> I call bullshit. They've been conditioned to think that they want it, because all product brochures have it.
You gave reason WHY they want it. Maybe consumers were conditioned to want access, but they still want access. If you give them similar devices, they will chose the one which has application or webpage to see how their big investment is actually working. It's not about current state of device, it's all about historical data and month-by-month savings presented as a nice graph. They will check this maybe every week or month (later every several months), but buyers still want to know what their installation did for them.
You gave reason WHY they want it. Maybe consumers were conditioned to want access, but they still want access. If you give them similar devices, they will chose the one which has application or webpage to see how their big investment is actually working. It's not about current state of device, it's all about historical data and month-by-month savings presented as a nice graph. They will check this maybe every week or month (later every several months), but buyers still want to know what their installation did for them.