I was privy to a small bit of info about SmartThings when I was still at Samsung (left 6 months ago). I’d say this assessment by @bravenel is spot on. There’s really nothing wrong with designing for a broader range of customers (probably a lot of friends and family of those of us most active in debugging this with Bruce), however, I’d really like to see @Ben and @slagle advocate with ST management to allow advanced users such as us to run Rule Machine locally.
Not only would this help in a lot of the performance issues we’re seeing, it would help stoke the excitement of those of us who are ambassadors for this platform to both technical and non-technical associates. Right now, I don’t feel comfortable recommending ST to anyone but my most technical family/friends. This is mostly because of the limitations/bugs in basic platform features. I know ST is working hard to fix these things, but I think having Rule Machine locally run would also help flush out even more of these basic platform issues to allow ST to try to fix them and improve overall system reliability and stability for all classes of users.