[icegreentea]

I think its perfectly expect-able that an actual smart home be accessible through a variety of modalities and methods. There's no reason why there shouldn't be smartphone access. But there's also no reason why there shouldn't also be the ability to use voice commands (not through your smartphone), direct wall controls, 'dumb' (relatively) physical remotes, etc etc.

For example, I don't always walk around my house with my phone. Sometimes I wear pants/shorts without pockets. Or I have to leave my phone plugged in somewhere cause it's charging. Or maybe cause I'm taking a shower and realized that I may have left the oven on and my roommate is out and I left my phone in my bedroom, and it would be awesome to be able to yell a question to my house and just have to dealt with. Or I have friend over and I want them to be able to play around with some of the coolness, but I don't want to fuck around with getting them to install the app, and syncing the authentication code, etc etc.

I mean, we can 'argue' about cost. But seriously, you're wiring up your house for automation and remote access. Enabling additional access nodes is a relatively tiny opportunity cost.