Fronius is Austrian and there are a few others but none producing microinverters that I’m aware of. If you are doing an install with no shading issues during the day, regular inverters are preferable though since the costs are cheaper and there’s no DC-AC-DC loss if you include a battery backup.

I don’t keep my phone on me for large parts of the day. The AW has just enough connectivity to get me the information I need without being a distraction. I’ve found it motivates me to do gardening, landscaping, etc. because I can track that as a workout. The weather alerts are also nice for that since it lets you know a few minutes before it starts/stops raining.

Mine is 7 years old now and the battery still lasts all day so I feel no need to replace it. I wonder if device longevity combined with lack of meaningful improvements might be slowing sales. They seem like the sort of device you wear until it stops working for a full day or you break it.

I just finished Bob Brier’s History of Ancient Egypt lecture series and he talked about this. They were the chief manicurists to the pharaoh. The lectures are over a decade old but really good - his enthusiasm for the subject is contagious.

“How was the hibachi restaurant?”

“Crazy. Shrimp fried rice.”

That’s just the Internet now. Every site has content pulled from other sites and their share of local content. Then it gets reposted with more compression artifacts each cycle until it degrades and returns to the earth.