There are definite use cases for these things however.
The problem is not that use cases don't exist the problem is those use cases are mostly weak, irrelevant and otherwise impart very little actual value on the user.
For instance having your thermostat aware of when the fridge is cycling on and off can allow it to determine the best time to run the ac for the most energy efficiency.
Maximizing cycle length of AC is the only thing that will save you any cooling energy short of living with higher temperatures. Complex calculations / appliance coordination are not necessary to predict the future a simple PID loop in t-stat has same effect.
Also if you are really energy conscious and live in an area where heat pumps make sense setbacks become counter-productive costing you more energy. You set the temp once and forget it.
Having vents that can be shut off separately and remotely from other AC vents allows for each room to be a uniform temperature and can prevent the ac from working hard to cool a room that is already at a desired temperature preset.
Closing vents increases total static pressure of the system which wastes energy and increases risk of damage to cooling system. Much better to do the necessary calculations up front to design buildings with the proper airflows so this is unnecessary. No short supply of well meaning people who "close" vents in unused rooms thinking it will save them money yet more often than not the opposite occurs.
It can be aware of when you are returning home and automatically cool the house just before you arrive.
What is the value of this heightened awareness vs standard setback features of your average programmable t-stat? My guess very little.
Other things too like self monitoring alarm systems that message you whenever a system intrusion occurs and allows you to decide weather the police get called or not based on snapshots taken by the tripped sensor.
Unfortunately I am already forced to pay homeowners insurance which covers theft and damage caused by break-ins. I don't get a discount for self-monitored systems I have to pay $$ monthly for professional monitoring to qualify.
There really are a bunch of use cases but id rather see this stuff be open and controlled by the hardware owner rather than all of the data ending up on a facebook cloud server. We really need control of the devices we own before we let everything get so connected.
I'm not saying everything is useless or there are not nice to have reasons for automation... yet to be viable they do need to provide more value than the consequences of ignoring "KISS"