171–180 of 597 posts
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As the GGP said, the menu can be exited without updating by scrolling down. The interface isn't intuitive, but it's not a hard block.
Agree, but I think there are a number of us that don't want a menu that needs exiting on our dishwasher.
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Notifications is the big reason: because cycle times are usually just estimates, you can't just set a timer for when it'll be done.
I don't understand the usefulness of notifications on my phone for a dishwasher. Either I am near my dishwasher and hear its acoustic signal that it has finished. Then I can decide to open it or empty it now or later. Or I am not near the dishwasher than I can't do anything about it. Then it is a completely unactionable information, i.e. noise. Actually, I have a Bosch/Siemens dishwasher with Wifi because it is very…
I can understand the appeal of most smart devices, but since a dishwasher can’t yet load and unload itself, what is the point of an internet connected dishwasher? You have to have physically loaded it. Why not just push the start button then?
Here's one idea: sensor-based washing. I doubt anyone is currently doing this, but the idea can at least hold water ( ba-dum-tss ). You'd keep the dumb maximum spray-area approach for the pre-wash & rinse cycles, but replace the main wash cycle with a "smart-nozzle" approach that uses a radar (or some other non-optical sensor) to detect surfaces and apply a directed spray. Theoretically, that would save on energy cos…
Smart devices are overly complex. The entire point should have been to make devices work for you, but now when you buy a ‘smart’ washing machine, it requires you 30min of setup. Downloading apps, connecting it to wifi, providing GPS location etc. why? What’s the point. We need devices that make life simpler. Straight out of the box.
My dad got a smart heater, for my parents holiday home. The idea is that he can check temperature, and prevent frost damage from home. Yesterday he ask: "What happens it the company that makes the App decides that they don't what to do that anymore, or they go out of business?". Well, then the smart thingy stops being smart.
Looks like a Miele. That menu can be exited (the image where it says "Software Update", the tiny bit on the right... that's a scroll bar of multiple options including the ability to exit this menu), but it does imply that the dishwasher is already connected to Wi-Fi and that it has determined that there is an update available. There are few times that a dishwasher is interacted with, if not when you go into the menu…
"the Wi-Fi is useful... the dishwasher auto-doses the powder, rinse aid, salt, etc... and can let me know the levels of those." I do appreciate your respect for the usefulness of this functionality -- I just throw my laundry in the machine, press ON and then press START, throw in a random amount of soap and 60 minutes later or so I have clean clothes.
Into the dishwasher?
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No software is perfect when shipped. Most dishwashers have had updatable firmware for at least a decade, it just normally required a technician connecting to it with a cable.
No software is perfect when shipped Why not? Or rather, why do we accept this as the norm? A dishwasher isn't that complex, it should be possible to prove the firmware error-free.
A quick google suggests the updates mostly tweak rinse times and temperature settings, presumably based on data that wasn't available before the model shipped.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My dad got a smart heater, for my parents holiday home. The idea is that he can check temperature, and prevent frost damage from home. Yesterday he ask: "What happens it the company that makes the App decides that they don't what to do that anymore, or they go out of business?". Well, then the smart thingy stops being smart.
This is exactly why Stallman invented free software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor... .
My bed has an app. Because of course it does. The bed logs sleep (and, presumably, other activities) and then sends all the data to the manufacturer. I don't want it to do this, so I explicitly opt out in the app. The problem is that it keeps asking and there isn't a good way to permanently disable the creepy behavior.
Back to the attempted murder - last week, I opened the app to adjust the bed (the head and foot of the bed can move) but because of crappy app design, there isn't a way to set myself as the default person when the app is opened. I had to deal with the privacy setting reminder again and in my frustration with it, I ended up changing my wife's side of the bed instead of my own. Frustrated, I try to cancel by tapping another preset position, but then realize that this preset is going to move both sides at once, so I then tapped the physical button on my wife's side to make her side go back to a different preset position. And yes, my internal model of whatever state the bed is in was now thoroughly confused.
Anyway, nothing new happened. The bed continued moving to the first (unwanted) position, then it stopped completely. I tried the physical button again and nothing happened, and the app wasn't working either, so I went to check that the power cable didn't accidentally come loose, with a plan to unplug the controller and plug it back in again if there wasn't a loose wire.
The problem was, the control box was beneath the (very, very heavy) bed. Thankfully it's easy to access the controller when the head of the bed is up - there is a bunch of empty space where the mattress normally would be. So I half-climbed in to the bed to check the power cable, and that's right at the point where the bed decided it had had enough of the human interfering with its utility function of providing optimal sleep at all times and decided to solve the problem by lowering itself on my neck.
It's relevant to note here that the bed in question is not some wimpy somnolence aid. No! This thing is designed to hoist two human bodies up to 350lbs (each!) into a sitting position. While it takes around 4500 Newtons to snap a neck, it takes much less force to compress the carotid artery and deflate the windpipe - in this task (unlike remembering my privacy settings), the bed was peerless.
I was first annoyed, then concerned, then serious panic set in when I realized that I (a 6'2 human male) wasn't able to fend off my assailant. I yelled, shoved, panicked and shoved some more. Only after several scary seconds did I finally realize that I could cut the power by yanking out the cord in front of me. Getting myself disentangled gave me a long scratch on my arm (first blood goes to the robots!) and a loss of much of my pride, but soon after I reveled in my victory - the first skirmish in what will be known to future generations as the Machine wars.
It probably says something about me that, even as I recount this story, the fact that the bed tried to kill me isn't the worst feature that I'd mention in a review. I'm genuinely more bothered by the constant nagging privacy settings screen in the app. Small, constant irritations seem to be worse than single, (albeit large) failure modes that seldom occur.
Anyway, I need to end this here. It's almost 7am and the coffee maker gets angry if I don't stick to the schedule it created for me.