Smarthome - General question of meaning

The classic from my parents (and not only theirs) on the way to vacation: "Did I turn off the iron?". :)

But it also works without. My parental home was completely unsmart. Mine is too. However, there are a few applications where it would be more convenient.

In principle, and have already explained everything. It’s about recognizing recurring patterns. The technology has long been advanced enough. In the era of self-driving vehicles, which have to evaluate significantly more data in real time, recognizing the morning routine in a house is not rocket science. And yes, also the different requirements Mon-Fri and Sat-Sun or vacation, etc. – the technology can be taught all of that or even learns it by itself if you let it.

You are merely fixated on the known hard-wired home electrical system. Where a light switch only turns on the living room light and nothing more. In a modern building, this light switch can not only perform multiple functions but also control/regulate these variably depending on previous user behavior and environmental influences.

The coffee cup might be a bad example but it’s exactly how it’s been working for us for about 10 years now. My wife needs her cup of coffee after getting up. Regardless of whether it’s Mon at 5:00 and she’s going to work, Tue at 6:00 and she’s doing home office, or Sat at 9:00 and she’s at home or any other time.

As soon as my wife gets up, shortly afterward the coffee machine downstairs in the kitchen turns on and makes fresh coffee. And it doesn’t matter at all when she gets up. Of course there’s also a vacation routine. Regarding the argument of cup and cleaning, etc.: The coffee machine would have to be filled and cleaned afterward anyway, whether the coffee is brewed automatically or by hand, so in our case the coffee example is actually perfectly fitting.

The comparison of building automation in an office building and a residential house is only conditionally accurate, because in an office building much is relatively hard programmed, since you want few variables. That is completely different in a residential house. For this reason, statements like: "I know it from work, it doesn’t work there either" are completely off the mark.

How is my house supposed to know that I want to be woken by the sun tomorrow morning, something I only decide myself tonight?

Exactly, you decide. And you can gladly tell your house that. It won’t bite and won’t judge you for it.

In a house without electronics you do that too. Because you consciously decide that the windows should stay open and don’t go and grab the switch or strap. You can do the same in an intelligent house. Instead of not going there, you press a button or tell the house verbally that you want to be woken by the sun the next morning.

How does my house know if I’m just going into the garden and it shouldn’t close everything, or if I’m going away longer?

Again, the smart house knows based on your behavior and the actions you perform whether you are just going into the garden or going away longer.

These are all things that do not fall under any automation.

They don’t have to. But you can have many things that happen again and again automatically. For example, the house can carry out one or another action (or even dozens or hundreds) autonomously while you are gardening and creating your new flowerbed. During that time, maybe the vacuum cleaner runs. Your favorite series records (or downloads) and your husband doesn’t have to turn on the extractor hood while cooking because it switches on by itself, including the controlled ventilation system which goes to a higher performance level.

And when it slowly gets a bit darker, it’s enough that you just enter the house and the lights turn on automatically (if they aren’t already on) without you having to operate the light switches after your gardening.

What kind of complicated coffee machines do you all have? Mine has a button that I press on my way to the bathroom in the morning ;)

What kind of complicated coffee machines do you all have? Mine has one button, which I press on my way to the bathroom in the morning

Ditto. My coffee machine is, next to my toothbrush, the least smart device by far and that's exactly how it should be, because it slows down the automated morning in a pleasant way :) If I've learned one thing in my professional life dealing with this topic: A customer you have to convince with arguments to like a smart home is not a customer for it. The industry always talks about how something like this will soon become a total standard, but Germans have some kind of problem exactly with this topic. It could of course be that at the beginning all those radio plug phone provider toys completely steered it in the wrong direction, but if you look at the American or Eastern European market, it's a completely different story there.

My coffee machine is downstairs in the kitchen... instead of going down twice to turn it on and then again to get the coffee, one trip is saved. In the morning, every minute is important. While the coffee is brewing, you can already take a shower.

what I think I can see (read) is that there seems to be a fundamental bias in both directions.
I am curious how the SmartCars will be received, or rather how long it will take ...
... but it will probably take even longer until the necessary safety is achieved.

That's how it is:
There are errors that only arise because of SmartCars, but there is also a lot of "nonsense" that is avoided because of them.
If I were a statistician, I would probably say: Wenn mehr Fehler verhindert als verursacht werden, ist "der richtige Zeitpunkt" für die Einführung.