Ok, can I see your credit card statements for the last 5 years? Can I listen to all of your phone conversations? Can I watch you shower and use the bathroom? I mean, you sound like an average person with nothing to hide...../s
To each, their own. In my case, the ease of use was worth every penny. If I take my hourly rate and apply that to how long I spent trying to setup a controller on a raspberry pi, then I could’ve bought 2 or 3 CloudKeys.
What you’re looking for is the CloudKey. It is the local Controller and can be accessed via “the Cloud” if needed, but not mandatory. I tried running the Java controller on my Mac, it worked but sucked. Having an independent dedicated piece of hardware is worth every penny IMO.
Honda. New or "CPO" certified pre-owned.
Spend the money up front for new or CPO, save the hassle later of buying used and the previous owner never changing the oil. All of my (3) Honda's have never required anything more than gas and maintenance, brake pads, tires, etc.
The regular Macbook, aka "Macbook Adorable". Yes, 8GB RAM, but..NVME storage, awesome little machine. I would keep it in OS X since Linux may not take full advantage of the screen. Linux definetely won't be able to pull of the per-application DPI scaling that OS X does.