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One thing I've learned when buying a full set of appliances couple of years ago: don't read consumer reports or reviews by randos on the internet -- instead, go to industry literature, and read reports by/for service and warranty providers. They have actual hard data on the types and frequency of problems across brands and models.

But back to the main theme of the article: hell to the no was my initial attitude, and I went out of my way to make sure my appliances were as simple as possible. Still, three out of the five were "wifi-enabled" and promised a world of app-enhanced wonders. Needless to say, none of these ever even got anywhere near being set up, and I think I am lucky, all the normal, expected appliance features work without requiring these extras.

The idea of remotely preheating my oven while I am not home still makes me shudder.

Bosch!

I ran into the same situation. I specifically told the salesperson I didn't want wifi, and they told me it's only if you want it to operate from your phone.

I was done installing it and got rid of the packaging by the time I read that it needs to use their website for some functions.

Beside the fact that I doubt the store would take it back after using it for a week or two and havi go no packaging, I had no time nor energy to remove it and return it.

I tried to contact Bosch who keep redirecting me to some other I ternal department and eventually stop responding.

Do NOT buy a Bosch diswashe, even though you pay full price upfront you cannot use all the functions without creating an account on their website and have them run those functions for you.

I feel Jeff should have bit the bullet and just returned it. I know it's a waste of time, but these products have to be rejected at retail. Retailers will eventually get tired of the extra support burden and demand manufacturers drop stuff like this.

They should all get hit with the open box problem from the returns.

Jeff, you left out the juiciest part of the story, which is that the Bosch Home Connect iPhone app hoovers up your Search History data. Anyone know how much that data is worth? I made the same mistake of buying the 500 and it's just so ridiculous that I need to reveal my most intimate Google moments to a dishwasher in order to use its advanced features which I won't. When I was building Internet technology in the 1990s and optimistic about the future, never in my fiercest nightmares could I have predicted that this is how normies would use it and that it'd be considered normal. What kind of monster do you have to be to use home appliances as leverage to spy on people? There seriously needs to be a different planet for people like us.

I live in an apartment building whose walls don't really attenuate RF at all. And like most of the building I have a Samsung "smart" TV. So most evenings I get three or four screencast requests from neighbors' phones that I have to deny. That's annoying enough but it also stops whatever I'm watching in the process.

The manual didn't include instructions for turning off Bluetooth, and when I called Samsung they said you in fact can't turn it off. I could simply pull the antenna, I guess, but it seems to be integrated with the WiFi so then I couldn't watch any streaming.

I ended up changing the BT device name to "STOP USING THIS ONE" but apparently nobody reads it because I still get the connection requests daily.

And all this stuff could work directly locally, it'd even make alternatives possible and it'd be an immensely better experience. It would eliminate the latency it takes for the requests to reach halfway across the world and back. It would also eliminate a lot of the privacy and security concerns.

What makes it worse is that these cloud connections also tend to be insecure and unreliable or both. I've seen multiple vendors (including Miele) make unencrypted connections to their cloud. (Try blocking port 80 outgoing on your firewalls.)

I've also set up a bit of monitoring for a few appliance manufacturer's clouds - these cloud services have outages all the damn time. To an extent it makes sense given that nobody is explicitly paying for them. On the other hand it's a terrible omen for the longevity of such services. (I can't wait to buy an expired appliance manufacturer's domain.)

I can't imagine a solution to this mess either besides legislation, like forcing some open access at least on EOL.

This is not only a problem with dishwashers, but a general trend with many electronic devices.

We see the same in the air quality monitoring industry, where more and more manufacturers lockdown their devices and make them cloud only operable. We at AirGradient are open source hardware (and can run completely local) and we are very successful with it. So things like this are actually opening up the market for new entrants or existing companies to highlight the benefits of non-cloud models for the consumers.

So I do hope that these kind of post like from Jeff Geerling create more awareness also among the normal consumers to change their buying behavior and bulk that trend.

I was in a similar situation with a clothes dryer dying where the repair required a board that was half the price of a new one. A key difference is that I had a professional appliance repair guy look at it and he determined it needed a new board. Rather than buy a new machine like Jeff did, I made the opposite decision and paid for the board. It has been a few years since that and I have been happy with the result. I was spared from having a dryer that did not match the washing machine so I not only saved the half the cost of the dryer, but the cost of a new washer too.

> And on my GE Amana dishwasher, it started having weird power issues > like the controls would just not light up unless I reset the circuit breaker

It was eerie to read that, because at ~10 years old my GE Profile dishwasher's logic board died and exhibited all those same behaviours. I followed great advice from techs but then faced the same issue: $400 to get another board, but why gamble?

I purchased a KitchenAid (with front facing, well lit and described buttons) and it has been great, with no WiFi requirement, and I felt the Bosch models were overpriced.

I actually just purchased a Bosch 500 series two days ago to replace my piece of trash Samsung dishwasher that stopped working. Supposed to be delivered in a week. Was deciding between Bosch and Kitchenaid based on recommendations. This kind of crap in appliances is so annoying. I will cancel my order from Home Depot and get something else. Thank you for this very timely post.

Dear Bosch, if you need someone to design a $5 control circuit that will time a few motors and actuators and last 20 years, just give me a call.

I haven't read every comment on this thread but it's highly likely that the use of wifi in the appliance is not for the convenience of the consumer, but more likely for the convenience of the designers and anyone having to service it. When building iot devices in the past I found it was a lot easier to interface over wifi than bluetooth, for all sorts of reasons. People who've tried to do both will probably appreciate why - I had to send bytestreams to bluetooth and it was quite complicated and error prone, whereas with wifi I could just make rest calls to the device. This was with an Arduino type device which was part of some customer b2b electronics we had made up for testing. Also some limitation of the Arduino meant it couldn't support bluetooth and wifi connectivity in the same build, possibly because of space limitations.

Anyway, my first thought on reading this was that all this wifi stuff was there anyway for the designers doing build and test and then someone in marketing had come up with the idea that this could also be a consumer feature.

In Europe Bosch has always been the go to quality consumer brand although there are quite a few next tier options such as Miele (which tend to be way more expensive). This is the case with domestic appliances but also with gas central heating boilers. Every year my service engineer says how pleased he is to see my Bosch boiler and how much better they are than other brands.

My toilet has Bluetooth. It sometimes crashes. I assume the logfiles are full.

We have HomeConnect on our new Thermador appliances. I actually went ahead and installed the iOS app and brought everything into Homebridge. (thinking about switching to Home Assistant, though...)

One of the big reasons that I did it is so I'd know when consumables needed to be replaced. The big hope was it would give me a warning when the fridge water filter was full and make buying the exact part easier.

It has failed to do this one thing. But I can get recipes from within the app. I still have no idea what water filter I need and have to try to find the model number.

If you're going to build a cloud setup for appliances, at least make it useful for the end user, eh?

edit: we actually considered a GE washer/dryer for the smart features until I sat down and realized that I was trying to over complicate laundry. We went with a Speed Queen model instead. My dryer now has two knobs and a button to start it.

If you want your lights or music connected to the internet, I can understand that, but NO HEAT PRODUCING APPLIANCES SHOULD BE CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. If someone wants to burn down your house, make them come over and do it the old fashioned way. Do not let them do it remotely from another country.

I've been thinking for a while about building a directory of sorts of product categories and products that are "dumb" (not connected to the cloud, or don't require it to function). I've done a lot of research for some and have a list myself.

If anyone thinks that'd be interesting and have thoughts/comments/suggestions or just would want to know about it, you can find my email in my profile and I'd love to hear from you!

(New) "dumb" cars are just impossible to find nowadays, unfortunately.

Mine is completely computer-free, with a mechanical timer, and has only required a minimum of maintenance over the years. There's actually a somewhat underground community rebuilding/restoring vintage white goods, which I suspect may become more popular as things like this keep happening.

Unlike the new stuff that's dependent on a cloud service with rapidly changing software which may get shut down or unusable in a few years, mine has been working with the same power and water for the greater than half a century since it was made.

If it fails intermittently it’s very likely caused by cracked solder joints or dried out capacitors in the power supply. I bet this GE control board could be fixed cheaply - if it was old, it might even not use a switching mode power supply, but an old classical transformer + rectifier - those are trivial to fix and no special parts are needed.

The problem is though, there aren’t many electronic shops left which are able to do component level repair. Almost everybody replaces full modules, as it is much easier.

I was quite surprised to discover that I couldn’t interact at all with my home battery without internet. I wanted to see how much power is left in it during a power cut but because in a power cut there’s no internet the app didn’t work. Interestingly the cell tower goes out after about two hours of power out and the landline goes after about 9 hours so I didn’t realise until quite far in that this would happen.

I'd like to play devil's advocate for a minute and ask a question:

Does anyone know exactly what the Bosch service sends the dishwasher?

While I agree that connecting a dishwasher to the Internet should not be necessary, it does open the door to an interesting scenario if what gets sent to the dishwasher is not a command to run a mode but an actual program to control the dishwasher. In theory that would mean that Bosch could alter the programs that get sent to improve the dishwasher over time.

On a dishwasher with no connectivity the modes simply are what they are from the factory. But on a connected dishwasher if the Bosch engineers figure out that when in ECO mode using every third sprayer saves water while not altering the cleaning performance expected of that mode, they can update the payload and make the dishwasher you already have even more efficient. They could also in theory create a whole library of modes for specific use cases or scenarios (All glass, hard water, etc.)

Of course, this has potential drawbacks as well. They could change a mode and alter behavior you expect, and it could potentially be a hacker's playground, but if done well it could be a net positive.

Would Bosch try to go the same route as German automakers and institute a fee for ongoing use of advanced features?

I am seriously surprised he chose this expensive model over the IKEA model costing less than $300, which the Consumer Report ranked not much worse than this expensive Bosch in their report, the latter of which he references in his video.

What does Bosch even get out of doing this? Why not add a simple 7 segment display (decades old tech) and make it possible to use the machines functions from the controls? It's not like they make money from active Bosch accounts or anything.

That feeling when someone put the story on Louis Rossman wiki today https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Bosch_Cloud_Dishwasher_I...

I'll just throw in that the Home Connect app comes at 700 MB. Why?!

The takeaway I've got from this thread is to never buy anything expensive or hard to uninstall unless you read the user manual first to suss out these sorts of landmines.

The Internet of Things is the ultimate digital land grab.

I get everybody wants to lock you in, but how do we incentivize manufacturers to add local support? Bosch is already high-end so it's not price.

Literally paid more so I didn’t need the app. Cost of doing business in 2025.

But Polythechnique, the French Militarian School will! \o/

> We don't have 1.5 hours every night to spend hand-washing dishes (not to mention the water bill!).

Where is that bizarre conception that washing dishes by hands ends up wasting more water? If anything it's the other way around.

Some things - I don't see value (yet).

But others like coffee machine, lights, solar, AC, ventilation, robot vacuum, car charger, hot water heater, speakers are so obviously better when connected.

My personal take: no, I won't connect my dishwasher - or any other appliance - to your stupid cloud, nor will I use your dog-shit garbage app. I will, however, consider buying your "Internet of Shit"-enabled appliance, if I know there's a working integration for Home Assistant.

"Smart" features are nice when done well. Like e.g. through Home Assistant. Companies could make them that good, even better, but they all universally see IoT as a trick for plausibly-deniable planned obsolescence and to get people used to subscription model for home appliances. As a result, the apps are usually pile of garbage, slapped together on the cheap by some random outsourcing company.

If it takes you an "hour and a half" to wash a few dishes, I'd say you have bigger issues than what you're whining about here...

Dishwashers and washing machine have really enshitified at warp speed.

Parents used to have them for decades plus. The last dishwasher my landlord put in made it about 6 month. Build quality feels like soda can alu

Basically disposable now

For fear of becoming a one line repeater:

It's kind of amazing that capitalism can go so far as to make customers want to opt out and build their fucking own...

Maybe worth to consider that with the AI craze going on and our lovely gang of anarchocapitalists at the helm, there is now not just the technical ability, but also economic motivation and soon maybe legal impunity for manufacturers to build hidden microphones into the devices, record everything you say and upload it for AI training.

In terms of "what should be done?", and I the only one who thought of the Silicon Valley episode where they immortalized Jing Yang on a "smart" fridge?

I have a slightly different perspective, though in principle I agree with this sentiment.

I'm totally blind. Last year I bought an Instant Pot (multi-function pressure cooker) because it's well past time I start cooking for myself. There are numerous models available on Amazon, and I had no idea which ones would have tactile controls (I think this was before Amazon introduced their LLM thing, and I'm unsure if it would've helped in any case, or just hallucinated and caused me to buy something I couldn't use). Could've waited until I had a sighted person around or available online to look at pictures, but that's beside the point.

So I ended up spending an extra $50 for the "Pro Plus" model, which is WiFi-enabled. Apparently a previous model connected to phones directly via bluetooth (that model is no longer supported) and that's what I was hoping/expecting would be the case here as well. Unfortunately it only uses bluetooth for the initial setup. So, after creating yet another account with my real email address, registering the device, and waiting several minutes for who knows what (firmware download?) it's connected to the internet and seems to be controlled indirectly by the phone app through their API. So yeah, that company probably logs when, where, how, and maybe even what I cook, for how long, because why the hell not?

My point, though, is that for the moment, at least I can use this device. I'm well aware that this may not be the case long-term; the app has already had one update that made accessibility much worse, the company could stop supporting this model as well, or the internet could go down. The app and the device occasionally get out of sync, resulting in quite a bit of wasted time. But if I were using buttons on the device itself, the best I could hope for would be to memorize menus and the temperature dial and whatnot. In practice, that would probably be less tedious than having to pause while cooking, clean my hands and use my phone, but for now, at least theoretically, I can use all the features of the device via the app. Barring that, the logical solution would be to just connect directly via bluetooth, as was done previously, but then I wouldn't need to create an account, and we can't have that. Maybe there are/were better options on the market, but product listings seem to just say things like "WiFi-enabled", "App-Controled", or "IoT" without defining exactly what that means, and "customer support" will either be a chatbot that tells me what I want to hear and then claims to contact a human who will never get back to me, or a human following a script who doesn't understand my requirements even after I state them clearly, and probably doesn't even know what they're actually selling. Wonderful world we live in. Incidentally, I do actually need to get myself a dishwasher one of these days, and it's almost certainly going to be the same deal.

> What should be done?

You should research your appliances better before purchasing them.

Also I guess they should be less user-hostile, good luck with that.

It's the tech bro mentality and low interest rates that got us here. It's not enough for a company to just make something good on an open standard. No, they have to go with the enshitification/juicero model and blitzscale the whole market. Appliances should work with zigbee or similar but instead we get a dozen janky apps or 'works with Alexa'.

Required reading: Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow (excerpt: [0]; part of his book Radicalized [1])

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicalized_%28Doctorow_book%2...

I recently bought and installed the same dishwasher. I also don't like the app requirement to access some features. But contrary to some of the other comments, I feel the need point out that it's still a fully functional dishwasher even if you never connect it to Wifi.

You will miss out on a few "advanced" features, but it washes dishes really well. I read the manual before I bought it, and I got the performance I expected. I would have preferred to have access to a rinse cycle and a cleaning mode, but I don't need them. It definitely gets my dishes much cleaner than the old failing one I replaced, and I have no complaints so far about its performance.

A few more notes while I'm here:

Yes, partially unscrew the front legs with a wrench before you put it in place. They are too tight. Partially adjust the rear leg before you put it in too. The diagram is confusing and may not adjust the leg in the direction you think it will. I wonder if this is what happened to Jeff.

The dishwasher apparently will refuse to connect to a Wifi network without a password. For mostly philosophical reasons I don't want to add a password to my network, and this is part of the reason I haven't connected it.

Note that the Costco version (at least in my area) is a subtly different model that does not include the automatic door opening "Auto Air" feature. Since this is one of the best features of this model, you should not buy it from Costco unless you verify it comes with this.

The "touchless" buttons are annoying. It frequently beeps and comes to life when I'm just trying to open the door. The interface as a whole isn't great, and I sometimes worry it's not set correctly. But once you figure it out, it will wash your dishes quietly and effectively.

Seems like this Home Connect stuff does support local only/no cloud mode[0]. I recently discovered my parent's kitchen hardware is all Bosch with Home Connect and was afraid I had to run it through their cloud. But there seems to be some decent effort done in getting it to work with Home Assistant[1].

[0] https://trmm.net/homeconnect/ [1] https://github.com/hcpy2-0/hcpy

> When I posted on social media about this, a lot of people told me to return it.

>

> But I spent four hours installing this thing built into my kitchen.

I sympathize with the author and what Bosch is doing here is ridiculous and I am fully against it.

But, they're not going to care about your complaints. Returning it and hitting them in the pocketbook is really the only way consumers have to send messages that companies hear.

It's a pain, but if you truly care about this, you, sadly, have to put in extra effort to fight back.

When buying a new washing machine and dryer, I actually spent hours extra to find models /without/ app requirements last summer. There were so few of them that did what I wanted, and also didn't require internet access that I'm worried the next time around there will be no more options where I can elect to keep them off the net. :/

I was pleasantly surprised that Yamaha flirted with this then backed off. My receiver is connected to the LAN since this is helpful for streaming, and it has a companion MusicCast app for controlling it on the WiFi or playing audio stored on your phone. No messing around with accounts, it just works. A year or two ago the app started regularly pestering you to register an online account. I, along with who knows how many other people, sent them an annoyed email promising that if an account ever became required my receiver would spend the rest of its days on OPTICAL1 with a different smart frontend. Quietly, the in-app popups stopped. For now, life is good.

By the end of the day, most kitchen and laundry appliances are a bunch of electric motors, pumps, solenoids, compressors, resistances, buttons, switches, and sensors.

If this trend continues, we will have more and more people having bricked appliances as badly designed web services are inevitably sunset, as mobile apps without updates become incompatible with new versions of their phone OS and get delisted from App Stores by the manufactures. Or then, Wi-Fi standards will change, and the appliance won't be able to connect to the network unless you keep an obsolete and by then insecure hotspot just to serve it.

Given that, I wonder if there isn't going to be a business opportunity for creating after-market appliance controllers. Just a board that you can use to replace the one that came with your appliance, but without any factory-controlled web-service nonsense.

This is already a thing for split air-conditioner units. In fact, I even saved one with such an aftermarket board.

Legal Action Possibilities:

- Product not as advertised, because it failed to disclose the need for a smart phone model supported by their app, and WiFi, and an internet connection, and etc.

- Product is not ADA(?) compliant, because all that extra complexity makes using it too difficult for some disabled people.

- Product is in violation of data security regulations of some US States, or countries, or the EU, because ...

And in theory, any Cory Doctorow fan with the spare time could set up a web site to name & shame all the consumer products which had these "involuntary cloud" features, helping people avoid them.

I work on embedded appliance software at my job. A few comments:

It's quite easy to find yourself having non-zero boot times for some unfortunate reasons. At least in my org, the software as a whole is RAM/ROM constrained rather than speed constrained. Even when you're this close to bare metal, devs tend to write over-abstracted code riddled with inefficiencies. And of course most people don't profile the application at all. This is a symptom of the software being under-tested imo. I have personally written tooling to integration test the whole application for a few appliances, and for one appliance initializing the application 56 times took over 1 second. On a modern machine it should take milliseconds. After profiling I found that 99%+ of our time was spent servicing a subscription tied to all events, that really only needed to subscribe to just one or two.

Along with that there are other reasons for long apparent boot up times:

- Waiting for other boards to connect and talk to each other. Your UI can't do anything until it knows the state from the main control.

- Randomized delays to prevent current surges after a blackout. You'll see this on ACs or other appliances that might have hundreds of identical units in a building.

- Waiting for flash memory to be readable

All of this adds up to seconds of boot time. Yet ultimately none of this matters to the business people because we're an appliance company, NOT a software company. Our software is mostly incidental to having a functioning product, and boot times could go way higher without the business being worried. Though recently yes, we have entered the data market hence the push for smart features. Word to the wise, avoid any appliance with Android in it if you don't like the idea of forced connected features!

I unfortunately don't have any solutions to most of the problems presented in the article. All I can do is continue to try writing bullet-proof software and push back against forced connected features.

This is why I buy “commercial” appliances when I can. My speed queen washer and dryer each have two knobs and a start button. Thats all you need. I doubt I will need to ever replace them.

I have this same dishwasher in my apartment (installed by my landlord). It’s not just that it requires a cloud connection for the features, but that the setup is so janky and bug-ridden that I’ve been unable to successfully make it happen.

So I just live without the extra features.

I was pleasantly surprised when there was an update to my Flymo robot lawnmower app where they _removed_ the requirement to setup an account to use it. Seems most other companies are going the other way though.

I purposely spend a lot of time ensuring that an appliance (such as dishwasher, fridge, oven etc) has no connectivity before I purchase. Even if it misses out on some of the “better features”.

Surely when all appliances go down this route it will not last long, purely down to the amount of breaches that will inevitably occur. Not to mention the backlash.

I put up with a variety of shitty appliances because I'm a renter in 2025 who doesn't anticipate ever owning a home, but if I were in the business of outfitting my place with appliances, they sure as shit would not be the crap quality touch sensor microwave, oven, and dishwasher we currently use, or the dumbass laundry machines with stupid arbitrary labels for each setting. The fridge is fine, it has a door, that's all it needs to do. I want buttons.

I see that the genius that decided that butonless car dashboards are a good idea, have found a new job, now that the car trend has reversed.

For me the most egregious thing was online account to use my mouse.

Also for dishwashers and washing machines - the eco and other bullshit modes are terrible. Let me waste tad more resources that I will gladly pay for and don't care how greasy the things that I throw in the dishwasher are.

I wrote https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-we-cant-have-nice-software.... after going through a similar process - used Consumer Reports, and then purchased exactly the one pictured in the blog article.

The only feature that would make me want to connect it to the cloud is if it would automatically load the dishes and then put them back in the cupboard when it finished cleaning them.

Stuff like this is why I never really trust "Consumer Reports" reviews.

I suppose this means that in the future, when I shop for a home appliance, I'll have to download their manual first and scan for things like this.

> Cloud should be an add-on.

I don't agree; dishwashers that connect to the Internet should not exist.

At most, a dishwasher's network connectivity should be restricted to the presence of firmware which serves a web UI. Everything should be doable via the web UI, whose commands should ideally be URL-driven, so they can be easily automated with simple requests.

A laser printer doesn't need to connect to the cloud; why does a dishwasher?

I've got a few Bosch appliances. I like the Bosch website where I can get spare parts [1]. When the door spring of my 15 years old dishwasher broke a couple of years ago, I went to the Bosch website, enters the model number and got an exploded view with all the parts. I ordered the spring and replaced it myself. A few minutes of work. Much faster than finding a repair guy with a free appointment slot. My Bosch washing machine has a WiFi label on it. Never connected it. Only using the buttons on the front panels. On the same website, you can get the instruction manual PDF, so I usually have a peek review in the manual of a device before buying. I don't know if that spare parts service is available everywhere but I have used it in 3 European country so far.

[1] https://www.bosch-home.com/de/produkte/ersatzteile

Netgear did a switcharoo on me after the fact with my Nighthawk. When I got it, I was able to just open the app and manage it locally. I don't remember what it was but the thing I was after definitely worked a lot better from the app. Then they updated it and required you to make a Netgear account to manage your local device. I was able to trick it into thinking I was offline for a while, and I found that would let me log in locally, but eventually that quit working too. I uninstalled the app and then just managed it from Firefox mobile. Their web UI wasn't remotely good, but it worked. Luckily I didn't have to make a ton of changes to it from there on out, since I was just using it as an AP at that point. When I moved, I got a much better AP for the new place.

This is not just dishwashers - robot vacuums are super bad with this one, did not see any with local first app. ACs are just as sketchy. Another opportunity where EU can fix worldwide market.

What happens when whatever stupid services this thing relies on stop working/get abandoned?

Related: Is "Internet of Shit" still a thing?

Reminds me of the BMW Heated Seats SaaS option.

What's even worse is the planned obsolescence, its such a huge waste of resources. I had a GE DW and fridge from the 1950s until 1995 and they still worked, albeit were a funky lime greenish color. And that DW washed the dishes better than the new replacement. Currently dealing with a 2 year old LG fridge that is dead.

My washer and dryer are miele, and the remote notifications are useful. I've used some of the remote start features to ensure the machines run when the solar is generating, but that's about it

Honestly I'd have been better with the speed queen and a relay wired into the starter switch.

As for the dishwasher, I rigged up my current one to send me end of cycle alerts by putting a current detector loop around it's power inlet, and alerting when it goes from high to low and stays that way for a period

Like, sure—I can download a new ringtone for my dishwasher… but you know what the dumbest thing about internet-connected appliances is?

I still can’t set my oven clock without doing some weird finger kung-fu combo. Why? WHY?? Why can’t it just sync with my phone or, I don’t know, the internet—like literally every other clock on every other device does now?

And don’t even get me started on the range hood. Why can’t I have the light turn on automatically, say, an hour after sundown? Or have the fan kick in when the gas turns on? That would actually be useful! But nope—no timer, no automation. The only feature my Wi-Fi-enabled range hood has is pure, unfiltered disappointment.

Or take my fridge. Why can’t it send me a photo of what’s inside while I’m at the grocery store? Or tell me how often (and when) I open the door every day? I know it’s tracking that data—just show me a copy instead of feeding it straight to Zuck!

Honestly, the features these things come with right now are all pretty much useless. And the worst part? Leaving them connected means someone could just push a kill command one day that bricks my garbage disposal. “Oh, profits are down this quarter? Time to end-of-life that model from 6 months ago!”

Not a dishwasher story, but related. We bought a whirlpool washer and dryer set and hated them. The set was one of the few name brand models without WiFi "features" added on. But they were still terrible.

The one highlight is that we learned about the brand Speed Queen from the sales person at Lowe's. She talked them up as being the best, but they aren't sold at any big box store. Speed Queen is only sold through mom and pop shops.

When we dug in and did some research, we found that Speed Queen has the best consumer ratings by a wide margin.

They still produce a fixed drum model for the washer, like the type that whirlpool and maytag used to make decades ago. We put up with the whirlpool for a couple of years, but when we moved we got rid of them and bought a fixed drum style Speed Queen (look for the models marketed as "classic clean"). Best consumer appliance I've ever owned. I expect it to last at least another 20 years.

>my GE Amana dishwasher, it started having weird power issues, like the controls would just not light up unless I reset the circuit breaker for a few minutes

And they say EVs will outlast regular cars. On every piece of my home equipment, electronics failed before they developed mechanical issues.

Power electronics, especially capacitors, and high power switching elements don't have a great track record of reliability.

I had a similar experience when I bought a pressure washer[1] that required an app. Some things just shouldn’t need one.

1. https://www.kaercher.com/au/home-garden/pressure-washers/sma...

At what point will we grow tired of this and make open standards for control of these appliances like comma, where one can buy an established unit and modify it with a microcontroller. I know there are jokes about the quirks of open source hardware and software, but what if the alternative is almost as bad

I am so glad I saw this today! I am in the market for a new dishwasher and was about to buy a Bosch tomorrow on the strength of online reviews. Not anymore! And you bet I will be asking to read the user's manual before buying, to make sure the manufacturer isn't trying similar shenanigans.

I just spent €1,250 for an oven (the only one I could find that was 45cm in height and could cook with steam).

It works very well but I was horrified when I saw the message saying that "It required an urgent security update" and that it would download it from the cloud.

I feel we went too far.

I think I had this dishwasher or one similar. The control board went out and the cost to replace it was more than a brand new dishwasher. I got a new cheaper dishwasher with fewer features/buttons/connectivity but it washes the dishes just as well. It also works.

> First, it lets product designers get lazy.

Product designers get blamed for this kind of thing, but I can all but guarantee the product designer just worked on the how, they didn't decide that your dishwasher needed this feature. We rarely go rogue and create a whole new system that nobody asked for, then convince a bunch of product managers, VPs, and engineers that what they thought was a shitty idea is actually worth doing. Ideas like this get given to us, it's our job to execute on them, just like engineers implementing shitty features to the best of their ability. Product designers are usually the ones who complain about bad user experience, and get told it conflicts with business goals.

Damn it Bosch. They usually make great tools and appliances and it looks like they're instead following the path of "subscribe for the basic features" scams.

I can't help but think my solution to this would be, to start hand washing the dishes, out of pure spite.

My current Bosch dishwasher that I bought almost 10 years ago does almost all of this (no eco mode or self-clean, though it does have a sanitize cycle which I would guess is effectively the same) with physical buttons and a 7 segment display. All of these “new” features seem so needless. They already solved it, my 10 year old dishwasher is a great dishwasher and I will happily use it until it dies.

I realize that that’s maybe the problem when the line must go up, but I am pretty sick of companies putting most of their efforts towards solving problems that no one actually has instead of doing a simple thing really well.

I’m at the point where shopping for any equipment from toaster to car/home, this is the primary thing I’m looking for first before purchasing is I need to know exactly how it works/operates. Everything is Wi-Fi enabled and smart but I need to be sold that I can operate it without connecting it. And if I can’t use the core features, the way dumb equipment would have worked, then it’s an immediate no go. I don’t care about most of the extra smart features I never had before on most things.

There are a few exceptions of course. Where remote access is a major value add. Home security systems, garage doors, deadbolts, etc fall into that cohort but that’s about it so far.

I had this dishwasher in a rental property I was living in. The landlord fitted it a month or so after I moved in because the old dishwasher died.

I was very skeptical of a WiFi connected dishwasher.

Very quickly, I loved it.

It’s actually REALLY useful to be able to get a ping on my Apple watch that the dishwasher has finished.

Once upon a time I had a dishwasher where the door popped open when it was finished. That was good too.

But with the Bosch one I can do things like mute it (so it keeps washing but more quietly), or make custom programmes (spray harder on the bottom rack because I’ve been baking).

When I moved I bought my own. And then bought a matching smart washer dryer.

I was really really skeptical of internet connected appliances like this. I wouldn’t return to a dumb appliance.

I on the other hand do want connected appliances because this will allow automation to run them when e.g. there is a lot of electricity from the sun or wind, which is the future of electricity grids. A dishwasher is perfect for this because it basically runs daily, but most of the time you don't really need it to run at a very precise time.

As for expensive control boards for the old broken down machines, I found someone on eBay that repaired them and fixed my washing machine for 40. The control board is just a plastic box with cables running to it. Disconnect, take it out, mail it, and install it once you get it back. Fixed.

I want fun features, but my trust in these companies not to abuse that is -1000% (I minored in math). The company and Consumer Reports need to be blasted here. Yes, Consumer Reports. This is a lemon of a feature. They should be warning people that you need a cloud account/app to use the advertised features and dropping the score on these things because that is clearly not consumer friendly and will lead to features being unavailable when the company decides to turn them off. Oh, and they definitely are selling your info to someone so there is that.

thanks, I'll take Bosch off my replacement dishwasher list

I wonder how long it will be before we need to start paying subscriptions to use our appliances or pay per use. Bosch is leaving money on the table by only allowing you to use DRMed detergent cartridges too.

this discussion is getting big so i've built a summary, here's a few bullet points:

- Cloud-dependent features for essential appliance functions are undesirable.

- Modern appliances are becoming less durable and harder to repair compared to older models.

- There are valid concerns about privacy and data security with internet-connected home appliances.

- Consumer Reports and similar review sites are not always reliable and trustworthy.

- Simple, locally controlled appliances are preferable for core home appliance functionalities.

- Some smart features, like remote notifications and control, can be genuinely useful and convenient for users in certain situations.

- Smart features might offer specific advantages in shared living spaces or for optimizing energy consumption.

- Developing local-first software for appliances is perceived by some as complex and expensive compared to cloud-based solutions.

- The market will naturally adjust to consumer preferences regarding smart features over time.

- For some users, the effort of returning a product might outweigh the inconvenience of dealing with cloud-dependent features.

- Not all Bosch dishwashers require cloud connectivity, and some models are still considered high quality.

the summary can be found here: https://extraakt.com/extraakts/dishwasher-app-dependency

Just return that dumb dishwasher.

I literally went through this exact situation a couple months ago with a similar Bosch. I refused to get the new models that require the app to do simple things like half load or delay cycle that are physical buttons on my old one. I will actively avoid products like this.

Get a llm soldetrd in that emulates the cloud? Bonuspoints if the actuator em ruins the connections.

Any device which can ever connect to the internet should have a big red warning label like the ones on cigarettes. People would know to discount this warning if they're buying a device they know they want to connect to the internet.

Once bitten, twice shy. It's a shame, I used to like Bosch.

(sighs, thinks back to simpler times, remembers all the other shit that's going on at the moment, and wonders 'just how big a tarriff PDT will slap on the Huns')

2007 I won’t connect my phone to your cloud

2012 I won’t connect my tv to your cloud

2015 I won’t connect my car to your cloud

After reading this post and the comment section, I am glad that I made the decision to keep the 1993 Miele dishwasher that was installed in the house we bought last year. We basically renovated the kitchen around it.

I'm really happy with my Bosch washing machine's WiFi. Getting a notification to the phone when the wash cycle is complete is something I wouldn't give up now, since I don't hear the beeping to upstairs. I also wish I'd get notifications from the dish washer, but it's an old model that still works and it's hard to justify replacing it yet.

I also have no clue what all the physical buttons on the washing machine's control panel do, but it's easy to configure the wash program using the phone app whenever something special is needed. I wish I had the same kind of remote control for the dish washer, since its buttons are also pretty much undecipherable.

The actual Home Connect Android app is not great though. Could be simplified and cleaned up of unnecessary cruft.

Not a huge fan of internet-of-shit but we have a similar Bosch dishwasher and it’s totally operable without wifi. I don’t think there is anything advertised to us that can’t be done by just pushing the buttons.

The smart stuff seems acceptably done: I can start cycles on my phone, it can be configured with the off-peak times for our power supply and automatically delay the overnight wash until then, I get a push notification on my Apple Watch to tell me to open the door to help drying, there are more program cycles you can download (which is the complaint here - should be more cycles on the machine).

And there is this useless feature where you can tell it you’ve bought, say, 90 dishwasher tablets and it will count down the tablets each wash and warn you when you need to buy more.

I say useless because you literally see how many tablets you have left when you fish them out of the box but still it felt like they tried to add some electronic smarts that made sense?

So yeah TL;DR works fine without wifi, with wifi you get some practical but otherwise ignorable functionality.

A rule of thumb I’m finding useful is, “If it has to connect to the internet to function properly, you do not really own it.”

To use the "Eco" mode you need a smartphone and a router.

This is beyond cynical.

Data sniffers always looking for some dirty washing.

Ok with some stats send in quality. But these days the more complex they get, they sound like printer Error blah blah. :)

Do VLANs really provide total isolation? Are there any attacks that still work for breaking out of a VLAN? Just like there is always a way to break out of a sandbox?

Kind of related. I gave my dad my old iPhone years ago, and when he bought a new car, the car’s app was unsupported on his phone’s version of iOS. He ended up having to get a new phone as well as a new car. (It’s nice to start heating up the car before leaving the office.)

I can imagine the same happening with connected appliances. You have to get a new phone to talk to your old dishwasher because the vendor updated the app to only work on the newest phones.

Jeff didn't mention whether Consumer Reports discussed this problem. If not, they also deserve blame.

If it takes you an hour and a half to wash a few dishes, you probably have a LOT more issues than this article describes....

So what's the "Speed Queen" equivalent for dishwashers and other home appliances?

Let's be clear. The industry plan for surveillance state is completely nuts. Expect toilets with AI analytical options over your feces and automatic report to your AI doctor. Transactional charges automatically included in your social scoring profile and carbon tax.

Can't wait till my clothes iron will start needing security updates.

You’ve just ruined every growth Product manager’s dream

We are outraged for ten minutes, and then move on, like the red sock in the white wash. The modern western consumer getting exactly what we deserve. MBA spin, rinse, repeat, draining us all, whilst the stain of these complex holding companies, launder their tax free profits.

With wage deflation, free time erosion, and political uncertainty, nobody has the time, energy or money to fight this. It is no wonder that we take the easy option, and so the cycle continues.

I do my best to pushback (this month was deleting firefox, last year was deleting youtube), but disengagement is just a number that nobody sees. So another 1000 people wont buy this brand, or use that service, or will boycott such and such. No one notices.

But I found some small hope. I recently switched jobs, and I have been lucky enough to talk to many people that do care enough to try to make a difference. I know there are others here on HN as well, some of us clinging on to one of the last websites worth visiting.

So if you have ever taken the more difficult option, I just want to say thank-you for your sacrifice, because even if the corps dont notice, you are doing the right thing. Karma.

Time to give tech a 'soiled wash' and start reviewing tech with a 'Clean Tech' moniker for companies willing to sell repairable tech, without the enshitifcation of ads, cloud, subscriptions, drm, mandatory accounts etc etc

Today's challenge, find Jeff a 'Clean Tech' washer so that we can have some interesting followup articles where he battles with the returns department because the machine has been listening in to his grumbles, and the water detection sticker has turned blue.

I have this exact dishwasher. To connect the app to it you have to go through a cloud account, but to its credit, you can turn the cloud connection off afterward and the app will then only talk to it through local wifi.

The dishwasher answers on SSH port 22. I suspect that the app's direct connection uses this and exchanges credentials via the initial cloud setup (so no cloud, no app connection either way).

I've found one useful feature not mentioned in the manual at all, that depend on the app: Popping the door open at the start of the drying cycle ("Efficient Dry" or something like that) vs. the end of it ("Auto Air"). Since changing this setting, plastic stuff is noticeably drier after letting it run into the night and then sitting open for the rest of the night. Stuff with higher thermal inertia (metal, porcelain, glass) is always dry except for the inevitable puddles at the top of upside-down mugs.

Actually I think you also need the app to run only the extra hot final rinse (for better drying) whereas "Sanitize" on the machine's UI runs the whole wash hotter.

The first thing it did after connecting it to the app/cloud was install a 70MB (!) software update. On a dishwasher.

Anyway I was not going to connect it to the cloud. But it flaked alarmingly. It would just sit there, blinking its red light, unresponsive to anything but power off, and there was no way to ask it what was wrong. Since the software update it has not done this, knock on wood.

The manual, btw, also doesn't mention this: If you do reset it via 4 second power button press, it does not go catatonic forever. It just sits there for 30+ seconds with all lights on and unresponsive. But then it does finish the reset. I'd previously run out of patience and unplugged it by then.

If you do RTFM you'll find that most of the features, e.g. how much rinse aid to dispense, are available through the machine's UI through deeply unintuitive keystroke sequences. But not all of them (like the mentioned delayed start).

I don't use the machine all that much, so a 20+ year lifetime is possible. Will the app and cloud still function then? I'd like to think yes - German companies are very customer service oriented. But we'll see. Whether the machine lasts that long and whether the app/cloud lasts that long. Keep in mind if you need the cloud to connect the app, you may have to do that every time you change phones.

One "feature" that this one has... with a 3:15h wash time (on the "auto" setting) it keeps things wet for so long that, say, rice starch comes off perfectly. On the previous, old, dishwasher it just got baked on really well by the hot dry cycle. Of course that dishwasher only took an hour, so you could run mutliple loads at the end of a big dinner evening. Win some, lose some.

I am genuinely worried that when I am old there won't be anything that I could buy that would not be an enshittified device... until them I am going to keep hoarding what I can that would outlast my life.

I have an LG washing machine whose old app is no longer around, and the new app doesn't work with my model.

The enshittification continues...

So this is what late stage capitalism looks like.

Welcome to DaaS. Dishwashing as a Service.

Fucking hell. Yeah, this 100%.

I'll go even further:

STOP PUTTING FIRMWARE IN THINGS THAT DON'T NEED FIRMWARE.

This is very stereotypical Hacker News blog post.

The only thing is, you know you can, like, buy a dishwasher that doesn't connect to Wifi?

At this point some things are better with bluetooth/wifi. The laundry machine in my building connects via Bluetooth to an app and I can pay for my laundry using it. Do you realize how much better that is than having to go to the bank every few weeks (during work because of course the bank hours are 10-4 these days), get a bunch of quarters, and use them to wash my clothing?

I guess the point is there's more nuance to the HN kneejerk reaction to "Internet of things bad" - some things are easier, some things are dumb marketing gimmicks that quickly die off. Ultimately the market sorts itself out. If people don't want to use an app for their dishwasher, manufacturers will stop making them. Remember 3D TVs?

Once the manufacturer decides to add remote controls, its not clear to me a better solution currently exists.

AFAIK Android gives you some freedom wrt notifications, but Apple demands all notifications go through a service.

This is all before we talk about the support nightmare of average people not understanding why they can't connect to their dishwasher when away from home, or what the proper security model should be.

While it's utterly true these features will simply get abandoned by the manufacturer, people seem to discount how hard (read: expensive) it is to develop local-first software, especially the one you want to just work with a mobile app that might or might not be on the same local network or subnet (try explaining that bit to your regular Bosch customer).

Since we are, ultimately, such a minority, I am sure that not even returning the product would make the manufacturer understand that this is — really — unacceptable. The only way we can get this "fixed" is by mandating open APIs for local use by regulators, when we'll see the proliferation of custom apps.