My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone.

That’s why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t?

I find that the anti-smart device brigade among tech enthusiasts is very detached from the reality of what consumers want. The general public does demand smart features and they want them to work well.

The sin here isn’t that the fridge is smart, the sin is that bad software was pushed out.

My particular refrigerator also has a purposefully limited set of features. You’ll notice that real luxury brands like Sub-Zero don’t pack their refrigerators with crazy feature lists and touch screens. Their smart apps are basic and focus on essentials like “door left open” or “change filter” notifications and remote temperature adjustment. They don’t have complicated features like craft cocktail ice and even basic stuff like water dispensing is an optional extra (since it’s assumed that luxury clients may have a separate dedicated reverse osmosis and sparkling water machine for that). They don’t push out frequent updates and they keep their smart functions as modular components since it’s assumed that the refrigerator will remain installed permanently for decades (e.g., you can add a newer control system with touch screen and WiFi to your older Sub-Zero fridge).

It would be nice if non-luxury brands followed some of these philosophies a little more.

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cesarb 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t?

...why do you need to change the fridge temperature remotely?

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Grombobulous 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I paid $11,000 for my luxury built-in refrigerator, I expect that functionality to exist since it’s trivial to implement.

I could implement that in a weekend on an ESP board.

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Boxxed an hour ago | parent | next [-]

By that logic there's a whole lot more useless crap it should do.

	▲	Grombobulous an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Would you buy a car that cost $50,000 without air conditioning even if you don’t need air conditioning? Do you think a $50,000 car that doesn’t have air conditioning is a good value?

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crtasm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When you had an offline fridge did you ever find yourself in a situation where remotely setting the temperature would have been useful?

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Grombobulous an hour ago | parent [-]

I’m away on vacation and weather reports say there might be a thunderstorm at my house with high probability of power outage, so maybe I lower the temperature setting to try and extend the life of the contents.

Kids/nanny/housekeeper changes the temperature against my wishes.

I’ve left the house for a long vacation with the fridge emptied and I’d like to change the temperature to consume less power while I’m gone, forgot to do it before I left.

And again it’s trivially simple functionality that costs almost no money or development effort to I implement.

	▲	epcoa 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> so maybe I lower the temperature setting to try and extend the life of the contents. Bullshit. The ideal refrigerator temperature is already close enough to freezing that any small adjustment you could make is unlikely to do any good. If this was actually a good idea then by your logic (similar to odd love for printer manufacturers) the all wise manufacturers would have already incorporated this into their “smart” fridges.

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CWuestefeld 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone. That’s why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t?

I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic, so I'll bite: why on Earth would you ever want to change the temperature settings of your fridge?

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Ensorceled an hour ago | parent [-]

Check out his comments in this thread, this guy appears to be a corporate apologist.

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kstrauser an hour ago | parent [-]

Check them out on other threads, too. I think he’s just a garden troll.

	▲	Grombobulous an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t really appreciate being assumed to be a troll just because I’m holding a contrary opinion. That’s very much against the guidelines of this site. I think if you are the type who is interested in digging up comment history you’ll find plenty of comments from me that show that I’m pretty much a regular person who has respectful conversations. I apologize if I didn’t follow the popular “corporation bad” narrative. Like, I do recognize that ink is grossly overpriced and all that. At the same time, I don’t really think we are held hostage by printer companies these days. I buy ink once a year or less and it’s not even a laser printer. It isn’t a significant expense or inconvenience.