>>Few years ago similar hoopla for smart central heating - there the connectivity clearly was intended to be always on starting with installation.

My central heating has apps and malarkey, but wall keypads just make sense. What I have done, is hook it into home automation that switches heating to 20C if it's less than 17C at 6am.

>>Currently no problem to buy old-style devices. But in next decade it will become difficult to escape hackable devices if one needs a replacement. TV certainly problematic, monitors soon to be. I do wonder what my next car will be - current big one very nice, even if 12 years old (another one with less cylinders and HP available for inner city driving in bad weather - on nice days motor- or bycicle used for small hops), but since Dieselgate by VW the pressure to replace whole groups of otherwise fully functioning car groups by disallowing them into inner cities might force me to choose between a hackable one built after 2015 or a true oldtimer as defined by our KBA, which means 30 years old at least to escape such regulations as emission standards.

I drive one of the last German-assembled VW Passat wagons available over here, though I'm considering a CLS63 Shooting Brake this year. Decision for ridiculous turbo V8 is driven by expectation that this will be the last car I buy to drive myself, so might as well go out in one of the crowning glories of the automotive age, and AMG is discontinuing the CLS Shooting Brake in 2018 so I'll end my driving days with one of the last (and best) of the rear wheel drive V8 behemoths in existence. ;-)