No disagreement there, but once you are set on a mobile app, you are going to push for it to be used.

It all probably starts benign: let's push some notifications to customer's phones (already requires a server — ahem, a cloud — and a mobile app).

Then smart product managers realize that the app is not used by anyone, and they start thinking about "value add" with the app, and quickly, you are looking at removing things from the physical unit and putting them only in software.

A PM next: look, this release has increased usage of the app 10x!

Instead of them just doing the right thing and nixing the app — but who'd advocate for cutting their own job?

I could see a remote notification that it finished being useful. That said, the manufacturers would never go for this, but a dry contact for a GPO that is asserted on the machine finishing is likely all a number of people here would ever need/want.