What amazes me is how many people (even here) will leap to their feet to defend an exponential increase in complexity to provide a minuscule improvement in convenience from putting their garage door/fridge/front door/etc. on the internet. I really hope the garage door opener bit is a joke (they come with radio remote controls!), but I have a bad feeling it's not.

I can almost see how this sort of thing could work -- a secure LAN for the house with appliance controls based on open protocols driven by a local server. Your phone would talk to the server via a LAN (in-house) or a VPN (remotely), decoupling the connectivity from the actual control. Heck, while we're at it, drop IP from the appliances entirely and use some low-bandwidth power line communication system (X10?) -- no need for an OS at all.

That would require a lot of industry coordination, though, and in an age of walled gardens and digital surveillance I don't see it happening anytime soon.