Is all the new technology worth it?

[rourkeh]

Had a chat with one of the local service providers on the dock yesterday. He had been called out to look at a problem on a one year old 70' motor yacht. The owner was having a problem switching from generator to shore power, a somewhat simple task you would think. When he arrived at the boat the owner pulls out his computer tablet and starts poking away at the screen for switching the power over. Upon inspection there is no manual switch for this simple task on this boat, everything onboard is operated remotely from an ipad. He opened up the panel and instead of normal switches there are a scary looking bunch of computer boards and relays. Welcome to the new normal. This boat is still under warranty, but it was built 5,000 miles away and the nearest dealer is in the U.S. and the boat is in St Maarten. There is no facility to download any information from this system to forward to the service department either.
Now it sure is cool to have a bunch of friends over for cocktails and whip out your tablet and start tapping away, until all this new fangled crap doesn't work and you are stuck on the dock on your new $4 million boat with no power. In my mind boating is fun and I want to have as few problems as possible while doing it. I used to build and sell boats and my moto was the simpler the better. When did we move to this high tech world of Chinese computer boards controlling our boating experience. If this new connected boating experience is becoming the norm and it is breaking as soon as one year what will happen when it is 10 years old, or 15 and it is a used boat and half the systems are shot. Who will be able to afford to fix this stuff cause it aint cheap. Those $4 computer boards when installed on the equipment on your boat become $3,000 "parts" and if you can find somebody with the training to come and fix your new problem it will cost you $100/hour as well.
I can't even find anybody qualified to fix my old school systems most of the time. Good luck finding someone in the Caribbean to come out and fix your broken joystick, propulsion pod, or computerized whatsit. New technology in boats might be great but over time is it really worth the added Bs?