"This is the thing, and here's what it does, and here's where you can get it. Cya"
My thought as well. Thin on content, but at least the overview generally rang true.
What caught my eye was
"The apps are still in the works, but are roughly expected to launch by April."
They left off the "very, very" part.
Almost sounds like the writer doesn't know the difference between home Wi-Fi and an Internet connection, but I guess he is technically correct that you can "keep using" Hubitat if your Wi-Fi is down as long as either your wired LAN is still up or you don't care about administering the hub or using LAN-connected devices like Hue Bridge bulbs or Lutron. This seem to be a common source of confusion--or at least ambiguity--in Hubitat reviews. ZigBee and Z-Wave, of course, will continue to function, and so should all automations you have set up involving these protocols. I guess the point still stands that this is different from most hubs in a similar price point, like ST, where only some automations (only two SmartApps, albeit fairly common ones) will work and manual device control always requires Internet access.
Local execution also isn't that crazy of an idea like the author makes it sound: Vera, Fibaro (I think), Home Assistant, OpenHAB, and HomeSeer are just a few others that also focus on local execution. Hubitat, in my opinion, just happens to do the rest better (and cheaper in many cases, or at least easier)--and that's why I'm still using it. Privacy may be a reason for some people--and this is at least the second article I've seen that seemed focus on that as the main reason people would use Hubitat--but I have to say that reliability and speed are really my main reasons for steering away from cloud-based systems.
that was my favorite part
I think MKBHD and Jon (formerly at Techno Buffalo) are still using Nest and a few other accessories (Alexa/Hue/etc...) without any centralized systems.
Jon finally updated his network (helped him out with the Ubiquiti setup) though he prefers simplicity.
As a new owner the big thing that hit me when I got my Hubitat was that "out of box" experience!
I'm glad I didn't just let my partner set it up, (and shes defo not scared of tech).
The first few minutes were not an enjoyable task, a few "welcome to Hubitat wizards" would have helped improve the experience a lot.
IF Hubitat want to shift boxes they're really going to have to improve their UserExperience. Otherwise they're restricting their market to a small audience mostly made up of maker types like me. Which would be a shame because the "local" side really is a good selling point.
Al that to one side, Once setup was out of the way, I am enjoying being a "DIYer" which is TBH the reason I bought HE. Integrating all of my odd things (Arduino driven Indicator Banks, motion sensors, under-bed lighting, DLP Magic Mirror, post box sensor, etc) into HE, mostly bridged via node-red is proving to be moderately straightforwards.
Because I had other things sucking away all my time, I ended up reading the HE forums daily for about 2 weeks prior to install. I skimmed the docs, too. As it turned out, that was a big help since I had no previous experience with hubs. That also gave me some insights into zigbee vs zwave. I had bought a few zwave switches but ended up dumping them for zigbee. But, yeah, the out-of-the-box experience is daunting. I suggest that hub noobs buy a plug-in outlet to start and write a lamp timer (NOT involving sunset offsets, heh!).