Why ? Just why ? (Hive outage ...)

I take it you are unaware of Apple, Inc.

what's that got to do with anything?

(Apple products may be overpriced, but they aren't fundamentally unnecessary)

And if you dont want to be reliant on an internet service look at the Honeywell EvoHome system. Standalone with remote access if you want it.

Almost everything apple does duplicates what is already available so it unnecessary stuff.

"When not in that place".

My only real use for a mobile phone is for emergencies such as the van breaking down. Because the phone gets so little use I charge it now and again. This time around it was completely flat. Once it was charged I switched it on and couldn't get any signal at all. For the first and only time I ever needed to do this I checked local coverage on the O2 status page. The phone is a £20 Tesco jobbie which is on O2.

According to the O2 site: "Sorry a phone Mast close to you isn't working, This means you might experience problems making calls, using the internet, or sending/receiving emails." This is updated hourly and has been down now for 12 hours; in West London. Checking the web, in some places its possible to lose mobile coverage for up to a week. I didn't realise outages were so frequent.

Round my way the council are installing Ringgo parking which requires the use of a mobile phone app to park. I'm not sure how this works in the event of an outage.

According to some sources outages "only" affect 1% of users (quite what's being measured is another matter). But if any of those 1% are *relying* on a mobile signal for something important then even 1% is too high IMO. So that until coverage is perfect (i.e never) people should never find themselves in a situation where they're solely dependent on a mobile signal.

michael adams

...

Because people who return from an airport and arrive in a house where the central heating has been switched off are clearly in danger of freezing to death; obviously.

It's all right for people like you with your thick overcoats and wooly jumpers but there are things of the past to people with cars and central heating.

michael adams

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"Chris Bartram" snipped-for-privacy@delete-me.piglet-net.net> Explained in message news:q8hl8c$4uh$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...

And then should it ever go wrong presumably after a quick two minute phone call to the British Gas Call Centre, a British Gas tech will arrive within hours to fix it, having brought all the correct parts along with him.

michael adams

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One thing you can't fault Apple for, is by locking the hardware and software into a single item, they have avoided the clusterfuck of android (with it's constellation of configurations and features in/out depending on the weather) and android phones with their spectrum of capabilities.

That's before you get into Googles relaxed approach to compatibility.

After the first 12 months you need to pay £3/month, or lose the "hive live" functionality.

I hve many acquantaince who have apple kit.

There is nothing that cant be done better on other kit, and there is nothing that is in anyway essential about it.

I think it may be of more use where people have work patterns that vary unexpectedly and frequently - if you are going to get home 2 hours late, why not save some energy and delay heating the house for that long? Equally, if you are finishing early, turn the heating on early, ready for when you get home.

For us there is no need. While my work times vary, my wife's health means she cannot work and is at home anyway. The once a year that we go away during the winter months, we can put up with the house being cold when we arrive home.

SteveW

Many programmable stats (but not internet connected) have a holiday mode, where you can knock it down to frost-stat only for e.g. 6 days when you're going away for 7 days ...

We have that on the hot water timer, but not on the room stats and as we have individual combined timer/stats in each room (8 in total), I'm not paying out to replace all those for the sake of once a year (we just put them in frost mode before we leave and turn them back to normal on return).

SteveW

And will no doubt arrive in a sleigh drawn by six unicorns.

True in the main ... but it means at least when you google for how to do something it's going to be right. Unlike android where you have to wade through pages of wrong results because the flavour of android and operator you have has been tweaked.

And there's simply no non-Apple equivalent of the iPad Pro that is SWMBOs lifeline, given her f***ed vision.

not-essential = un-necessary

Essential is far too high a barrier

If we're going to talk essential, then you don't need a room stat on a CH system at all (I had CH in a rental flat controlled by no more than a timer and a boiler stat)

But a room stat is definitely a useful nice to have. So the question is one of: is paying for remote control (and if so, from how far away) useful?.

And a tablet, any tablet, certainly fits into the category of nice to have and the question is one of: is paying extra for an iPad worth it. And someone could easily argue from the point of better quality hardware that it is.

tim

The question isn't about duplicating stuff

it's about whether the fundamental stuff is worth having

It either is, or it isn't. Once you have established that it is, the brand doesn't change that

tim

which is going to be what

tim