of families out there that have no idea how to
program their thermostat beyond changing the current temperature, so they just
leave it running all night and day, whether they're home or not.

The appeal of the Nest thermostat is _not_ so that control freaks can fine-
tune the temperature at home while in an airplane. It's so that regular people
can just have it installed and forget about it.

~~~
talmand
But wouldn't those people not able to program their current thermostat, for
whatever reason, would have to be able to program their new fancier
thermostat?

~~~
Domenic_S
They don't scream this like they used to, but it's called the "Nest _Learning_
Thermostat". There's one control, a ring that you turn left for colder and
right for hotter. Over about a week the thermostat takes your inputs combined
with the weather and develops a schedule it thinks you'll find comfortable. As
it misses, you override it (again, just turn the ring) and Nest learns and
updates its schedule for you.

You can use the app or the website to input a specific schedule if you prefer,
which is still simpler than 99% of conventional thermostats.

Anecdotally I just programmed my grandmother's thermostat for her and it took
me -- a 30-something with deep technical experience -- way too long to figure
it out (I even had to break out the manual). What if grandma could just turn
the ring left or right and the thermostat would come up with a schedule for
her, wouldn't that be better?

~~~
talmand
But isn't that just a small part of the Nest idea?

Wouldn't the same thing be accomplished by getting someone to do it for them?
Much like your grandmother and you? You set it up for her, she likely has to
rarely deal with it again. All Nest does is take you out of the equation but
you work for free.

~~~
Domenic_S
Except the next time I visited, her thermostat had messed up its program and
it was set at 80 degrees. Whether it was a power outage and dead backup
battery, or she somehow fiddled with it and messed it up herself, it was once
again in a broken state.

I hate to invoke the overused phrase, but the nest thermostat Just Works™.

~~~
talmand
Could not the same things happen with a Nest?

~~~
Domenic_S
Not really, because it continually adjusts its schedule for you depending on
your manual inputs, is powered by the HVAC wires themselves (and charges a
small backup battery that you never have to worry about), and if you really
wanted to you could log into her account and fix the thermostat remotely if
somehow she managed to really break things. If all you do is turn the ring
right or left for colder and hotter, it'll do its thing just fine.

You could hop into the menus and.. forget the wifi password or something I
guess?

One thing nest handles really well is "I'm feeling a little too cold/hot
tonight and I'm going to adjust the temp". You walk up and twist the ring and
you're done. You don't have to disable scheduled mode or enable override mode
or anything like that. Twist and done. I have a feeling that's how grandma
messed up her thermostat, she was feeling cold so she turned it up to 80 (lol)
and then the thermostat said, ok I guess this is my life now. 80 degrees
forever.

~~~
talmand
I hate that this sounds like I'm arguing, because I'm not. I just find this
discussion interesting.

If the device learns over time from grandma turning the dial up and down, does
that not create strange data for the device to figure out? Take your example,
grandma is cold so she turns the temp up; does this count as a manual input?
Does that not eventually create a problem? Much like the original thermostat
but takes longer?

Although, the account thing is interesting. Can you set the schedule and then
disable the manual interface to let grandma change all she wants with no
changes?

~~~
Domenic_S
Heh, no offense taken.

I don't know the internals of how nest deals with wild swings in manual
inputs, but I haven't seen a problem. Although even if it results in a "nights
are 80 degrees" situation, the rest of the day is unaffected so at worst it's
still better than the other thermostat.

Yes, you can set a schedule and disable the physical interface.

------
ubercore
Funny timing on this story. Just last night my Nest "froze" the heat on. Heat
was set to 68, thermostat read 73 and the Nest was still running the furnace
(and the screen was orange, indicating the heat is on). Had to power cycle the
thing for it to stop running my furnace. Welcome to the future!

------
alistproducer2
Nest is product very few people want. Period. A thermostat is not difficult to
operate and why would regular people introduce complication into their lives
over something they think about as little as the thermostat? The IoT will only
take off when someone can come up with a value proposition besides "isn't that
cool?"

~~~
sp332
The Nest requires less interaction and less thinking than a normal thermostat
or even a programmable thermostat.

~~~
ianferrel
But is it enough?

It took me maybe 10 minutes to set up my programmable thermostat, and I
probably never need to touch it again.

It cost like $40. I just can't see spending $250 for something to save that 10
minutes. And that's assuming that the Nest actually takes zero setup. What if
I have to dig into it because its internal logic is doing something weird?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
There was an efficiency program that gave out programmable thermostats to
average householders. When they evaluated the program they found that they
actually made things worse, because no one knew how to use them properly.

~~~
alistproducer2
It's not that most people couldn't figure out how to use those programmables
right; it's that they didn't care enough (ie, see the benefit) to take the
time necessary to learn it.

For people who do see the benefit (I am one of those as I programmed mine in ~
10 minutes as well), it's much more time and money efficient to use the
programmable that came with my house than it is to buy some $250 contraption,
install it, sync it, then learn how to use it.

With gadgets, the world is divided into those who love them for their own
sake, those who see enough utility in them to invest the added time/money
(relative to lower tech alternatives) and those who do not care enough to use
the alternates or the gadgets (ie, most of humanity).

------
jandrese
I have a Nest and if the cloud service went away and I couldn't control it
from my phone anymore, I really wouldn't be sad. It's a feature I use maybe
twice a year at most.

The Nest does look cool and has a much better interface for programming a
schedule, but it is hardly revolutionary.

In particular, I've been disappointed that the "the Nest will know when you
aren't home and automatically adjust!" feature never worked, although that's
maybe not a surprise since it's basically magic.

But I got it for free, so I can't complain. It looks cooler than the old
Thermostat I had and they send me an email every month telling me how I'm like
the bestest person in the world for turning off the heat and opening the
windows in the spring.

~~~
Domenic_S
> _it is hardly revolutionary._

When it was released there was nothing like it. It's still the best DIY home
thermostat imo. The installation is straight out of the Apple playbook, little
included screwdriver and all. It looks both retro and futuristic. Turning the
wheel to set the temperature is such a great interface.

Auto-away works really well for me, so being able to crank on the heat/a/c
when I'm an hour away is huge. Huge. This sounds lazy, but I like being able
to control the upstairs thermostat while I'm comfortably snuggled in watching
a movie downstairs.

Monthly emailed energy reports help me pay attention without being too
intrusive. It's also adapted to our family's usage really well (the "learning"
part of the learning thermostat). I love not having to mess with it too much,
although I understand that's not a Nest-specific feature.

Best of all, there's no monthly fee. I can't get behind Nest Cam because of
their fee, but the Thermostat is buy-it-once (...so far).

What's so smart about it is that unlike other energy-saving improvements, you
can use it in rentals too. My current nest was installed in my last rental, I
just saved the old thermostat and took pics of how it was installed so I could
put it back.

For me, its set-it-and-forget-it factor is massive, and that's what I prefer
almost always. Since I'm the resident utility guy, the less I have to dork
around with stuff other people use, the better - and Nest filled that role
perfectly (incidentally: that's why my family has iphones and macbooks instead
of android & windows/linux desktops, why I don't install Tomato on my routers,
etc -- not because I think they're intrinsically better, but because I don't
have to spend a bunch of time managing them).

Anyway, my point is I think the thermostat _was_ revolutionary -- essentially
nobody was thinking about residential thermostats before Nest came along.

Their smoke detectors on the other hand... don't even get me started.

~~~
mcphage
> Turning the wheel to set the temperature is such a great interface.

It doesn't get talked about as much anymore, but the scroll wheel on the
original iPods really was a fantastic interface... it turned something
obnoxious (tapping arrows to move through a really long list) into something
easy and comfortable. I'm very glad the idea is still being used.

------
PaulHoule
It's a fascinating topic and there are many angles to discuss, but the one I
would focus on is the acquisition issue.

One of the contradictions of capitalism is that a high-P/E and high-growth
company like Google will inevitably close services and squash products that it
acquires because it to maintain that high-P/E ratio they will be forced from
time to time to get out of any businesses that can't sustain the great numbers
that their core business can put up.

At the enterprise level, if I was tasked with vendor management with a company
that was acquired by Google or Facebook I would probably call my sales rep
right away and be like "you better post a performance bond" or "you better
sign an escrow agreement for the source code" or "I talked with a sales rep at
company B and he told me this and he told me this (what do you think about
that?) and he told me this (what do you think about that?) and he told me this
(what do you think about that?) (oh really?) and I would go on with that until
he gives me at least a 15% discount or blows up at me and hangs up the phone."

If it was Microsoft I would feel the same way based on historical experience.
Not so with IBM. They buy failing or market trailing companies that have
something to do with "Watson" or "Cloud" \-- generally they don't get any
better, but they suffer from at most benign neglect. Generally they did not
make the cut or we moved to a competitor years ago, but as notorious as IBM is
for discarding employees, it does try not to leave customers out in the cold.

~~~
mcphage
> ...or "I talked with a sales rep at company B and he told me this and he
> told me this (what do you think about that?) and he told me this (what do
> you think about that?) and he told me this (what do you think about that?)
> (oh really?) and I would go on with that until he gives me at least a 15%
> discount or blows up at me and hangs up the phone."

What?

------
traviswingo
I think this article makes some good points. No matter how you spin it, most
people just won't understand the appeal internet-connected, smart devices for
the home. That's why the direct-to-consumer market isn't exactly the correct
route to take, right now.

It works well with tech-savvy individuals, but that's a small subset of
humanity. It's basic economics.

My company (ElectrIQ Power) is actually in the IoT space, and we've carefully
assessed the market before even starting. Fortunately, for us, we're in a
unique group where demand is currently small, but increasing at a very high
rate. Our revenues are also far greater than would be possible if we were
operating in a direct-to-consumer strategy.

------
matthewmcg
I replaced my existing "dumb" thermostat with a nest and it has certainly been
worthwhile, both in terms of energy cost savings and in having a convenient,
pleasant interface for temperature control.

I purchased the third party Skylark app and installed it on my phone and my
wife's phone so that the nest goes into "away" mode only when we are both out
of the house. I think the official Nest app also added similar functionality
recently.

After this initial set up, and a week or so of "training" we haven't had to
think about setting our thermostat. Our house is just magically at the correct
temperature when we are there but our bill is lower than it was before we got
it.

------
Naritai
The main takeaway from the article (they don't make this argument directly,
but I'm inferring it) is that the main opportunity is for a cloud/services
company to provide a standard and backbone services for all the individual
appliance manufacturers to connect to. So we wouldn't be seeing a Nest washing
machine, but rather an LG washing machine that connects to your (for example)
Nest account.

This still leaves an opportunity for Alphabet (who knows better than them how
to offer a free service and profit off the data?), but leaves Nest in a
category similar to Nexus - a line of HW that demonstrates the value /
usefulness of the services, but is not really a key profit center for the
company. It's not bad, but it's not somewhere I personally would want to work.

------
pacala
Nest is a pillar of the future. The future of ubiquitous surveillance. We
track your online activities, we track your work and personal communications,
we track whom your friends are, we track your whereabouts, we track your
financial transactions.

The last battlefield is your home. You must have an always on device in your
house that listens to your activity and conversations. Since you can turn off
mobile phones and smart tvs [1], we need something better. Amazon has Alexa.
Google has Nexus Player. Nest is the best, because shutting it down has
unpleasant consequences.

[1] Your smart tv is probably smart enough to not really shut down and keep
listening [wink wink].

~~~
seanp2k2
We're already there as of >a year ago re: TV always listening to you:
[http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/09/technology/security/samsung-...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/09/technology/security/samsung-
smart-tv-privacy/)

------
increment_i
Nest is a cool product, but it might be just slightly ahead of its time, by a
hair. Maybe the future generation of homeowners will be adamant about having a
high tech touchscreen interface for their HVAC system, but for most people I
know, it isn't a problem they're compelled to pay for. As the saying goes, the
existing solutions are generally "good enough". I think Nest is on to
something, but I'd bet it's another 5-10 years before they start seeing real
breakthrough success.

~~~
bpchaps
One of my good friends asked me to make a touchscreen interface for his car's
HVAC system.. so there definitely are interested folks out there. :)

------
caseyf7
I'm really disappointed about what they did with Dropcam. The dropcam was such
a great product that Nest basically destroyed by pushing out the core team,
making the product worse (but hey, it's slimmer), and stagnating development.
I believe we are missing out on great things that would've happened if Dropcam
had stayed independent.

------
anexprogrammer
It took them so long to produce a version capable of running common European
systems (separate hot water), that I lost interest long back. They finally
released something christmas last year.

The cock ups along the way didn't help either. Wouldn't touch them with a
barge pole now.

Honeywell on the other hand seem to have smarter smart kit, and a decent
reputation.

~~~
dangravell
Honeywell's Evohome product is much smarter, you're right. As is Heat Genius.
They are probably a slightly different market though, because have more
capable systems, being able to do soft zoning. Also arguably, neither are
quite as slick looking.

The trouble with Honeywell is that they should've been doing this stuff a
decade ago.

Personally I think all these thermostats are just sticking plasters over the
real problem: houses shouldn't leak heat nearly as much as they do. We know
how to fix it, it's a technically solved problem, but regulation and
government intervention just isn't keeping up.

~~~
ghaff
>houses shouldn't leak heat nearly as much as they do. We know how to fix it,
it's a technically solved problem, but regulation and government intervention
just isn't keeping up.

The house I live in is almost 200 years old. What sort of regulation and
government intervention do you have in mind? Should everyone with a house
that's not up to the latest modern insulation standards be forced to undertake
a major construction project to update all their walls and windows?

As with many things, the issue isn't with the technology and standards that
exist today. It's with the large installed base that can't be just wished
away.

~~~
anexprogrammer
The UK had, for a while, a reasonable approach to insulation. Historically,
especially post-war, we had some terribly poor housing as far as thermal
efficiency went.

The energy companies were required to provide free and discounted energy
saving measures for their customers, to a certain value each year. This was as
part of the overall carbon lowering measures.

They typcally provided loft and wall insulation, both of which could be done
in a day. If you had solid walls it took a little longer and some properties
weren't suitable.

For the vast majority it was quick, easy and cheap. No major construction
required either for most.

~~~
ghaff
When CFL bulbs were new (and pricey) there were a number of programs to sell
those at discounted prices to consumers through the power companies. I've
never heard of anything comparable wrt insulation although that doesn't mean
there hasn't been such.

I've actually done a lot with my house when I've been having construction done
anyway but there's no easy way to retrofit insulation into the existing walls.
(Plaster lath etc.)

------
draw_down
When this thing started out, I remember reading Fadell saying that he would go
around and have coffee with his colleagues in the valley, and tell them he was
working on a thermostat. And as the story went, they were all incredulous that
it could be a good idea. Maybe they were right after all.

------
xg15
If, in an article of a former IoT enthusiast who now starts to understand the
other side, most of the quotes and sub-headings sound like trivial common-
sense, maybe that sheds some light on how solid the assumptions behind today's
IoT actually are...

------
CullingTheHerd
"Nest" isn't a bust. "Post-Google" Nest is a bust. And the bigger issue is
much, much bigger.

Google didn't acquire Nest to out of an altruistic desire to assist Nest to
grow faster to fulfill their mission. Nest was acquired because Google was
lazy and saw an opportunity to grow _Google 's_ revenue and data-base while at
the same time getting a foothold in the nascent but exponentially growing IoT
sector, instead of having to build something themselves and compete with Nest.

When I hear about the piles of cash that companies like Google and Apple are
sitting on I often shudder to think of all the other "Nest" like companies out
there that will be snatched up in the middle of a growth spurt like an
organism infected with a virus that injects its own DNA in order to hijack the
host organism's biological mechanisms in order to fulfill its own goal of self
replication, often killing its host in the process.

Nest was born from Apple culture. The founders left Apple after having worked
on the iPod and set out to build another beautiful product. They wanted to
_build_ something. And the culture that informed them to make this decision,
to take this path, was essential in the manner in which it played out.
Acquisitions such as this, that aren't merely hands-off capital injections, by
definition change the culture, goals, and products of the company acquired.

So, companies, like Google and Apple, that have massive, _massive_ stock-piles
of cash have the luxury to, as a side-effect, at will, change the culture,
goals, and products of just about any nascent company, and they most often do
so for the purposes of furthering their bottom line, expanding their user
base, and growing their data-base.

Everyone else (read: everyone that is not one of these handful of companies
like Google and Apple) pays the price by losing out on all the beautiful
things companies like Nest could have born into the world.

Because it's not just about products. Products are, in addition to being
attempts to solve engineering problems, a piece of our culture, of our social
technologies, of our shared experiences. Nest wasn't trying to "solve"
thermostats. They wanted to improve the experience of being in your home, for
many of us our most sacred or private space.

You can't "solve" everything, because not everything is a "problem".

People buy vases and then put them in the middle of a room with nothing to
fill them, because they like the way it makes the space feel. There was no
"vase" problem. And there is no "awkward silence between friends in a car
ride" problem. That awkward silence is a miracle of a good relationship, when
two people know, without saying anything, that something is being left unsaid,
and that one of them has the chance to be brave and kind enough to, for the
benefit of their friendship, make the unspoken spoken. But Spotify would like
to suggest you play their "awkward silence" play-list.

Independent companies creating products they themselves want, and that they
are not trying to push onto others, but that they'd love to share with the
world, need to resist the urge to take that capital infusion or accept a
buyout so they can have access to the network and infrastructure of some grand
suitor. It's a deal with the devil almost every time.

