I’m really not sure how much of that hyperbole is needed but this app update was pretty disappointing, if not downright worse.
There’s a dashboard that’s supposed to give you a quick glance of the status of everything and yet you don’t know what mode you’re in? Big Miss, but easy fix. Get on it.
Rooms are, well, awkward? They don’t make sense to me. It’s like I can check things by room, nifty. But what else? It doesn’t make setting up Apps any easier, it doesn’t improve interaction of the devices, it doesn’t allow for scenes still, I don’t really get the purpose of them, especially considering that I don’t have the same level of control and interaction as I would on the Things screen? Couldn’t you just lose the things screen and then combine those features into Rooms? (Groups is a better name, I’m sure most people have at least one “room” that isn’t a room) If there’s some other functionality to the rooms, I’d love to hear it so anyone please chime in.
When the app update was announced they said that they were moving all the SmartApps onto one screen for easy access, but really they just moved the custom installed apps, all the native apps are still buried in the individual things tiles and very difficult to find to set up for pre-existing devices. This is a total fail and indicates to me that they don’t get why people are so often frustrated with this system. It’s like they heard people, but didn’t listen. Having important and significant functionality hidden in the OS is blood boiling. If I have a motion sensor activate a light but I want to change how long it stays on, I have to remember if I set it up on the Motion Sensor’s settings, or on the Light’s settings and go searching. In my mind, it should show up for both. But really, I’d like a separate Apps view, that actually shows all your Apps and allows you to define new rules without going to the things page, but if you’re on the things page, you should be able to view all the Apps/Rules that specific device is associated with. It’s not like this is an uncommon or unreasonable request. The control of these devices is the entire reason people are doing this.
Adding a mode is also buried and I found it at the bottom of the location settings. Again, not intuitive, not easy to find, especially when there is an entire section dedicated to mode changes.
Alphabetical order for Thngs is fine, but it should be a choice. I had my things tiles organized by importance and frequency of use. When there are 55 things (some people over 100), most of which I never need to look at, having the things that matter buried down an alphabetical list isn’t really helpful.
The font and color choices really do make it quite difficult to read things. It’s pretty much an industry standard that lighter fonts mean those input fields aren’t available. It was very confusing, not intuitive, and hard to read.
The blurred out picture at the top is just awful. That’s like a junior high graphics design club choice.