You Asked About CES 2018. We Answered.

Apple doesn’t exhibit at trade shows in general. In 2008, Steve Jobs announced that Apple was pulling out of Macworld Expo, the Apple-centric trade show, where he had previously announced a number of important Apple products, including the original iPhone in 2007. Apple’s reasoning was that the company had retail stores all over the world that could showcase Apple products. In addition, the company had the clout and budget to host keynotes, or marketing events to unveil products, independent of a giant trade show, where companies are competing for attention from the press. Many companies, like Amazon, Samsung Electronics and Google, have followed suit and introduced products at their own events.

Here’s what’s interesting: Over my last decade attending CES, Apple cast a long shadow over the conference despite not having an official presence. Many companies were making things that worked with the iPhone or iPad, like cases, speakers or apps. But this year, Apple doesn’t seem very relevant here. The show now revolves around Amazon and Google and their battle for domination with voice assistants. There are a good number of companies here showing smart home products that work with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant and choosing to skip out on Apple’s HomeKit because of the stricter privacy requirements and extra fees associated with making products that are certified to work with HomeKit. So the show seems to have moved on from one giant to two others.

PG, that is definitely the sentiment among journalists and exhibitors I’ve chatted with this week. I think this year is an incremental phase in consumer technology.

A couple of years ago, virtual reality was the hot new tech at CES, with brand-new products like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets that worked very well. And Alexa was just starting to become popular, along with smart home accessories. This year, we’re seeing those technologies mature with improved features that make them more capable. That isn’t very exciting, but at the end of the day consumers will be getting better products in the coming year.

Yes, the pole-dancing strippers were a real thing at a strip club this week. While they weren’t officially affiliated with CES, they were an effective gimmick to lure CES attendees into the strip club. Still, your point is valid: CES has a diversity problem. The vast majority of featured keynote speakers are men.

In some ways, that mirrors the tech industry. The overwhelming majority of tech executives in Silicon Valley are white men. Tech companies have acknowledged their diversity issues, but over the years there has been little progress.

Brian Krzanich, Intel’s chief executive, gave a keynote speech at CES. Unsurprisingly, he downplayed the repercussions of Spectre and Meltdown, two security flaws that affect nearly all microprocessors in computers and smartphones, by saying the company has not heard any reports about people whose data was stolen as a result of Spectre or Meltdown. (How would anyone even know if they were victims in the first place?)

His statement was disappointing because downplaying the problem could make consumers complacent. Meltdown can be fixed with software updates for your operating system, browser and other important apps. But Spectre is an issue that can’t be completely fixed with a software patch; tech companies can only mitigate the vulnerability with software updates. The bottom line is you have to be diligent about keeping your software up-to-date. And you should also run an ad blocker to prevent malicious code from infecting you through ad networks when you’re browsing the web.

I saw some pretty goofy gadgets, like a piece of rolling luggage with an electric scooter built into it. Can you imagine riding your luggage through the crowd at the airport? I also saw a robot sherpa — it was basically a big trunk for carrying heavy objects — that follows you around as you walk. It had sensors to avoid colliding with you.

Adam, I understand — a separate bridge or hub, which establishes a connection between your Wi-Fi router and a smart home device, is ugly and a waste of space. The good news for you is I did see some bridge-free light switch dimmers at CES. One example is Belkin’s Wemo dimmer switch, which only requires a Wi-Fi connection to work with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.

I think you will continue to see companies shift away from hubs toward Wi-Fi connections built into their appliances. The downside of this, in my experience, is that Wi-Fi-equipped smart home devices occasionally lose their connection with your Wi-Fi router, and you sometimes have to power cycle them (turn the power off and back on) to regain a connection. With a light dimmer, that might require flipping your circuit breaker, but hopefully not.

The smart kitchen, which is a segment of the smart home where devices are internet-connected, is very interesting to me because each big manufacturer is approaching it in a different way.

Samsung is selling a very expensive smart fridge that is equipped with a 21.5-inch touchscreen and voice controls; the company is focused on making the kitchen the center of the home, where families convene and spend quality time together. (I don’t know about your family, but that’s never been my experience.)

Whirlpool’s smart kitchen vision is to try to make it easier for you to figure out what to cook with the ingredients you have. The company is offering an app that lets you use your smartphone camera to scan the ingredients in your pantry or fridge so that the software can give you some ideas of what to cook.

It’s tough to say who is leading the charge because these are fairly new ideas, so we will have to see what resonates with consumers.

Nick, I’m not a fan of smart locks. Every type has flaws.

There are complete lock systems that include the dead bolt, door handle, keypad and electric locking system that talks to a smartphone. These are the most robust solutions, but they don’t fit on all doors. One lock I tried from Schlage didn’t work on two different doors; I probably would’ve had to cut new holes into the doors, which is a pain.

Another approach to take instead is to try the robotic arm that attaches to your dead bolt and turns it. These are marketed as the simplest to install. The August lock is an example. But the reality is that when you install these devices, you need to make sure you have a modern high-quality deadbolt that can withstand being locked and unlocked repeatedly by a robot arm. In addition, you will need to change the batteries frequently, probably every other month.

A third approach is a deadbolt with a wireless connection built into it that talks to your smartphone. The Kwikset Kevo, which is Wirecutter’s top pick for a smart lock, is an example. While this lock appears to be easy to install and well designed, there are hundreds of one-star Amazon reviews from customers who say the lock is unreliable, leaving them hanging outside the door.

As a former Airbnb superhost, I recommend using an old-school lock box to provide keys to guests. A lock box requires no batteries, and it’s secure, easy to install, cheap and reliable.

The tech giants that offer virtual assistants for controlling smart home devices — Apple, Google and Amazon — continually issue software updates with security updates. It’s those smaller brands making the smart home accessories that you need to be wary of. While many smart home products work great, their security teams probably are not as thorough or experienced as the people that work for large tech companies.

In the end, the onus is likely on you to protect yourself. I wrote a guide on how to fend off cyberattacks on your home devices. I also recommend reading privacy policies of smart home accessory makers to understand what data they are collecting about you and potentially sharing with third parties like marketers.

It will likely be a very long time. Many of these smart appliances have premium price tags. A smart refrigerator with Alexa controls, for example, costs upward of $4,000. It’s unclear why you would pay that much for a refrigerator when you can just put a cheap Echo Dot ($50) on your counter.

It’s also important to note that smart appliances have been around for many years. There are high-end ranges priced upward of $5,000 that include buttons you can press to tell the oven what you are cooking so it can set the temperature and time accordingly. At the end of the day, these features are a novelty: If you’re going to spend that much on a range, you’re probably a pretty good cook and know what temperature and timing to use to cook a roast or casserole.

Smart home appliances need to be cheaper and have more useful applications before they reach the mainstream. Until then, they are an impractical luxury.

Nope, you’re in good shape.

At CES, LG demonstrated a so-called 8K TV, which has quadruple the resolution of 4K TV. But rest assured that your 4K OLED HDR TV, which is the best type of television you can buy right now, won’t be obsolete for years. That’s because content makers are taking their sweet time to transition from 1080P resolution to 4K, meaning there isn’t much 4K video to watch right now, but there will be more coming over time. In addition, streaming devices like the Apple TV just recently added support for 4K. In other words, we’re only at the beginning of the adoption curve with these TVs, so sit back and enjoy your fancy television set.

I’m going to defer to Chris Heinonen, the TV expert at Wirecutter, a New York Times company that recommends products, for this one. He says the following:

“OLEDs can still improve quite a bit. For professional users, Sony makes a reference OLED that is an RGB OLED while consumer models are white OLEDs right now with color filters. The RGB version is over 50 percent brighter, and has more saturated, true colors for bright areas (fires, skies, leaves, and so on). Sony also just demoed a 10,000 nit LCD (a higher peak brightness than current OLED TVs) which is a long way off, but the extra brightness made everything look more like real life. 4K Blu-ray content, and streaming content, already has picture information that an OLED cannot correctly display. While they do look great, and are what I use as a reference, they still have a lot of room to improve, even with our current content.”

I wouldn’t expect this to be a consumer product. When picking screen size, you should consider the distance between where you are sitting and where the television is placed. In order to properly consume a 146-inch television, you would have to live in an enormous house with a huge amount of space in the living room. Many products shown at CES are merely demonstrations of what tech companies are capable of doing today; very few actually materialize into products you will buy on Amazon or at Best Buy.

Less friendly.

If you look at the sheer number of features that Apple and Google keep adding to iOS and Android year after year, mobile operating systems are becoming increasingly complex. (As an iOS user, I find the Mail app’s user interface to be confusing, and I find it perplexing that Apple hid the useful Airdrop feature in a menu that is difficult to find.) In addition, now that Apple has nixed the physical home button on the iPhone X, the way we use phones is poised to change significantly in the coming year. In both Android and iOS, we are increasingly relying on touch gestures that are not as intuitive to discover as pressing a physical button.

I think so. Internet service providers keep increasing their bandwidth speeds, and a dated router might not be able to deliver the higher speeds you could be getting. I like mesh networking, which is basically a system of Wi-Fi stations that work together to blanket every corner of your home with a strong wireless data connection. That is mainly beneficial for larger homes with multiple stories, but even if you have a modestly sized home you could benefit from having two mesh stations creating a continuous wireless link throughout your home.

The other benefit of modern mesh networking systems is that they automatically apply software updates with the latest security enhancements. Many older routers require the consumer to manually download the updates, and I don’t know anyone who would even remember to do that.