An interesting take by someone on the outside.
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Heās not wrong.
The jargon is dense (but well documented).
HA is not yet ready for people who donāt like tinkering a lot.
Though regarding the HA identity crisis, I see it more as a matter of choice. You can have ultimate privacy if you are prepared to put the effort in, or you can take the easy way and forego some of that privacy.
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Agreed. I wish he would have stuck with some form of that (āI donāt want to tinkerā) instead of trying to appropriate other peopleās experiences by saying he already has a full time job and that anyone else with one āwonāt have time to mess around with this.ā Plenty of people handle it just fine because they want to.
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If he had not made the comparison with hubitat, I would have said heās not wrong. HA is still a bit of tinkering 
He is 100% correct this platform is and I think will always be for tinkering. This is why I am extremely confused by the decision to get away from YAML. That being said I love this platform and is by far the best platform our there.
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The fact that it runs on a Raspberry Pi should be a clue, surely?
Absolutely, and that is exactly why my statement about YAML(keeping this platform coder friendly) is true.
It doesnāt have to run on a raspberry pi.
Agreed. Tinkering around with HA is a choice, not a necessity. You can get a perfectly fine setup going without putting in much time at all. He may be right that HA requires some technical background, but I would argue that most people going for a deeper local home automation approach will be technically inclined anyway.
I looked at some of this guys videos. I really dislike his weird humour, but well thatās subjective. He did however lose me completely in a video where he compared wifi and Zigbee and he basically stated that āboth wifi and Zigbee are exactly the same thing, only they put Zigbee on a different frequency so they can charge you more moneyā.
Just wow!!
WiFi and zigbee
Well technically when people say WiFi they mean 802.11 protocols over wireless transmission. And technically you could do that over a different frequency. eg the different bands under 2.4 and 5 ghz
But heās just ignoring the different protocols optimised for different purposes, reach, security, command size vs available bandwidth etc.
But āsayā heās right about that, - - - heās then ignoring benefits of scale and how long has WiFi been around ?
Does he have anything valid to say ?
Edit : so I watched kloggās linked video
I know what people mean about āhow he comes acrossā
So he makes a big deal about Samba (remember heās a tech video blogger) - huh !
Yes he has some points
No, I wouldnāt buy a used car from this man
I have never seen a 5Ghz iot device, so in the iot world they both run on 2,4ghz.
Eye dee ten tee alert.
Yeah, that was my point. All the important similarities and differences that would make a fair and unbiased comparison between both systems were completely ignored and replaced by a simplistic click bait style āthey just want your moneyā.
That Zigbee vs wifi video of him was just an example. I found that most of his videos I watched (admittedly mostly skipped through) were pretty biased and of questionable technical accuracy. A lot of the videos are also sponsored by one IoT device manufacturer or another. So yeah, all I am saying is, one should probably take that video about HA with a pinch of salt.
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Iāve only watched a few of Paul Hibbertās videos and letās just say that itās where you go to be entertained by gonzo opinions and outlandish visuals and editing. Anyone expecting unbiased technical journalism has picked the wrong channel. Come for the sizzle and aroma but donāt expect any steak.
Heās not wrong that there are more user-friendly options for automating oneās home (for example, Hubitat). If youāve standardized on ZigBee and z-wave devices, youāll do just fine with Hubitat (and cloud access is included).
The fault in Hibbertās presentation is that it assumes both products compete for the same users except thatās not currently true. I would be flat out lying if I said Home Assistant is a consumer-friendly product. Even in its simplest, most integrated form (Home Assistant OS) it requires procuring and assembling hardware then deciding which flavor of ZigBee and z-wave integration to implement. Itās for hobbyists. Yes, it can do far more than Hubitat but expect to invest a significant amount of your time and effort to achieve your goals.
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Guilty! The tinkering is part of relaxation next to the full time job. Some people read a book, some play sports, some others tinker. Really weird to take the tinkering part as a reason why it would not be for people next to full time work.
As a life long (life of linux) user of linux (solaris before that), I find a number of elements about HA to defy logic. So much so that I have written more code to do what I need than I have utilized that feature in HA. Too many dead ends. I appreciate it, and couldnāt do my Wyze home alarm integration without it, but I have never used a āfreeā tool that was any less free (labor-wise).