they could pull the plug on their access to cloud service
It's happened to me twice.
The first time was about seven years ago, when Fiet Electric sent out a software update that deliberately bricked all of its home hubs, and consequentially turned all of the connected smart light bulbs into dumb light bulbs. Speculation on IoT forums at the time was that Fiet failed to properly license some piece of code that was critical to its system; but that was all speculation. I seem to recall that Fiet put out an e-mail long after the fact letting people know they could no longer use their "smart" devices.
The second time was earlier this year, when Sylvania ended its cloud service, and turned its smart bulbs into merely clever bulbs. They'll still work with the stand-alone Sylvania app, but new bulbs can no longer be added to Apple HomeKit setups. So you need to use two apps (Home and Sylvania) to control the devices in your home. That is, until the Sylvania app is no longer available in the App Store, or compatible with modern devices.
Avoiding Fiet Electric products was easy. But I thought I'd be safe with a big name like Sylvania.
I completely agree with the grandparent. This is all avoided by using Zigbee or Z-Wave devices. All our smart lights are Hue. If they decide to stop supporting it, they can be controlled with the Samsung/Aeotec SmartThings Hub, Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, or whatever you please. Similarly, our smart plugs are also Zigbee and we use a couple of Aeotec Z-Wave temperature/humidity sensors.
Best of all, less worries about yet another IoT device with probably vulnerable software that we have to put on a VLAN/IoT WiFi network. Zigbee and Z-Wave are also much simpler than WiFi/Bluetooth, so less likely that they are a swiss cheese of vulnerabilities.
With hue there is still potential risk of a lockin with their hue app. They allow it still, because their sales are not really good. But otherwise they might have restricted it.
Hue bulbs currently are stock standard Zigbee compatible light bulbs. You can pay them into ZHA/Z2M without any issues and control them without any Hue hub or app.
If Hue were to suddenly switch to something proprietary their existing bulbs will all continue to function without their app or hub.
The bulbs are ok but I tried moving my Hue motion sensors over to my main Zigbee network and they were terrible, constantly dropping offline and needing reset.
Luckily Hue is made by Philips who I'm pretty sure aren't going anywhere.
I moved my Hue sensors to my primary Zigbee network and left the bulbs on the hub, especially since I have some of the gradient strips that don't work unless they are on the Hue hub, and my motion sensors have been rock solid.
Hue Bulbs use Zigbee. If hue stops supporting the hub or older devices, you can reset and pair them to anything.
The Hue bridge is IP based but can be controlled entirely over your local network. It’s a slim possibility of something breaking (the mobile app mostly) and then the bulbs are still fine.
what's the state of bulbs that don't use apps? I have some from IKEA that get paired to a Bluetooth remote, and it seems pretty good for now but I'm kinda nervous about relying on a device like that.
IKEA bulbs use mostly Zigbee, can be paired directly with their remote so don't require any hub, and connect directly with any Home Assistant with a Zigbee dongle like Sonoff.
Philips Hue uses Zigbee and the quality of Hue lights is really excellent (both the lights themselves and longevity, our oldest lights are over 10 years). A lot of Ikea devices also use Zigbee, though it sometimes takes a while before they are supported properly by SmartThings, Home Assistant, etc.
It's happened to me twice.
The first time was about seven years ago, when Fiet Electric sent out a software update that deliberately bricked all of its home hubs, and consequentially turned all of the connected smart light bulbs into dumb light bulbs. Speculation on IoT forums at the time was that Fiet failed to properly license some piece of code that was critical to its system; but that was all speculation. I seem to recall that Fiet put out an e-mail long after the fact letting people know they could no longer use their "smart" devices.
The second time was earlier this year, when Sylvania ended its cloud service, and turned its smart bulbs into merely clever bulbs. They'll still work with the stand-alone Sylvania app, but new bulbs can no longer be added to Apple HomeKit setups. So you need to use two apps (Home and Sylvania) to control the devices in your home. That is, until the Sylvania app is no longer available in the App Store, or compatible with modern devices.
Avoiding Fiet Electric products was easy. But I thought I'd be safe with a big name like Sylvania.
The "L" in IoT stands for "Longevity."