I agree, I'm sure they made a choice to not include it at the time. But I'd be flabbergasted if they did include an unused module in the BOM for every machine for 6 years. The whole point of a modular design is to facilitate additions like this over the life of the platform.

Stern not only keeps the BOM minimal, they even shave it for the Pro at expense of needing different manufacturing steps/parts. It's precisely because of how easy it is to add a ethernet/WIFI module to their modular platform that I would expect them to not add it until they have product support for it. As it turns out, the WIFI module itself is obviously a minor cost in the set of BOM changes needed, I think the apron bracket and camera are probably more cost than the network components but my point is that the benefit of a modular design is NOT having to add in advance everything you think you may use in the future.

A couple or more years from now, if their "Connected" platform matures into something actually deployed and adopted widely enough to be relevant we may consider it to be a good thing to have been included in all pins shipped for the past couple years by the time some reason appears for many of us to want to use it.

Personally I'm cynical but still a bit hopeful that eventually something will be done with this connectivity in a way that interests me.

lol! so that's what you meant! I forgot about the pegs, I hate them and the first thing I did was replace them with service rails.

You don't need a phone. You can create your account with any web browser. You can print your account QR code on a card to carry with you, or tattoo it on your forehead. Connected pins will have a QR scanner/camera in the apron to scan your QR code, whether it's on paper or a phone screen. That seemed pretty clear to me from the info released so far.

Yep. No way I'm giving up my movie soundstrack and callouts on GOTG for this.

I plan to create an account and print business cards with the QR code on them and leave a stack on every location pin I find inviting the random public to use them.

I'm not sure why people don't get this. It's not you or your phone that need an internet connection, this whole thing is about putting the pin on the internet. If it was using your phone's connection they wouldn't need to add a wifi and scanner to the pin, it would just be a QR code sticker.

What I've seen so far doesn't include anything I care about having but I'm curious to see what happens with it over the next couple years. My predictions aren't very positive but it's fun to be wrong. I suspect people will find ways to (ab)use it that Stern doesn't intend and maybe even come up with a use case that's worthwhile. Maybe it will evolve into something else. Maybe it will follow the CueCat. If it adds something to your life, by all means enjoy it. If it doesn't, it doesn't. MSRP was going up regardless. I'll play my game my way and respect you to play yours.