A remote server should not be an absolute prerequisite for a doorbell to function. That feels like complete nonsense. Like sure, the fancy cloud features should fail, but there is no reason that it shouldn't continue to operate in a degraded state like say, only making a noise indicating someone pressed it. If you have hardware sophisticated enough to interact with an API it should also be sufficiently powerful to do operations we could successfully do locally with much more primitive electronics.

I hope I never have a toaster that's too stupid to count to 4 minutes without connecting to a lambda.

Great point and I totally agree. I was reffering to the other commenters' here generalizing sentiment of "IoT is a mess".

Just realized I wasn't clear what comments I was referring to when I wrote I don't understand their issue.

Solar, wind, and batteries are improving. Eventually it will also seem ridiculous to require constant power shipped from some remote location.

Plus, you can currently solve a blackout with a generator. Or a backup internet connection in case of your ISP being down. Sounds like neither would solve an issue with these sorts of devices requiring remote servers to be online.

You're narrowing down my line of reasoning to a specific example and then disputing it. But you didn't answer to the overall fact that there are central points of failure in most electronic devices/infrastructure that are even more critical than a vacuum cleaner. Yet we still rely on them. That doesn't make the whole "electric" infrastructure "a mess".

And BTW not every blackout can be solved with a generator. For instance a city-wide blackout, in regard to streetlamps etc. Also, not everyone can install a generator. Not every landlord allows a generator etc etc. Even if you had a city-specific generator, that can just as well fail. Now, if your not concerned with a backup system failing you shouldn't need to be concerned with Amazon's system failing as they also have multiple backup systems in place.

I was talking to @jessaustin and not really interested in debating the entire topic. Just saying that an individual in a given situation can have some control over things like power and connectivity, but zero control over their IoT device working if the server goes down.

I have a mechanical doorbell. The only way it can be down is due to an external service is if it breaks in a way that I can't fix.

For many cases of reliability, mechanical > wired > wireless > cloud.