Why is so much of my digital stuff broken?
I already wrote too much about my August lock, which looks pretty dreary without its faceplate or batteries. This may not actually be the…
I already wrote too much about my August lock, which looks pretty dreary without its faceplate or batteries. This may not actually be the fault of August (even though everything in consumer electronics is the fault of the maker), since my door is very tight fitting and might have resisted too much the August lock’s attempts to lock and unlock it. (Would this not be contemplated in the design of the product?)
But August is now in very good company, where I find that many of the digital products I have bought in the past two years (and I have bought a lot!) don’t seem to work. Even Nest seems to have trouble reporting smoke alarms correctly and has now persuaded one of my four Nest thermostats to report continually that there is an emergency because there is smoke in the master bedroom. I know definitively that there is no smoke in the master bedroom and hasn’t been since Nest decided to report it more than a month ago.
My Withings Smart Body Analyzer (a product I’ve had for more than two years) hasn’t been able to connect to my WiFi network for some time, frequently is unable to report data to my smartphone via Bluetooth, and even recently started under-reporting both my girlfriend’s and my weights by as much as 20%. Much as we appreciate the instant weight loss, it just isn’t accurate. When I try to re-connect the scale, it arrives at this dialogue box, which tells me to “select my device in the popup”, but fails to complete the process when I do what I’m told. (I won’t even talk about the Withings Home, which happens to be a video monitor with a separate app and a separate device, all of which never worked as advertised.)
I could go through my Zuli Smart Plugs (they work but don’t do anything useful just yet), my Normal earbuds (left earpiece isn’t working), or the DJI Phantom 3 drone that I cannot get unbricked. The one that got me most recently is the new DXO One camera I bought for $700; I’ve pulled it out to try it three times in three different contexts. The first thing I have to do is remove my phone cover! Somehow DXO thought it was good enough to specify that their lightning connector only needed to work with Apple’s own phone covers. Seems like they could have made it work any phone cover (just like Apple’s Lightning connectors do). Put that aside, I have not been able to actually take a picture and have come to the conclusion this product is made for way smarter people than me, including people who care way more about their photos (who would be the people who are likely to have a fancy camera for making photos…).
I don’t want to complain or anything, but I’m getting kind of sick of buying things that either don’t work at all, don’t do what is promised, or fall apart after a while. Okay! I am complaining!