The impossible dream of the universal remote

Jun 14, 2026 08:42 PM - 20 hours ago 980

David Pierce

is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host pinch complete a decade of acquisition covering user tech. Previously, astatine Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

You don’t really ever person to explicate why a cosmopolitan distant is simply a bully idea. You person a bunch of worldly that needs controlling; this point controls them all. Many companies person group retired to build a merchandise worthy of this idea, and 1 merchandise came overmuch person than most. It was called the Harmony, and for galore years it was the champion cosmopolitan distant connected the market. Maybe the only one that mattered. And still, moreover the Harmony couldn’t make it work.

On this section of Version History, we show the communicative of the Harmony. The Verge’s David Pierce, Nilay Patel, and John Higgins are joined by Matt Rogers, the CEO of Mill and erstwhile co-founder of Nest, to reckon pinch 2 decades of buttons and touchscreens. The merchandise originates arsenic the Easy Zapper, takes off, sells to Logitech, expands for illustration crazy for a number of years… and past begins to fade. Sure, you could reason smart TVs and integrated intermezo systems conscionable made the full thought irrelevant. But there’s thing astir the cosmopolitan distant that feels arsenic enticing arsenic ever. So we effort to fig retired why.

This is the first section of the 4th play of Version History. (We are so back.) For the adjacent respective weeks, we’re telling a bunch of stories astir the smart home, from Hue lights to Keurig java to the viral sensation that was The Clapper. Here’s really to get each episode, and each our different nosy stuff, arsenic soon arsenic it drops:

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If you want to cognize much astir the history and bequest of the Harmony, present are a fewer links to get you started:

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