For 10 years I've loved our Nest smoke alarms.
They look smart (for this sort of thing), are reliable, also detect carbon monoxide, have a nightlight feature which is handy, perform their own checks on themselves, and can be controlled by an app (so no more having to hit them with a broom to switch them off). But Google has made the decision to axe them from their smart home product offering. And like all products like this, they have a finite life span, principally for the carbon monoxide sensor which stops working.
Google have decided that whilst they're no longer going to make or support them, they are going to anoint a preferred successor. Except they're only available in the US and Canada. Live elsewhere in the world? Tough luck, get yourself on t'internet and research your own solution sucker. In itself this feels like a missed opportunity, surely they could have sold / licensed / found an equivalent option for the rest of the world, as they must be leaving an awful lot of easy money on the table (estimates are that Google had about 5% of the global home smoke alarm market).
So as the alarms reach their end-of-life, they helpfully start to tell you this three months before they expire. What's the best way for them to alert you to this? Yep, that's right. At random times of the day and night, one alarm after the other until all have said the same message, making sure that anyone who was asleep is now well and truly awake.
And is there anyway to acknowledge these notifications and turn them off, either permanently or whilst they're going off? Of course not silly!
The only way to get them to stop requires you to climb up a step ladder and disconnect them from the mains electricity, remove the backup battery, and throw them out in to the garden. Leaving you with no smoke alarm for the last three months of their working life, perfect.
Someone at Google thought long and hard about this and made some conscious decisions about how they wanted this to work, but completely and utterly failed to consider how they were going to be received by end users. Or how it would make them feel. Do I feel like Google is looking out for me and actively warning me, trying to keep me safe – or, at 10:30pm with my son fast asleep and the warning going off (in triplicate) at a right old volume – do I hate them with every fibre of my being?
— Know your audience
