Kind of — Harmony remotes still had way too many buttons, you had to keep them pointed at the thing being controlled for the entire duration of a sequence, things could get desynced, and we shall not mention the horrible software, right?

this is true for the IR based harmony remotes. But they also have hub based systems where the hub blasts the commands (over IR or BT) and the remote talks to the hub using RF or BT. No need to point at things.

Oh man - I used to have a Harmony remote and thought it was the best thing ever for my multi-vendor AV setup...

...then the AppleTV was released, with a remote that made the Harmony look like the console of a nuclear power plant by comparison, and I never went back