Should You Prioritize Form or Function in Gadgets?

Here at The Vergecast, we get a lot of questions. Questions from you, which we love! Questions that, for some reason, often tend to be about the smart home and why it's often not so very smart. So on this episode, the first in a two-part series, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy helps us answer a whole bunch of your questions. Questions like: what's Apple's deal with the smart home? Are there any good smart faucets? And what's about to happen to my robot vacuum cleaner? Jen helps us wade through all that and more. We also go on a long diversion about smart smoke detectors, which are pretty awesome.

Further reading:

• My smart kitchen: the good, the bad, and the future

• Moen’s Smart Faucet with Motion Control is totally hands free, and works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant

• The future of the Roomba, and the best robot vacuums

• This smart smoke alarm could be a worthy Nest Protect replacement

• Home Assistant’s next era begins now

• Apple’s plan for AI could make Siri the animated center of your smart home

• What’s in a smart home reviewer’s backyard

• How Matter works, where it’s headed, and why it matters

• The problems with AI in the smart home and how Amazon and Google plan to fix them

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