Lemmy.world needs an internet-of-shit community. This could be a solid first contribution.
It might fall into the remit of @enshittification@lemmy.world
That links to a user for me.
Web link is https://lemmy.world/c/enshittification
Community link: !enshittification@lemmy.world
For those of us on Android, can’t we download the old APK which still talks Bluetooth and just never interact with the web/wifi for these?
The wifi ones work with Home Assistant so you won’t lose remote features. The bad news is you have to run home assistant and set it up.
As for the BT only version you need more work and a BT proxy. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/anova-ble-control-via-ble-proxy/550295
The original models will. While Home assistant has an Anova integration, it is cloud dependent and it’s the cloud that will discontinue support. As I understand it.
Local control uses a Bluetooth bridge which I guess is my next project.
BT Proxy Bridges are super easy to make. Just flash a esp32 with the premade package and power it. I have one on every room of my house just so whatever I have will just work everywhere.
Yup! I have the stuff, just haven’t gotten around to flashing one yet. Working on a wind meter at the moment.
This is lemmy and so I understand it but flashing an esp32 is not super easy for 99.9% of the population.
Oof, you too with the enshittificafion and planned obsolescence, Anova?
I have never bought an appliance or physical product that requires an app to use, and I never will until our society has deteriorated to the the point where there is no alternative to that in order to get by in it. It’s almost at that point already with smartphones but for now it’s still possible to get by without one.
Translation:
“Fuck you for not replacing your perfectly fine and still working 10 year old machine and making our line go up more. We’re gonna do our best to brick it because we want all of your money.”
Fuck capitalism. I will (and have been) doing my absolute to avoid buying any kind of physical device that requires an app to function
I mean it is shitty still, but people with an old device and an account already are unaffected, plus the old devices like the one I have is completely operable offline. I’ve not connected it to WiFi except when I first got it to check the app out.
I will (and have been) doing my absolute to avoid buying any kind of physical device that requires an app to function
Same. It’s becoming more difficult every day.
And that’s so sad. There are a lot of (mainly Elderly people) who don’t even have a smartphone who now often can’t use the most basic stuff necessary because it needs an app.
A lot of this stuff is only useful if you have money, anyway. And poverty rates among the elderly have been climbing since the Housing Crash of '08
I’ve said this before, I’m going to say it again: people with money spend it to save time.
Managing 2FA, software updates, account signin, device pairing, billing, privacy policy updates, cookie notices… This shit does not save people time. It does the complete opposite.
These products are not built for consumers. These products are purely anticompetitive schemes, propping up crappy business models, trying to cash in on the data harvesting gold rush.
These products are not built for consumers.
they’re often built for investors. they are feasible enough products that some people will even buy them, so you get investors. then, the thing is always just “one more issue we need to fix” away from “mass adoption”, “for real this time”… to keep milking the investors as long as possible.
I’ve been screaming this at the top of my lungs for 20 years, and oh my god the “I told you so”'s I get to say now feel SO good.
i mean, I don’t have any friends anymore, so mostly im just calling up people who hate me now and saying “I told you so”, but, like I DID, so, worth.
I mean, not, like, ‘worth’ in the sense that anything in my life works or wasn’t torn apart by my adherence to materialism and avoidance of dark patterns, but, like, you know, feels good for a few minutes when they haven’t changed their number.
Yeah, I need to start being better about this. It’s a shame because I bought my joule sous vide because I like the simplicity and ability to monitor and program it remotely (helpful when cooking for 5-6h). App stopped working properly and now they’ve been purchased by breville and if I want to use it I need to switch and I’m guessing it won’t be long before they start to drop functionallity or require some sort of subscription. There are things like this where the app is much more than a gimmick. But it sucks to have some company pulling the strings of what you can or can’t do with your own hardware.
water+heat proofing is hard, or I’d suggest a DIY solution.
if I see something requires an app, no matter how good it is otherwise. the product is dead to me. I know it is, effectively, going to break within a year or two.
I have one of these, and I use it just fine without an app fwiw
you never know for sure until you try though, so if it requires an app, it’s dead to me and I don’t trust anything else the company makes.
if it has an API i get very wet very fast.
About two phone changes ago I never reinstalled the anova app.
It’s like pressing the buttons on top of the cooker with extra steps.
yeah there are apps I want on my phone, but if anything says ‘there is an app’ I’m instantly averse.
even the things I do want phone apps for, I have to browse on fdroid because default options are all terrible. basic shit like file browsers and media players in commercial OS’s are just, like, vile and do not function. even if I didn’t care about the endoscopes they try to snake up every orifice, they are deliberately nonfunctional.
That’s fair, but the point I was trying to make was that I have tried and, for the one I’ve got at least, the app isn’t required. I’m not trying to defend them or anything, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
Tbh I’m kinda glad it doesn’t have an API, because I’d end up wasting a lot of time playing with it haha.
see, if it had an API, I could integrate it into an open smart home app, and it would be cool as FUCK.
I’m getting that same way.
Currently trying to chase down some automatic sun shades that don’t need an app to do time-based cycles. Shouldn’t be this hard, but every band wants you to use absolute garbage apps.
Imagine buying a devices that makes you install a program on a device you have to keep on you at all times and which probably contains all of your personal and financial information.
Like 98% of the human race are absolute fucking morons.
Think about it after 10 years either the app is not supported by your operating system or their server is offline.
I need to gadget that’s works with flip of switch and has all the functions offline even after 10 years.
If people don’t understand this facts they are morons.
You wouldn’t download a sous vide
My new microwave rotates for free!!. The 9 dollar MW subscription gets me 500W, the 15 dollar gets me 1500W and with the $30 monthly subscription I can get 3000W! It’s wonderful!
Oh ffs… This is the one I have…
And, you know what? The firmware sucks.
You can’t even connect to wifi if you have two AP’s with the same name (which is literally everyone).
I haven’t even installed the app in ages because it’s a PITA and has never worked 100%.
But, they can guarantee my next one won’t be an anova again. There are much cheaper alternatives now
I’d recommend anova brand
Oi bruv, it’s anova kitchin appluiance asking for moy woyfoy passwood.
Damn autocorrect was fighting me on every word lol
Did you read the article?
I haven’t tested the cheaper Amazon ones. They probably don’t have Bluetooth but they probably work the same.
But the wifi on my ANOVA has sucked since the beginning. I’ve never really been able to use it. No way I’m paying a subscription fee for something that should have worked since the beginning and still barely works. And bluetooth is pointless because I can’t start cooking when I drive home
In fact, I should have returned it given that it is normal for houses to have multiple wifi access points
I suspect that maybe the cheaper units which hit the market is maybe now why they’re struggling
ah they were making a nice and lame pun (anova brand == another brand)
I will never throw a brick through the headquarters of Anova, nor would I advocate for others doing it.
someone can just make a cracked version people can sideload
This is the absolute worst possible way for me to first hear about a product and company that I would have otherwise been interested in
Same. I’ve been thinking of replacing the cheap immersion circulator we have, and was going to go with Anova. This blatant enshittification is enough to make me look elsewhere.
I’ve had one for years, use it often and honestly didn’t know it had an app until today.
Fair point. I just don’t like the move, and don’t want to support a company doing it. Even putting that aside, it really makes me worried that they’re at the point that they’re trying to ride on their reputation while increasing profit margins. It makes me think that, if I buy their newer models, they’re more likely to cheap out but charge more.
I personally think it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to eventually start charging for a service they provide that costs them money to provide. They might bakenin some number of years into the product price, but they can’t keep providing the service for free forever.
It seems like something that should be expected if we do want certain services to be provided and maintained. Heck, I also think that offering a subscription is better than the usual alternative, which is that the company just shuts the service down.
However, the way this is done is almost always slimy and shitty and likely is only going to get solved by regulation.
- It’s incredibly rare that IOT devices NEED cloud integration. Most of the time it really SHOULD just be local-only, or have a local option.
- If they are going to start charging for something to continue to work, unless there was already an explicit agreement that - and when - this would happen, they need to provide an alternative.
- Either documentation or open software for how an alternate cloud - including local - could be used instead.
- That info really should be mandatory to be made available beforehand in case the company shuts down.
- The subscription fee needs to be reasonable.
- Personally, I think $24/year is still far too much, but it’s still WAY more reasonable than some I’ve seen.
Should be a no-brainer.
It’s all pure CEO bullshit though, and none of it is real.
It doesn’t cost money to send a Bluetooth signal from your phone to a sous vide. Maybe the WiFi server costs money but it’s their own fault for adding stupid functionality that phones home.
I’ve got one of these and I’m prepared to bet money that almost all of their server costs come down to every recipe in the app just being a link to a web page with lots of photos. https://recipes.anovaculinary.com/
People who made accounts before they start charging will be grandfathered in for free.
OK, cool, that’s also better than normal.
Until that changes, or they shut it down.
Edit: ah, I missed that in the article and everything.
Thing is they needed to factor this j to the cost of selling the device.
It basically costs them nothing to ru the service for this device. If they failed to calculate that as part of the sale price, that’s not the consumers fault.
Part of the problem comes when companies go out of their way to provide a service on their end that could be covered reasonably easily on the consumer’s side of things. Why put a few cents worth of storage in a device and make it locally accessible when you can make it cloud-connected and hosted to turn it into a revenue stream?
Another example, GM has had OnStar for ages. It does the same things your cell phone does, so it’s hard to justify the subscription. Plus Android Auto/Car Play works really well and relies on something you update more often. So naturally, GM revamped their infotainment to do the things you’d have your phone do and got rid of Android Auto/Car Play.
I wish people would stop threatening companies switching to subscription that they’ll lose business. The c-suite know they’ll lose much of the current customer base. They’re banking on the data telling them that the market acceptance of their product is gaining traction with new customers.
That will float them until they tell grandfathered users to go screw themselves and will face all sorts of new charges to use their app as previously established.
This is what happens when you have companies run by MBAs and lawyers. They respond to the data, and as long as the data says any negative responses can be overcome in some other way, they’ll do it. They don’t care about their clientele (or their employees for that matter). They care about the extra millions of dollars they were promised for the degrees they paid for.
Start finding alternate solutions to any product that connects to the internet. Then they can’t spy on you or handcuff a sub fee to their product.
