Software advances not coming fast enough
For every additional feature added, the impatience for more only gets worse
my home air-conditioning and heating. only wish it was smarter.
The schedule you set for Nest is kept on Alphabet’s servers. You can access it from anywhere you have internet access. Using the app or a web page, you can check on monthly electricity savings, set it to “away” when you’re on vacation — all very neat stuff.
That is, until the power goes out, even for a second. Then Nest resets to default mode, and you have to reprogram it from scratch. This really should auto re-populate from Alphabet’s servers to your custom settings.
I recently decided to use Uber’s ride-hailing service instead of driving or taking a train to head into New York for a dinner that I knew would run late. The app gave me an expected arrival time of 45 minutes. Given that, my wife and I request the car 45 minutes before we wanted to depart.
After I placed the order, the Uber app indicated that our car would arrive in nine minutes — before we would be prepared to leave. This could subject us to ridiculously high waiting fees if we weren’t ready when
Uber’s arrival estimates:
I the car showed up. I called the driver and told him he was running way ahead of our schedule. He advised me to cancel, which I did. A bit later we requested a second car; it arrived and we left.
Then Uber hit me with $5 cancellation fee, based on its protocol that you have two minutes after placing an order to cancel without cost.
Wait a second. Uber’s software should have figured out that it gave me bad data initially and that the driver and I texted and spoke on the phone and that I followed his advice. This wasn’t my fault. It was poor asset management on the part of Uber. An intelligent software agent would never have billed me for the cancellation.
The net result: repeated emails back and forth with customer service, and a frustrating experience that eventually led me to: a) like the company much less; b) get a $5 refund; and c) open a Lyft account.
I have no doubt that the future is coming, and that eventually, Andreessen will be proven right. I just wish it would hurry up and get here already.