GPS in my pocket. Internet connected calorie counting app. Streaming whatever show I want on demand instead of watching the one show that's on. Paying $120 dollars a year to listen to whatever music I want to. A calendar that's on all my devices that my wife can add things on. A speaker that can stream my music straight from the internet by itself.
Those are just the things I can think off of the top of my head.
I do make heavy use of my phone's productivity apps -- calendars, shopping lists, todo lists, and many others. What I do not use though is stuff like Facebook and the numerous mind-numbing "games" trying to strong-arm you into buying their diamond currency every 15 minutes.
I also make heavy use of Safari's ability to pull my MacBook's tabs to my iPhone or iPad, or between any of them. Really helps when you started reading something at home and then want to finish reading it while in the subway, for example.
Let's just say that I am a proponent of the idea to make my devices work for me, not me working for them. And sadly the latter is what we are nudged towards by many apps and services. It seems everybody is trying to addict us and we have to actively fight that back and make sure our devices help our lives and don't turn us into zombies. Would you concur on that point?
Ditto. My so-called "smart" TV gets HDMI inputs and that's it. An external device connects to the Internet for Netflix etc and if that device ever displeases me or becomes truly obsolete, it can be swapped out for another. But it is extremely difficult to buy a non-smart-TV above a certain size these days. All I wanted was a high quality screen and some inputs - I don't believe in regular upgrades, too much e-waste, I want something that will last as long as a Trinitron did.
You end up having to sit progressively further away from them the bigger they are, which probably requires progressively larger rooms to put the TV in.
At 8', that's 60" screen size for 30 degrees (80" for cinema)
Now I treat these with a pinch of salt, they're SMPTE values, and the last SMPTE event I went to we all agreed that in the UK 4K is pretty much pointless for 80% of the country, but SMPTE can't say that because panel manufacturers want to sell new screens every few years. Still 30 degrees feels like a fairly good number.
Assuming you have 20:20 vision, and have a 60" TV, it's only worth going to UHD over 1080 for resolution if you're nearer than 8'. For a 40" TV, it's 5'.
Now UHD comes with other benefits, namely a higher temporal resolution (interlace has gone, there's no 2160i - thank god), and higher dynamic range. I suspect they'll flog 8k panels for the Tokyo 2020 olympics, but bundle 120fps at the same time.
• Bigger screens.
• Much better screens (like QLED by Samsung).
• Better hertz values (doesn't irritate the eyes).
• More "smart" builtin software and firmware, with tons of bugs and security holes.
• Bigger resolution.
I'd take all of the above points except the smart TV software. To be perfectly fair I also think 4K is the absolute maximum for resolution that we need to use on TVs for like 5-10 years, too. As many people pointed out in the past in other threads here in HN, I'd love for these TVs to come in two packages -- with and without the hardware module that gives it its "smart" software.
Alas, we don't have the choice. Our best course of action is:
(1) Never give our TV access to our WiFi network.
(2) Make sure to buy an HDMI cable with lower protocol version so it doesn't pass-through your Ethernet connection.
It's a pretty screwed up market. I bet 10-20% of the price of the modern TVs comes from the supposed value proposition of the "smart" features and our group of users pays this premium without needing it.
why will 5-10 years make any difference? Will living rooms become larger?
IMO we're hitting maximum levels beyond which there's no sense to continue -- except to sell us the latest and the shiniest.
However 4K isn't worth it until you get over 30 degrees, and any higher isnt worth it unless your tv is too large, at least with modern cinematic techniques.
I have a pretty decent Philips 58" TV and to be fair, watching it from the bed (2.5 - 3.0 meters) it does seem small to me.
However, if I am to buy a gaming console and sit like 1.5 meters away from the TV then it seems to be plenty enough, even a bit bigger than needed.
I will probably settle for 65" in the next 1-2 years or, if I want to spend a lot of money, 75". But that's because I plan on having a 40+ square meters (131 sq. ft.) living room.
My "smart TV" is a 4K Samsung with all it's smart features turned off connected to a PC running Xubuntu because that way I have control over it.
I don't own a single IoT thing, I have about 5 apps installed on my phone (4 of which are Chess related, 1 is my bank), I use the mobile web for everything else, if you don't have a usable web app I don't use your product.
I deliberately minimise the amount of technology to 'plain' computers running Linux because I understand those and feel in control.
No smart toasters for me.
tl;dr from the article:
> If the network name of a wireless network (SSID) is not broadcast, the clients must search for it with probe requests. So if you have one AP and 100 wireless devices, you partially limit exposure of the network name with one device while causing 100 devices to expose it instead.
Most OSes do this anyway to speed up the connection process (try to attach to last n networks and see what sticks). Can be abused to learn about past locations of that device by asking one of the wifi location api databases (iOS, win, google/android):
https://www.mylnikov.org/archives/1170
Edit: couldnt find good links about rapid wifi connecting procedures but here's an older article about Apple's rapid dhcp mechanism:
I had XBMC hooked up to my TV with samba share years before smart TVs were really popular.
I really liked wifi tv then, and I really like it now. Improved my life.
This was the article's highlight for me. As a senior programmer I found myself saying "no" to more and more tech nowadays -- smart speakers are and will always be not welcome in my house, I carefully study mobile app permissions and deny everything but the absolutely necessary minimum (on my mother's phone as well), I am unplugging microphones and webcams when not using them, I refuse to buy washing machines and any kind of kitchen tech with touch screens (they are awfully non-durable, big surprise right?) and prefer tech with real, physical buttons.
I am never gonna give WiFi access to my TV. I am even considering making my home WiFi network hidden (not advertised). If you manually specify SSID and password you will connect alright but you can never see the SSID. I feel this might be a necessary default before too long. We'll see.
I did give WiFi access to my printer because accessing it through the router's USB port turned into a nightmare of problems and inconsistency. I disallowed it to make outgoing connections (through the router) anywhere but in the local network however -- I don't want it going to the internet.
Point is, new tech is marketed as "progress" for mercantile reasons by the big corps and me and many others aren't just taking their word for it when they say it's for the best of all of us.
My rather depressing observation has been that historically, ever since the 90s, technology and especially computers / phones aren't used to improve people's lives; they only complicate them and increase people's time, energy and money expenses. To actually improve your life with tech you have to go a lot of extra miles.
The marketed "progress" technologies don't deserve the benefit of the doubt lately. It's all but a historical fact that most "progress" is mostly "guys, here's a new market we just invented, please buy because we want the money".