A $20 toaster has overheat detection technology. Presumably other planes are doing this already. I am not understanding how there is a novel engineering problem to solve that could not be incorporated into the release.
While that doesn't make Boeing any less responsible for engineering proper solutions instead of a compliance hack, there's a difference between the solution for a throwaway consumer device and one for a multi-million dollar airplane that has to operate in conditions with harsh vibration and wide operating temperature ranges, has to be serviceable for decades, and cannot fail in ways that render the plane inoperable.
What a bunch of hysterical hand-wringing.
They just needed to a program a timer on the heater circuit and/or add sensors; the engines are already incredibly instrumented so this wouldn't be hard to do.
"Cannot fail in ways that render the plane inoperable" is precisely why there should not be a system that if forgotten about by the pilots past ~10 minutes causes the destruction of the engine nacelle and thus both probable destruction of the engines and penetration of the body of the aircraft by parts of said engine when it ingests parts of the nacelle.
You don't understand how serious that is. The nacelle of a jet engine is designed to contain a blade-off event where one or more blades - each of which has a massive amount of kinetic energy - completely break off from the turbine rotor at takeoff power levels.
The level of corporate apologism in your comment is breathtaking.
A simple thermal fuse to prevent catastrophic failure of a toaster is an example of a solution that works for a toaster. It's cheap. If the toaster handle gets stuck, the fuse heats up, trips, and the toaster is inoperable but there is no fire. The customer can replace the toaster or the thermal fuse.
That solution doesn't work for a plane, because if the fuse trips mid flight and the anti icing system doesn't work until the plane lands and maintenance replaces the thermal fuse, the plane is screwed if it encounters icing conditions during the same flight.
A timer doesn't work in this case, since from what I recall keeping the anti-icing system on is okay as long as the plane is in icing conditions. It can only overheat if the anti-icing is kept on outside of icing conditions for a few minutes.
Realistically, the system should work the same way it works on other planes; if it's forgotten, then it could waste energy but shouldn't cause the engine to fail. It's only because the engine inlet is made of composite materials instead of metal that this is a problem, but this is a problem of Boeing's own making.
Feel the thrill of life threatening bugs!