I truly believe that today's modern homes should be able to take care of themselves and leave the occupants with more time to work on more important things.
Here are a couple of projects that I've done. Using a Dell AXIM PDA + Insteon hardware + PocketCRON & PocketDAQ Pro (my own software).
PDA Controlled Christmas Tree Lights
PDA Controlled Water Sprinkler
In my experience, most home automation is still in the realm of DIY and requires a certain level of patience with the technology. The rest of the advanced configurations are niche and usually professionally installed into million dollar homes.
The dream is for the technology to still become much cheaper, and then for a major home builder to pick it up and install such things into new neighborhoods.
I say give it another 4-8 years.