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We live in a time when a great deal of consumer electronics seem to work like magic — you walk into your house, tap a few buttons, and you can have exactly the song you want playing in exactly the room you want. This is in large part thanks to the variety of different systems that companies like Apple, Sonos and Google have built to streamline your life, consolidating your speakers, lights and music into one cohesive experience.
This is, of course, until something goes wrong, at which point these “seamless” experiences somehow become singularly impossible to fix.
I made the seemingly-smart decision a few years ago to use Google and Nest products around my house, believing that doing so would mean that my house would be a beautiful, unified utopia where all my things worked. I went with Sonos for speakers, again lying to myself that there would be no issues, because these setups “just work,” as they have in the past.
Except, as you’ve probably worked out, this is not remotely the case.
It makes sense to start with the single stupidest thing I’ve witnessed in consumer electronics: it is harder to add a new Nest device to your home if you already have other Nest devices. One would think that this would be easier — your settings are saved, it “knows” you, and so on — except doing so requires you dealing with Google’s “Home” app, one of the single worst-designed devices in history. To add a device to your network — a thing that should be very easy — requires you to create a distinct…
