I live in a 1700sqft space - not small, but not large. I have ~15 separate banks of overhead lights that were built into my builder grade condo when I bought it, and probably 20 light fixtures (lamps, accent lights, etc) I've added myself. If you are even remotely interested in design, decor or lighting it's easy to end up with a similar number of lights in an average sized space. When I walk through the door, the scene sets itself perfectly based on the time of day. If I didn't have that automation, I'd probably end up turning on the nearest 1-2 lights out of convenience. It's a huge quality of life improvement. Today it takes some up front effort to get it set up, but it's getting easier and easier and more people will realize the benefit.

I think their point is that a simple infra red sensor like outdoor motion detector lights will do what you need. There's zero need for a camera to do this. Massive, massive overkill.

This sounds very cool. I have home assistant and have fiddled around with presence detection but I feel like its pretty niche and preference dependent. My gf did not like it in the bathroom and getting the timing to work perfectly required a ton of fiddling. Maybe apple will get it right but I don’t think their core customers care about home automation to this degree.