I'm also unclear why you are claiming the only gains are in maintenance. Security is a real end-user benefit & having devices not allow arbitrary incoming network connections is a security choice. Similarly, arbitrating everything through the web results in a simpler, more reliable, enrolment process & makes it easy to add customer features like family control more easily, securely & reliably. These are all customer-facing advantages.
2 hours out of a year is still 3, almost 4, 9s of uptime. That's probably better than your home network/ISP.
I get it. You personally would prefer they traded off for supporting direct connection to your phone. However, that doesn't invalidate that there are legitimate engineering reasons someone might choose other tradeoffs.
