On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 12:59 PM Mary Otten <[email protected]> wrote:

> I couldn’t agree with you more. I think the whole Smart appliance thing is
> incredibly over sold. I mean really. A smart refrigerator? Who really needs
> that? The description of what you could do with that Samsung refrigerator
> just made me scratch my head and wonderment as to why anybody would spend
> all that money for stuff that is so not necessary.
>

Sadly, I think the smartness of the appliances isn't really the gating
factor. I'm old enough to recall appliances that were really built to last;
our relatively high end Bosch Dishwashers from just 13 years ago have both
failed (about 2 years apart), and the claim is that parts stopped being
available ... Bosch changed hands, the designs (and suppliers) changed, and
no one bothered to stock parts past the 7 years the US government mandates
(I probably could have tried to import parts from Europe). Our LG fridge
was fundamentally functional, but all of the little plastic bits were
breaking ... and our ovens both died because they weren't designed to
actually survive the heat of the self-cleaning cycle ...

The software staleness/lack of updates endemic in embedded devices
(routers, gateways, TV's, etc.) is a big (and as more features are added,
getting bigger fast) problem, especially with respect to security ... but
across multiple industries, their solution isn't to engineer the sw bits to
be upgradable (perhaps upgrading processors as required) but to ensure the
entire appliance ceases to function in a short enough timeframe to mitigate
the need to cope with advancing technology.

As a lifelong engineer, it makes me very sad.

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