This is definitely on the horizon and future generations won’t even be aware of a time when you didn’t pay a subscription for every aspect of life. (TikTok screencap)
This is definitely on the horizon and future generations won’t even be aware of a time when you didn’t pay a subscription for every aspect of life. (TikTok screencap)
Smart fridges don’t even improve storing food.
I won’t buy a smart fridge until they can play Tetris with the food inside.
We’ve seen how this goes: Eventually if you need a new fridge, you won’t have a choice.
It’s just like smart TVs.
Smart tvs aren’t as bad of a concept as smart fridges. A smart TV is better at being a TV than it otherwise would be, purely because it is smart. A fridge doesn’t have that. There is no way that a fridge can be better at being a fridge by being smart.
The one smart feature I could see useful on a fridge would be for it to send me some sort of notification if the door is left open. Perhaps it could also send a notification if the temperature inside gets too warm (or too cold) - which assuming the door is shut would probably mean the fridge is broken.
With that said, I’m perfectly happy with a dumb box that gets cold inside and has a simple electro-mechanical switch to turn the light on when the door is opened.
I think that depends on what you want from your TV. If you just want it to have a video input to stream stuff from somewhere else, smart TVs are typically worse because they take more time to boot up.
More time to boot up than a fridge which is booted up all the time?
Also, they spy on you, can be bricked by the manufacturer, can therefore be used to extort money from you after buying it (depending on your country’s laws) and lock you into one ecosystem. The profit margin off of that is so high that “smart” TVs are always much cheaper than normal TVs, even with development costs and higher hardware costs. So you are the product.
And if you actually want to stream Netsucks or smth, plugging in your Laptop where you’re already logged in is much more convenient than using a native app on the TV. And ofc you don’t have to use some broken, outdated YouTube unshittifier that Google keeps breaking on there, you can just use piped/invidious in your Laptops/Mini-PCs browser. Also, not having any apps on a fucking TV means not requiring Network access, so no spying, updating etc. anyway.
Your comment represents the disconnect with most consumers and maybe it’s why you can’t see the reason most people don’t fight back against smart tvs.
First, just because a smart TV “can” be bricked by a manufacturer does not mean they all deliberately do so or use that as a means to extort you. If my tv bricked because of an update, and wasn’t remedied for free by the manufacturer, guess which maker I’m not buying from for my next tv? Not to mention the lawsuits.
Next, I’m struggling to figure how connecting a laptop to a tv is more convenient than a built in app. I have done every type of TV setup but no extra devices has always been a lot simpler than more devices.
I completely understand your concerns of privacy and a YouTube app that can’t block ads, but let’s not pretend that it’s all bad news.
It is infinitely more convenient for me.
Having to navigate through an obtuse UI just to open an app, then search with an on-screen keyboard by moving the cursor with a D-pad on the remote is just awful. Besides, a lot of smart TVs don’t allow you to sideload which forces you into either ads or subscriptions for a lot of things.
I have my desktop sitting next to the TV, already plugged in, so when I want to watch something I just turn the TV on, search for whatever I need on definitely legal website, download it in a definitely legal way, open mpv with subs and start watching.
It’s bricked as soon as a company is bought up, and the new company has no interest in continuing support or wants customers to buy a new or their product. The lawsuits are non existent, because due to forced arbitration clauses present in almost all contracts today, you cannot sue. The most prominent, recent example being Disney not allowing a customer to sue them for a death in their park, because the dead person has used a free trial of Disney+ and therefore agreed to forced arbitration. Video by Louis Rossmann. (Generally, Louis covers a lot of such cases and maintains a wiki where the cases and companies are collected.) Also, there’s no way to just buy from another manufacturer and be happy, because it’s all of them. And the shareholders, which are the only ones that are relevant for what a company does, do not care if they damage the reputation and run the company into the ground long-term, as long as the numbers went up quickly (from forcing subscriptions, ads and/or tracking onto customers, or discontinuing a product in favor of another one. With a normal TV, you now have an outdated but working product, as neither HDMI, cable TV nor satellite will randomly change or need updates. Something connecting to the internet and requiring permanent security updates for apps and OS does. So either you will suddenly lose most functionality, the manufacturer (or rather, new owner) sees this as a good way to justify just bricking it or the new owners will first implement forced arbitration if not present already (which you have to accept, otherwise you can’t use the product), force said subs/ads/tracking, then rugpull and close the manufacturer. Good luck suing against suing against a company that does not exist anymore, and disallows you to sue.
Paid a few million for a company, got that worth in trained workers, customers to scam and already collected data, and got many more millions from implementing said stuff. Bottomline: “Earned” many, many millions. Bonus: There’s a good chance the consumer buys a new TV from you, because they don’t know who fucked them.
All of those things are real cases, more or less common, documented in thousands of videos of Louis.
Most people I’ve met have streaming services set up on their laptop already. From start to finish, plugging in your Laptop and typing soap2day.pe or netflix.com is much easier than connecting to wifi or ethernet, installing the app on the TV, and logging in. Just to disover that streaming service XY is not available on the TV due to an old OS, license issues, compatibility issues (as eg. Netflix has special requirements, such as x86_64 and not ARM and RISCV for >720p and playing in general, iirc). On your laptop (or whatever), everything’s already set up.
That is, if you have a laptop or similar of course.
That is a wall of text sir.
I am aware of Loius Rossman and am a fan of his work. I am also aware of the arguments you are making and your Disney example.
But there is a difference between the theoretical and what happens in practice.
Name one major TV manufacturer that was sold off or went out of business and their TV was bricked because of it.
Do any of the TVs even force you to update if you don’t want to? I am not aware of any case but it’s possible. I’ve stopped updating my tv for over a year without issue.
You think all major corporations don’t care about image or branding and are only interested in the short term, but aside from forced ads none of the other issues came to fruition because customer feedback IS important to them. Find me a source of these issues related to Sony, Samsung, LG, or any other major TV brand.
Also your explanation of TV vs laptop… why is it that you are comparing an already set up laptop with saved credentials to an out of box experience on the TV? If I spent the initial time to setup the network, install a streaming app and log in once, I’m all set and no longer have to worry about connecting cables or another device.
The concern of whether the built in apps work well is valid, but both the app maker and manufacturer have a vested interest that it does.
For reference my LG TV is over 10 years old and running strong. It’s got Netflix Disney Amazon Plex and Jellyfin all working without issue. Aside from the ad that sometimes shows up when changing input, there is nothing to complain about. I have also connected a laptop for gaming and viewing files and have nothing against it, but a no laptop setup is absolutely better and it’s crazy to not at least acknowledge it.
A true smart fridge would be great.
An actual smart fridge would do things like scan everything you put in it, so you’d know that you had leftover lasagne from 4 days ago that was about to go bad. It would know its full contents, and where they were (like that you had some kimchi on the 4th shelf in the back), and when they were going to expire. And it would do it without you having to change how you used the fridge, like stopping to carefully scan everything you put in or took out. AFAIK some smart fridges do some of that, but not all.
It’s all about marketing. “This smart fridge uses quantum AI technology to do neural scans of the contents of your fridge, allowing it to adjust the temperature and humidity perfectly for your food, making it crisp and moist!”
That fridge competes with a dumb fridge from a budget brand that costs 200 to 300 bucks. You can even get self-defrosting ones at that price point.
Unlike TVs, which need to display content, fridges can work just fine when they’re just a heat pump, a thermostat, a light bulb, and an insulated box (and optionally also a fan and a heating element). The biggest technical difference between a cheap fridge today and one from the 50s is in materials and using an LED bulb.
I mean, smart fridge COULD be scanning its contents and adjusting the cooling intensity based on that. My dumb fridge always freezes vegetables because even when set to lowest setting the cooling is too much.
But corpos would rathed stuff ads everywhere instead of making actually usefull upgrades.
Looks around at where product design is usually heading
I mean, a smart fridge COULD be scanning it’s contents and adjust the displayed ads and sold data about you based on that.
If the lowest setting freezes your food, turn it up.
Yes, and use the contents it has scanned to sell to advertisers.
Lettuce is the only food that can be simultaneously crisp and moist
What about onions?
You keep moist onions in your refrigerator?
Sometimes I only need half an onion, and the rest goes in the fridge
Nope. A TV’s sole job is to shit photons into my eyes. I have different appliances to tell it which photons those should be.
They could be in theory. But they are designed to bring a lot of terrible interface choices into the mix, so a basic screen where you just pick the input source and delegate the “smart” parts to something you control can end up being more comfortable.
And cars.
Indeedy.
And everyone needs a new fridge every 3-5 years now because they’re all pieces of shit.
Nah, fridges are simple enough that I guarantee it’s trivial to rip all the smart bits out and still have a functioning fridge. Or just buy and old one, my grandparents still have their fridge from like 1970s and it still works.
Unless there begins to exist a new business based around lobotomizing smart devices.
Unfortunately, even fixing a smart fridge without the manufacturer’s consent is a crime punishable with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and possibly prison time.
Manufacturers will add “security features”, then sue the new lobotomizer business for tampering with DRM
And so the lobotomizers cite right-to-repair laws
What are those? It takes years to make the smallest iota of progress with right to repair.
In the US, maybe
Of course. Europe is smarter than that.
Don’t you do that every time you fill it?