Appliance makers sad that 50% of customers won’t connect smart appliances
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
2. We want our appliances to work for us rather than for data brokers
Now if my washing machine had a web server built in and I could log into it to see the status of the machine (spin cycle, rinse, finished 22 minutes ago) I would like that. In fact, if the smarts on the washing machine didn't phone home without asking me first I might even join it to my home network. But as long as the terms are that I must accept an electronic leash up my ass from the manufacturer with little say in what info they collect or to whom they give it if I want to see the status of my machine remotely then they can get stuffed.
Give me Bosch, Speedqueen, etc appliance quality with right to repair and I will pay. I want dumb yet sturdy equipment that will last.
You have a lot more faith in YC than I do.
They're ridiculously easy to work on and you can buy parts for them off PartSelect.com. The most common issues are that a relay on the control board goes out or the suspension wears out. Both are easy to diagnose.
I feel like retrofitting older appliances might be the way forward, whether preemptively or as part of a repair. Although I do admit there are benefits to modern brushless drives (etc), that would be hard to design a generic control board for.
Although recently having gotten a tiny bit of experience with off the shelf PLCs, going that way might be the right answer rather than reinventing the wheel.
Looked very simple. Had a relay for the oven and 2 temp sensors. One for controlling the oven, and another to shut everything down if the temp outside the oven got too hot.
I do wonder how many types of these boards would be required to fit the common appliance types.
Probably the biggest new difference I've seen is brushless motors with variable frequency drives, which requires its own power control electronics and probably some calibrations.
So in my estimation not very many. Packaging it all up in a way that an appliance tech could be comfortable installing would be the hard part.
Documentation would be fantastic, but it feels like a curation/discovery problem. After a bunch of deep searching, you can usually find a forum where people are discussing various lines of machines at a higher level, what features they have, repairability, etc. Parts websites generally have diagrams and whatnot (no idea where these come from or what it takes to get access to it wholesale). You can usually figure out cross reference part numbers from pouring through eBay/Amazon listings. And sometimes you even stumble onto a wiki or something where someone has documented a specific machine tangential to another project (eg Home Assistant).
Gathering it all up in one place to be useful, especially in a way so people will contribute their findings back so it can be self-sustaining, seems like the hard problem to me.
I was along term user (30 years) but my latest purchase was disappointing.
I'm sitting on $8k worth of rather new appliances that I am unable to repair in any fashion. When we bought them from a local appliance store — we live in a rural New England state — they were Miele-certified. Then they outsourced that certification to a local appliance-repair technician. Then Miele revoked the certification, or otherwise is no longer providing it, to that appliance-repair technician.
My appliances are broken. I call the place I bought it: they punt me to their repair technician. That repair technician is outright hostile and hates Miele and says they never call him back and he's not certified anymore. I call Miele. They punt me to "regional dispatch," which then ends up punting me behind the scenes back to the place I bought the appliances from, which doesn't ever call me back. I keep trying to push further, but all I get from Miele is that there are no certified technicians within X miles of me. This cycle has repeated 8 or 10 times.
The part I believe we need to fix the dishwasher is >$500 non-wholesale, so that is too expensive of a risk to take if it's not what will fix it. No non-certified appliance repair techs in the area (thin on the ground in general) will touch Miele products.
So I am literally waiting for them to stop working and then I guess I'll throw them away?
One of these days I'll generate the gumption to, I dunno, send a letter to Miele HQ or something?
So desperately screwed as a consumer here.
As long as this monitoring system can completely fail, and the machine still works, I'm okay with it. Ultimately, the more shit like this that gets shoved into appliances, the more the cost climbs. And, If I had to guess, actual functionality (eg. washing my clothes) is the target of cost cutting measures. Which is precisely what I don't want in an appliance.
https://us.community.samsung.com/t5/Washers-and-Dryers/Samsu...
I do something like if power usage goes above x, then wait till it goes below that for at least 3 minutes and notify me then (exact timing may depend on the washer/dryer)
With these projects, you can replace the nasty privacy-invasive bits in the vendor's SW stack.
There's a buying guide to find a matching rootable robot for your needs: https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/buying-supported-robots...
I got a pair of Dreame W10s in the last Black Friday deals and they're a great help.
I wish my money wouldn't go towards the vendor crapware that takes extra efforts to get rid of. But i couldn't be happier with the result, having automated the vacuuming and mopping.
Note to makers of "smart" appliances: if you want my business then support standard Zigbee or ZWave hubs.
Matter might improve things a bit.
They know they're not. Developers aren't stupid.
They’re all just tech demos… and often buggy ones
A valuable feature solves a problem
How big is your house? And why do you need to know when the cycle is finished?
I absolutely do not want a so-called "smart" appliance and will go out of my way not to buy one. I want something with as few buttons as possible, that promises to last a long time.
I have ADHD, my washer sending a push notification to my iOS devices (I have LG ThinQ enabled washer/dryer) means I have an alert in a place where I am already looking for alerts that my washing machine is done and I should go move the clothes into the dryer.
Before I enabled push notifications for this, my laundry could sometimes sit in the washer for days, getting all nasty and moldy and needing another cycle to be run just to get them clean before throwing them into the dryer.
That is why I need to know that the cycle is finished.
Why can't they just run a local webserver or API? I'd use that. Even more if it was a documented API and I could write my own automation for it.
Few years in, I realized what a lie, a mirage it all has been! I bought them to make my life easier, it did the reverse (with some very rare exceptions). I just kept seeing weird bugs, random forced updates, missed schedules, firmware issues, interoperability issues.
Then, I started seeing ads in physical mail, emails, even phone calls for new or renewing subscriptions. Real creepy stuff. All this to monitor usage and sell me more stuff ! I pulled the plug, dialed back on everything smart. I then realized I had a hard time getting my hands on products that get the job done and don't force me to connect it to the internet.
I'm now monitoring my router logs for weird activity, locking products down and actively figuring out ways to firewall them.
Such a waste!
Imagine that happening to your washing machine, or stove, or fridge. By malice or incompetence, the invisible hand of the cloud reaching down and making a device work differently than you're used to. No thanks.
But an easy fix for those recalcitrant 50% like me. Just make the device refuse to function at all unless it has (recent) internet connectivity. Problem solved.
It's simply the lesser of all evils to ensure people are relatively up to date on security.
I don't really like it either, but I understand it completely.
Apple, MS, etc should do the second. Even with a "do it now, or within 7 days, or we do it for you." Same for the router.
For goods that have safety implications (cars), the updates should NEVER be silent. And probably need a long notification period with a detailed "What's New".
1. It angers power users who want their computer to retain their workspace's context, which is often easily lost between reboots. 2. It reduces Windows' usefulness as an OS on which to set up and run long-term processes, especially ones with real-time sensitivity, since Windows may decide to reboot itself at some unpredictable point in the process.
I suspect they want to push you towards the server edition, because that's where they make their money.
There's no technical reason this is required - any system components will get updated after reboot, and this is not use Windows used to work.
I am convinced it is intentionally introduced behavior, but proving it is difficult.
That is why ISPs have lists of cable modems that are certified for their networks, and thus the ones allowed to connect to them as that is the list they have firmware updates for.
three times now i have been up late working on a project and it has kicked me offline to update. it’s so goddamned annoying. i wouldn’t have bought this router if i’d known it did this. (i also had to call them on the phone to get a custom ip range enabled on it, which, for a “pro” product, is just ridiculous).
Many, many, devices don't allow firmware downgrades, on purpose.
On the extreme end, Microsoft spent a huge amount of development effort to forbid that on the hardware level. I con't find the Xbox 360 link right now, but here's a Nintendo Switch one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23534793
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/18/welcome-to-the-future-where-...
My cable modem, which I own, is installed in a difficult to access location due to my lack of desire to run coax between buildings. In the summer every couple months it has to be rebooted when it loses lock and can't regain it on its own. I used to have a cronjob that would automatically handle it, until comcast without my authorization reached inside my property and applied a change to completely remove the ability to remotely reboot it. The remote reboot stuff was XSS vulnerable, so customers whos client PCs could access the cable modem could have had websites randomly rebooting it on them. This wasn't a problem for me, and could have been fixed by eliminating the XSS vulnerability instead.
Screw giving remote access to third parties.
So I think I'm pretty much 2 for 2 in terms of devices allowed remote access ending up screwing me over because of it. I can only imagine how many additional problems I would have had if I wasn't diligent in preventing any kind of remote access and avoiding having internet connected devices in the first place.
I wouldn't use their product again for anything involving energy storage. Solar only it seems to be fine.
But I was bit in by this in another way. This happened with an AT&T dsl modem I had years ago. AT&T pushed an update and then my network stopped working. I had static ip addresses and all of a sudden I got no traffic. I went round and round and because the static ip devices were not their equipment, and I could connect out (on their dynamic ip) they washed their hands of it. What a mess.
(I had to delve into the internal router logs, and eventually figured out the pace 5268ac modem had a bug. even though the firewall was DISABLED, packets were blocked unless I enabled firewall "stealth mode")
There are also concerns about control, in Texas there were people who signed something that allowed the companies to remotely control their ac, apparently at night time it was turned up to 82, I am worried about what other companies could do like smart washer ( how about allowed to wash cloths only after 10 pm ) or not allowed to use some setting like extra wash etc.
What would happen if your account gets locked and you cannot access your smart stove to cook a meal. All those people who posted that their oculus was locked out because their FB account go locked out. In my opinion most of these smart appliances are more of a hassle than worth it.
I don't like when smart appliances like the Samsung connect to the internet for what I as a consumer hope are good things (like using Netflix with the push of a button, etc.) and instead abuse that by showing me ads -- not something they include very visibly in the agreement or feature sell. It is not transparent and near impossible to opt out of.
Making it do what it's advertised to do would either require fully trusting the hardware (and hardware in this case means the whole hvac system), or monitoring a home's electricity usage and having some after the facto punishment (which will only catch the unsophisticated ways of working around it).
Xcel Energy calls their program “Saver’s Switch” if you want to read more about it
But my original critique still applies. If you have two AC units, and only install the switch in series with one, do they figure it out based on your draw and cut your discount in half, or what? Or do they do the install themselves and check over your system. And if you later open up your own equipment and bypass it, they treat you similarly as if you were to just jump your electric meter?
I do wonder if this approach makes sense from the homeowner perspective too. Modulating your compressor means that you need a bigger compressor to handle the same cooling load, and short cycling isn't going to be good for it.
Yes, you could buy a second AC and do complex wiring and control trickery to hack the system... Or you could just not sign up for the voluntary system and pay an extra couple bucks a year.
Any effort to hack the system is going to be far more cost or hassle than just not signing up for the program, for people who are following financial incentives. If you want to hack the system for the fun of it, sure you could, but the utilities aren't really worried about that.
Also jumpering over a low voltage thermostat takes like 5 minutes tops, and could be easily done by the type of tech enthusiast early adopter that would be interested in programs like these. And it only takes someone getting too hot once to try it, and then just continue doing it routinely. Never mind people for which the few bucks a year is significant.
As I understand it, those people got a discount on their bill specifically _because_ they allowed for that.
When I bought a samsung tv for my home office, I explicitly never enabled the wifi, and plugged in an external FAANG device with a remote and control the TV via that. If the device gets buggy I can go buy a new one for $60.
This kind of craziness is illegal in Europe and I honestly cannot understand why this is not regulated in the US.
The electric utility is very clear about what would happen if you sign up for their energy saving program. It is possible to buy a home that has an energy saving switch already installed on the A/C circuit, but you can simply request to have it removed by the utility.
My favorite "feature" is that the phone app can turn on the light inside the oven. Which you can only see if you're standing right there, obviously.
NAT is partially to thank for that. ... there is pretty much no normie user supportable way of having a device talk to your phone short of having them both phone home to some cloud server.
They could support both direct connections for easy cases and expert users AND the cloud nonsense-- but then they'd have to implement their connectivity twice and they'll still end up with more support calls from users in the wrong mode.
isn't this what MDNS is for?
The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.
Your company's need to make money is not my problem.
In the indie maker world, low traction just means it isn't meeting a need that hurts enough, so it's time to pack it up and move on. Telling customers they're wrong for not buying from you is quite a look.
Can't wait until they find some moralistic reasoning that not buying smart = worse environmental choice. Then the true fun will begin.
Connecting a washing machine to the WiFi/Internet made me feel slimy.
But look at consoles today. Exactly what people said they didn't want, exactly what these companies said they weren't trying to do, are the norm in the home entertainment industry. And the same will happen with these appliances.
The manufacturers are waging a war of attrition on the public, incrementally increasing surveillance and kneecapping their own products to pressure us to accept the surveillance. We become tired, then exhausted and eventually give in, eventually people but those with the most resolve get tired of fighting it. This is where our governments are supposed to step in on our behalf, they're failing us, because they benefit from the surveillance as well. This can't go on indefinitely, and I don't think they see over the horizon on this one.
And that was basically all walked back, and I don't think the latest generation of consoles does anything like that.
And currently from my experience you can't play single player on many games without an internet connection and things like that. The only thing I can see that isn't in them is the always on camera, but they've got that sort of stuff in the TV now. The rest of it, requiring an internet connection to phone home, forced updates, non-ownership over the media, all have become the reality at this point.
> Wifi-enabled washer/dryer/dishwasher? I'm working out how to retrofit that onto my existing devices!
Shelly smart plug - set up an app somewhere to poll it and when power usage goes up - washing machine is on, power usage reaches idle for a while - its finished.
For other sensors, you mentioned zwave, curious what you're using.
I'm not using it for sensors, and probably won't; I like zwave because it lets me use commercially produced UL certified devices with wall current - I don't trust myself to DIY a smart plug and not burn down the building. Sensors are safer in my mind, so for those DIY ESP8266 projects win.
I share this sentiment, last I looked it would also be more expensive and off-the-shelf plugs with HTTP interface work just fine.
For appliance makers, they need to have a better selling point for connectivity. Only a few appliances benefit from automation and remote commands (like thermostats and some light fixtures). Other appliances, like ovens and clothes washers, require physical presence at the start of the cycle, have a predictable runtime, have simple interfaces, and can't predict failures (due to a lack of sensors and cost of further firmware development). So connectivity isn't beneficial.
If you already have a GE Washing Machine, with an account when you go to replace your Fringe you will be more prone to buy a GE Fridge so you do not have to setup a Samsung or LG or Whirlpool account...
The smarts doesn't really do a lot for me. My house isn't that big, I can hear when it's done because it stops rumbling in the distance. Getting a notification on my phone isn't very useful.
It was offputting that it needs an app, and the app was rated 1 star on the play store. Do I want that on my phone? I didn't look into why it was rated like that.
Then I started wondering about exactly what Chinese data centre either the drier or the app connects to and decided I didn't need a smart tumbler drier. Not enough in it for me to risk whatever problems it may bring.
/sarcasm
Now I'm imagining a fancy washing machine that can measure the inseam of your pants and run tests on blood stains to determine blood type.
They might actually eavesdrop on your network traffic. LG made a smart TV that crawled your home network collecting data and sending back things like any filenames it found on network shares or on USB drives that were connected (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/lg-sm...)
I wouldn't be surprised if it also let them do things like remotely brick your appliance. Maybe because you used an "unauthorized" brand of soap/fabric softener, or maybe just because your warranty period had ended and they think you should buy another washer. Maybe four years after purchase they decide to switch to a Washing As A Service model and force you to add a credit card which charges you a small fee for every load.
Why do they need this data? I don't know.
Microsoft has decided to use their OS as a data collection and ad pushing platform. The amount of dirt they must have on the average windows user is disturbing enough, but with office they get unprecedented insight into the internals of damn near every company including their own competitors. When my own company gave me a windows 10 machine, it came with Microsoft's keylogger enabled. First thing I did was tell them they should probably update the image they're using on new workstations to disable telemetry or at least make sure that every password and keypress wasn't being collected, but we still leak a ton of data to MS. Company data, employee data, and customer data. It's amazing how every company accepts it.
Is it though? I mean, you really don't have a choice. Entire industries are built up around Windows. Linux is definitely not capable of stepping in, and Apple seems content to keep macOS / iPadOS focused on high-end consumers only.
For example, to contribute my own "anecdata", I tried switching to Linux recently (I will attempt to do so again, soon). In the 3 months, I had more issues than I've had in 3 years of using Windows.
One such example is that KDE's multi-monitor support isn't that great (for example, KDE does not remember the size and position of any of its window anytime you resize or place them on any displays other than the left-most one - and this is maybe the best DE/WM Linux has to offer at this time for the general public), GNOME just seems to insist on their way or the highway. i3/Sway is a nice tiling wm which I daily-drove for a while. But it doesn't handle GUIs very well (unless that GUI is a web app) and forget switching between audio outputs and so on. It's a hassle until you key-bind and script everything. I imagine the Linux entire community suffers from the IKEA effect[0].
I'm perfectly capable of running Linux as my daily driver, and I really don't mind it at all. When Sway locks up at least daily because of swaylock (known bug for ~1y), and you're told not to use it, and Linux doesn't always want to wake up from sleep/suspend. Then you have to fiddle with the monitor every time it wakes or hard-code your display arrangement in a script.. and GNOME requires a ton of extensions just to accommodate my 'power-user' tendencies.
The community isn't quite so nice - any issues I had was met with some variation of "lol you're doing it wrong", "buy better hardware lol" or a "donate ploxz!/?? we'll see if it gets pushed up". I'm semi-retired, so I don't have money to donate. I want to contribute in develoment, but have a hard time figuring out the right way forward. I don't have any faith that whatever I do develop will reach an audience (even as an open source project). They seem allergic to any type of GUI - and it shows. I made about ~10 bug reports and all except one went ignored. The one that didn't get ignored was close it because "WONTFIX". Fair enough.
I understand that the community is built up around volunteers and I'm ok with that, too. I don't begrudge anyone, but when the community is sometimes toxic, issues don't get fixed, and I have to sysadmin my computer.. it's a struggle. I accept that, and that there will always be some issues. But, I need a break so I'm back on Windows.
As a Linux sysadmin for over 15 years (ran macOS as my desktop) it's a rock-solid and amazing server OS but when it comes to desktop.. it has me wanting for more. Administrating over 100 individual servers using I don't want to sysadmin my desktop and I don't want to be trapped in Apple's walled garden. What do I do?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect
This turned into a rant.. so I apologize for that.
The washer/dryer really push you to use their preset modes that are supposed to figure out the right settings. To find out how long a wash cycle is going to take you need to start it, wait while it sits there silently for an interminably long time, before it finally displays a runtime and starts washing.
Unfortunately the "smarts" are really dumb. The dryer never gets it right, clothes always come out wet or over-dried; I've had more clothes damaged from this set in a few months than my entire life prior to this set.
The worst part is the lack of manual controls. Tasks that used to take a fraction of a second and zero thought on old machines are now difficult or impossible.
For example, if the clothes are still damp and I want to run the dryer for another 8 minutes on medium low heat -- too bad. That's literally impossible to do!
(Fun - if legally dubious - halloween prank: put a load of spooky sound effects on your phone, then wander around town looking for unsecured bluetooth soundbars!)
For example if you don't connect yourr LG subwoofer to wifi, it shows up as an access point, and ios shows an airplay device.
I thought that number would be much lower
Having stuff in my friend's "smart home" stop working because there was a hurricane and it couldn't connect to servers far away was also vindicating, tho.
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For the appliance companies, it might be cheaper to offer the installer $25 to make sure the appliance is connected to the internet before they leave. They wouldn't get to 100%, but they would certainly get a lot more.
1) I don't want wifi on these things. I don't care what they can do for me.
2) I discovered they pump RF that was literally off my meter, making my kitchen an RF kill zone experiment.
Now, turning this wifi off was the difficult part. There is no method given in the manuals and even dedicated searching of forums couldn't turn up a magic maintenance code to turn them off.
I ended up using my RF meter to hone in on where the signals were coming from in the appliance, opening the back, or in the case of the fridge the top, finding the wifi chip and pulling it.
I've also heard it said that wifi access is desired so system operators can manipulate the appliances as needed. Under any condition: DO NOT WANT.
In my experience, smart devices are without exception worse than dumb ones. I have a Nest (came with the house, too lazy to change the mounting and put in something else) and once I had to spend an hour manually clearing all the random recurring temperature changes it had "cleverly" accumulated over months of use and people changing the temp. I had to work quite hard to make this silly device behave in a predictable, controllable, useful way.
And that is what is awful about electronics these days. Smart by default, but "smart" is actually dumber than dumb. Just let us have dumb please.
It's not a far jump to extend this mistrust to all appliances and be weary of connecting anything to your network that does not require it to function.
I'm fine with my equipment having networked features, I just want to be the one in control and I do not want any data to leak. If the things need specific data to work I want to be the one who tells them where to get them, if they need to report some data I want to be the arbiter on whether this is allowed, what is reported and to whom the reports are sent.
If the price were reasonable I would have just bought the Samsung replacements and called it a day. But instead they got $0 of my money.
GE started this trend, but aren't alone.
On my fridge it lights up the "not-filtering" light, but that's okay by me. I replace the filter every 3 months.
"Incompatible yogurt was detected! To ensure your refrigerator maintains an optimum temperature be sure to buy only GE compatible Chobani™ yogurt and foods from our other "GE Chill Eats®" partners."
I've read they already do things like charge people more based on aggregated data like their zip code or an areas rate of fast food consumption (Perversely, health and life insurance companies also invest billions of dollars in stocks for fast food companies), but also based on individual data like social media posts, how much money a person makes, or how much TV a person watches. Whatever it takes to justify taking more out of your pocket.
For its part, LG saw an incremental increase in water-filter sales when it tracked water volumes on connected fridges versus non-connected fridges, the company told the Journal.
(Alas, the real reason for low connectivity is surely just the difficulty for the average user of connecting the appliance to Wi-Fi.)
If there are no commercial precedents, are there open-source firmware or hardware IoT devices setting a good example?
When there's a problem, it still doesn't diagnose it for me. I still have to look up some obscure E004 error code that may or may not be in their manual.
I have a dryer that gives me a "CARES" alert every 6 months. It just wants to be run in a 'cleaning' cycle - but the manual doesn't tell you how! Presumably so their consumers can call them for support every time it happens. I don't know.
I'll never connect an appliance to the network because I know it doesn't need that to function. I don't get any practical benefits from it, aside from being data-mined!
The second most common reason is because, compared to a dumb feature, a smart feature, despite doing something above and beyond the dumb feature: has much worse UX; is brittle in its functionality; is ephemeral in its future availability; and is nebulous in how it works (is this using the internet or just the LAN?). It's a bit like the difference between a mechanical toggle and a touch screen.
The third most common reason is because it's just annoying to go through the setup process.
Data privacy concerns come in at a vanishingly rare fourth place.
Again, these are my personal real-life observations of other people.
If you're in the business of selling a dishwasher, you are going to suck at the business of selling dishwasher tablets / month. It's going to be more costly, you're going to miss dates, you're going to cock it up when I change my credit card.
There is a serious trust issue with these people. I don't think they can do this other thing. I really don't. They lack the organizational expertise. Plus the software they have is shit, so I don't trust them there either. They probably make a damned nice dishwasher motor and nice rotor arms and they can put it all together, but I don't trust them with the other stuff.
I'm surprised by the "declining replacement purchases" since based on what I'm seeing/reading/hearing appliance qualities have gone downhill and they have become more complex meaning that more people are replacing their appliances sooner rather than getting them repaired.
Edit: Amazingly, 15 minutes after posting this, I discovered my Instant Pot is not heating.
The assumption everyone is a tech genius at home is insane.
I briefly looked at setting up the app for notifications (it’s in the basement, I work upstairs). Their signup process is absurdly clunky, the EULA signs away everything, and then the app insists you can’t set up the washing machine’s Wi-Fi without giving the app permissions to collect precise location data and run in the background, as if it couldn’t just use Bluetooth to send it 128 bits of text.
"Allow anyone to remotely activate your stove and burn down your house while you are sleeping."
- Replacement of nice physical controls with touch screens and touch panels. It's so nice to have tactile feedback when you turn a knob compared to pressing some virtual button.
- Introduction of new failure modes which might make devices almost unusable without finding their instruction and following obscure reset procedures, i.e. you turn on some settings, and it's not so easy to turn it off.
Not to mention these appliances are often handled with unclean (slimy, dirty, wet etc.) fingers!
And vital to anyone visually impaired.
I've struggled for hours to get these two appliances to connect to WiFi with the various mobile applications the manufacturers come up with. I gave up and just won't bother anymore.
What percentage of smart appliances require at least one other device to do the connection (be it a smartphone or desktop PC)?
The industry has vastly overestimated the median user's technical competency if they require such interconnects.
It makes coffee. If I click it a certain way, it cleans the machine.
Why does it need wifi?
You should be sad.
of course for a $14.99 monthly subscription to HomeAppliancesPlus I will be able to skip the ads...