we shouldn't make something a little easier because I have a make-shift solution that works in my situation
Make-shift? Touching a couple of buttons on my watch to set the count-down timer is more of a make-shift than buying and programming and paying a monthly fee for a device to send data to the internet so that it can call my cell phone and send me a message when my clothes are dry?
Rube Goldberg would be proud!
I just want to point out that you only do all of that stuff once. So yes, I still say it's easier.
Except for the monthly fee part.
The fees are very reasonable for vendors, though. A vendor can end up paying $1/year for connectivity - low enough to bundle into a BOM.
What they get for the money is much more than they could make themselves - reliable, secure, able to update firmware remotely, connection monitoring, server-side agents, etc etc. Even if you're making 100k devices a year, you're not going to be able to build, operate and maintain a service for a comparable amount...
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