And here I am, wondering why anyone remotely intelligent would ever consider buying smart anything to connect to the internet of fail. All it seems to do is let you more easily buy crap you don’t need, I don’t get it. I don’t even get why a phone needs an assistant. Am I old or something?
FWIW the concept of a smart tv isn’t unsound. I use Chromecasts and Amazon fire sticks in all my TVs because the smart functionality (i.e. netflix, hulu, and other apps) are things I actively want for these devices. I want to be able to see a show on the netflix app on my phone and just cast it to the tv directly for instance.
However, TV manufacturers have realized they can provide this smart functionality while adding on data collection, ads, and other things (this is partially why TVs are so cheap of course). So despite my Vizio having chromecast functionality built-in, I don’t trust their implementation (nor their functionality surrounding the chromecast abilities) so I have my own Google chromecast plugged into it instead.
Siri is amazing for controlling music or reading/sending text messages while driving.
“Siri, play X song.”
“Siri, send a text message to my sister. I’m running late.”
And she does.
You often don’t get a choice any more.
The sidewalk thing sounds similar to what xfinity has been doing for years. If you use their wifi router it also provides a hotspot for others to use. Akin to a guest network that you have no control over.
There are difference. The amount of bandwidth and the information exchanged being the biggest.
Sidewalk uses relatively little bandwidth to form the mesh.
But I like my Dots. Good for playing music, or making announcements to the whole house or simple talking to my wife when I am in the office. Better then shouting all over the place.
Plus, I have it connected to smart plugs.
I have my Television and Corner Living room lights connected, as well as my basement office lights. They all turn off when I say ‘Shut Down Procedure’.
It’s good at night, or when we leave on a trip.
And presumably Comcast isn’t using the hotspot usage against your data cap.
I also think you have to be an existing Comcast subscriber to use those hotspots, so you have to log-in with your account, as well.
Ultimately if a manufacturer decides it’s important enough, they could put their own cellular modems in devices and they won’t need your home WiFi, Sidewalk, or any other network access outside of their control.
I’m not thrilled about that, but it’s something I’ll just try to be aware of for any gadget I consider adding to my home.
But if I had any Amazon devices I would absolutely turn off Sidewalk; I’m not interested in making it any easier for any companies to gather data.
And now that Apple is moving into that space, it becomes even harder to fix.
If Comcast gave me the speeds they it advertised, I would not be all that opposed to it, but Comcast is slow enough without sharing my band width.
But that isn’t Smart™, that is just clicking a button to explicitly do a thing (that mostly existed before). It’s not guessing, or in the marketing definition, isn’t exposing anything to the internet.
Be poorer? :P Honestly, even though I do have old stuff (it keeps working, shrug), I have no idea what world people articles talk about when talking about all the supposed standard smart functionality of cars, tvs, … (not to say it’s all the same and/or all bad, just not common here, or something).
Maybe it’s just because my wife hates the music I like that makes me not care about smart speakers playing it throughout the house.
Yes, being the ISP themselves is a significant difference but it’s still piggybacking on your hardware and connection which to most is the main issue. Anyway, that’s why I never use any ISP’s built in wifi.
Not trying to minimize what Amazon is doing by mentioning the xfinity thing, just adding the info that this sort of thing isn’t unique. We’ll probably see more of this sort of thing going forward too. I wouldn’t be surprised if mesh network makers like google and netgear are thinking of how to deliver something similar.
Eventually it doesn’t then you go to get a replacement.
I don’t really buy new shit much and when I do I prefer wired stuff. I had to get a wireless keyboard and mouse because my cat kept destroying the cords. They never worked together. Eventually I just bought a wired mouse and ran the cord in a weird way so that he couldn’t get to it without being where I could see him and stop him.
If you don’t have old, reliable stuff, new stuff also breaks. Like at an insane rate. It’s designed to fail quickly.
I’d never own an Echo or anything similar. If I wanted to have the cops have access to everything I say and do, I’d livestream my home. At least then I might make some money in the process.
You make a good point.
Started a new thread in hardware about it.
Right, that was a caveat that maybe I’m not paying that much attention, but, say, smart tvs here are marked as such, I assume the others are not. Maybe it’s only for <=32", which is fine for the size of our rooms? I still don’t see screens in common cars though.
It could also be that I’m cheap if something works well enough for me, so that I don’t mind, say, manually connecting BT or playing a networked file through Android TV, which in itself I’ve only done for a 3-4 years.
I opted out of Sidewalk (we have Echo Shows or Dots in most rooms). My devices work just fine off my router. But I live in a townhouse and my neighbor uses Ring cameras. I don’t understand how I benefit by having his devices work better. I’m kind of curious whether he’ll start getting push notifications in a few weeks saying his devices will work better if we turn Sidewalk on.
Hope I’m not making this more confusing, I posted this a minute ago in this new thread just as stusser merged in the posts from the previous thread. Deleting and reposting this new response so it shows up at the end of that conversation instead of above those older posts.
Approved third parties can also use the network, but the difference is what the network is built for. Apple’s using the ubiquity of their devices to build what I guess is a kind of mesh network (I don’t know how narrow the accepted definition of mesh network is), but all it can be used for is anonymously reporting location data of a tracked object (AirTag or similar approved 3rd party hardware) back to the owner of that object. Apple doesn’t know whose object is where, the manufacturer of other devices don’t get the location data or anything else. If you had an AirTag on your keychain and lost your keys in the park, you don’t know whose nearby phone your AirTag reported back to, and the owner of that phone doesn’t know that it reported the location of an AirTag or who the AirTag belonged to.
Yeah, sidewalk is kind of a different animal. It’s a 900Mhz long-range low-bandwidth mesh network, while Apple’s UWB is a ping that’s much better at close-range accurate spatial location, then your phone talks back to Apple to report a lost device, there is no mesh. That’s my understanding anyway.
Read a bit of this, it’s very helpful, thanks.
From my understanding of Apple’s mesh network for AirTags and related devices, and Amazon’s Sidewalk network, I think I’m theoretically okay with both of them as far as concerns about my individual privacy, and concerns about my data usage (it’s not much).
The difference is that Apple’s network is more limited in its application, and it’s a use (finding things without compromising user data) that I’m comfortable with. Sidewalk is more open to whatever partners want to do with it, and that’s what makes me uncomfortable, not knowing what exactly I’m making it easier for someone else to accomplish.
Like I said before, if a company’s determined to make a Smart Device that phones home and reports all the consumer data it can, they’ll find a way with or without Sidewalk access, but that doesn’t mean I’d like to make it easier for them. I’d switch Sidewalk off. If Apple later expanded the way their mesh network is used or who it’s available to, I’d similarly reconsider whether I still wanted to be a part of that, but right now, I’m comfortable with it.