These types of products have come up perennially for, I don't know, at least the last fifteen years. Maybe I should write an article and look for older precedents. I've always been cantankerous about single-board computers and "hacker" devices etc., I think the Raspberry Pi set a really unfortunate precedent by instilling this idea that "enthusiast computing" means a large number of small devices and popularizing a "one physical device for one task" approach to so many home automation or media problems.
But anyway, these commercial "personal cloud" things are so much worse. The vibe is always "we've realized that running services in your house is difficult, so we've done the easy parts for you and for just $500 you can skip directly to the hard parts." On top of that, the average supported lifespan of these types of products might not be much longer than zero. This, of course, is just another way of leaving the hard problems to you.
