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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
I will never throw a brick through the headquarters of Anova, nor would I advocate for others doing it.
I have one of their’s that can connect to your phone. It’s not needed, it just adds extra cook book functions. It even hosts it so you can control the sous vide when you’re not at home, almost like a reverse proxy.
But yea the physical buttons work fine without the app.
What I like about having the Bluetooth connection to the app, is mostly just to see when the water has come up to temperature.
But that was apparently too much to ask, since it says that they are also removing the Bluetooth functionality from the app…
My car works fine without a seat warmer, but if you sold it to me as part of the car then later it started charging me a subscription I’d be pretty pissed.
Yeah, I barely use the app, but this is a bullshit anti-consumer move that leaves me with zero reason to trust the company going forward.
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.
You wouldn’t download a sous vide
I have two Anova cookers and have never needed the app fwiw
I honestly didn’t know there was an app and use mine a few times a month.
You know, This kind of shit happens so frequently anymore that if you’re dumb enough to buy things that, for absolutely no reason, requires an internet connection and/or an app… Then you deserve what you get.
It’s sometimes hard to find, I needed a new stove, all the ones I could afford and that had what we needed had a fucking internet connection. I fucking hate it.
Are you shopping at best buy?
No, home depot.
Find a scratch and dent place near you. Thats pretty much where I get all my appliances. Often the cosmetic issues are not even noticable, and if they are, they are often in a place that you wont see since they’ll be hidden by cabinets or what have you.
I’m not being sarcastic or attacking or anything, but I find that hard to believe. I spent 2 minutes before posting this looking at ranges and ovens (I dont know if you’re talking about a complete stove unit (burners on top of an oven in a self contained stand alone package) or the oven unit that mounts into a wall, so I looked at both in that time) and I found tons that were cheap (well, cheap as far as these devices ago at least) and none of them had smart connectivity.
It wasnt until I was getting into the high cost items that were $5000+ that smart stuff started appearing.
I wish! The entire range is what we needed, had to be propane compatible, it was around 1k, at home depot. I genuinely try to avoid IoT bull shit.
Almost all ranges are propane compatible but will require the effort of installing the (included) propane conversion kit. The exception is Frigidaire, where the kit has to be purchased separately.
FYI, most of Whirlpool’s range lineup (including Amana, Maytag and the non-“Pro” KitchenAid models), all of Frigidaire’s range lineup, most of GE’s base line range lineup (not Profile or Café) do not have Wi-Fi capability. It’s mostly Samsung and LG pathologically putting connectivity into everything they make.
What features did you need that you couldn’t avoid connectivity? I just queried my own product database and came up with 202 models that are LP compatible without purchase of a kit and do not have Wi-Fi capability. 261 if you’re willing to countenance Frigidaire. And even among most of those that do have connectivity (KitchenAid’s “Pro” models being an irritating exception) you don’t need to connect to Wi-Fi or use the app for any functionality of the appliance; it’s just an extra.
Username checks out
Yes let’s make this the consumers’ fault, what with their limitless power in this dystopian fuckscape
“Its not my fault that I bought for $$$Texas more than a normal product and created the market for it, its their fault for making it available for me to choose to buy!”
Gross oversimplification of a complex issue by a corpo bootlicker? Color me shocked…
They control the market, idiot. As well as the regulatory mechanisms for it.
Yes, because a corpo bootlicker is gonna tell you to stop buying their overpriced crap and creating a market for it
Cause corpo bootlickers are notorious for wanting to harm the companies that do stupid and/or bad
Fucking galaxy brain over here, thinking hes a genius cause hes a literal parrot repeating tidbits of what other people said without any consideration for thought or context.
You can’t keep throwing money at these awful companies, buying these awful products, and expect them to fucking stop. at some point you’re gonna have to fucking admit you’re gonna have to make a sacrifice and actually fucking speak with your wallet.
There there, you are very smart, now piss off
It is utterly bullshit. But is the app required for using the device?
Also
The subscription fee will only apply to people who make an account after August 21. Those who downloaded the app and made an account before August 21 won’t have to pay. But everyone will have to make an account; some people have been using the app without one until now
I have one and I can use it without the app
Better make an account in the next 5 days
You can set the temperature and the cook time on the device without having the app at all. The biggest benefit of the app is that you get a notice when the water is to temperature, which for certain more sensitive foods is needed to put the food in. (If you’re doing a 24 hour slow cook, it’s not really needed, but if you’re trying to do something with more precise cooking lengths, you don’t want the variance of starting water temp affecting how long the food is in the bath.
Friendly reminder for others that you can setup this quite easily with home assistant and conditional notification alerts. I do it with my govee. Open. Source. Everything.
Is there a bridge? I’d definitely be interested in that.
Just need to configure Bluetooth and the govee integration.
I looked into that and you need to build a Bluetooth bridge out of a ESP32. Pretty easy once you have the dev platform set up, but not for your average Joe.
There is an anova integration, but depends on their cloud service. When they stop supporting old devices, they will no longer function.
That’s what I understand anyway.
So it’s not as bad as it seems, at least.
Except, prior to this announcement, there was apparently another statement from Anova that you can’t control the first gen ones.
the announcement follows an Anova statement saying it will no longer let users remotely control their kitchen gadgets via Bluetooth starting on September 28, 2025.
Unless these people paid a premium for this kind of “smart” device vs. the cost of a basic version.
I think the bigger issue is that they’re bricking all support for the oldest models, trying to force customers to abandon a fully functional device just because they want more money.
The app subscription fee is obnoxious as all get out, but punishing your oldest customers for your profit margins is what’s a bit infuriating.
At least, imo.
Honestly, after a decade of keeping compatibility and stuff, and that the sous vide still works fine without the apk, I don’t really see this as much of a big deal. An apk for a sous vide is nearly useless, anyhow. What are you going to do with it?
It’s more about the principle. Why is it ok for a manufacturer to remotely disable a feature that was bought & paid for by a decades worth of customers?
Now that they’ve done it once, what’s stopping future attempts to gin up higher profits using the same tactics?
I don’t think anyone here is angry enough to go all Kid Rock on their Sous Vides, but I do think there are plenty who will look at a different brand when it is time for a replacement.
Well they’re on v3 now and this ends the version 1, so I doubt they’ve sold the v1 for the past 5 years or so, but again, it’s not an apk that you need to use it. If it were a device like a garage door opener that let’s you open/close or see when the door is opened or closed I’d be bitching up a storm. Same if it were like a door deadbolt to lock/unlock your front door. But a water cooker? What do you need the apk for? It couldn’t functionally do anything over bluetooth to be of any help.
Would you buy a refrigerator from a manufacturer that wanted to make the ice maker a subscription service out of nowhere?
I get that the app isn’t a requirement for the device, but neither is an ice maker required for a refrigerator to function as designed.
They’re both features advertised as part of the original purchase price. Why does one get an expiration date out of the blue?
The people who are likely to be losing Bluetooth functionality are also the most likely to be from the original kickstarter batch.
Even if some-many of them have already upgraded to a newer model, that’s still one hell of a statement to make to your original backers.
Sounds like it’s time for an open sauce alternative.
Ten years before they pulled this. Hopefully the cookers can be used without the app.
The funniest thing about this is a anovas app is practically f****** useless.
It has maybe two thirds of the things I ever want to cook in it. I end up looking times and temperatures up on the internet anyway. And it’s maximum utility is to set the temperature and timer which you can do from the unit itself easily. Honestly more easily.
Lame move. That being said, I never use the app. It’s very easy to set the temperature without it.
I bet the app requires cloud hosting for it to run, and its starting to eat away at the profits they made.
If it needs nothing but bluetooth, then this a pure money grab.
It use to operate only off of Bluetooth, & then they added single band WiFi. They just added dual band WiFi as a new feature & are now removing Bluetooth functionality completely.
Absolutely a cash grab.
Usually, if it needs cloud hosting, it’s because they’re collecting your data. That presumably is a revenue stream for them.
I have one of these, and I haven’t touched the app. Works perfectly fine without it.
2$/month for a fucking thermostat…
Cost or no cost, IoT should not be able to brick devices on the whim - or unexpected dissolution - of a faceless corporation.
Unfortunately too many people are trusting of monolithic entities which promise the moon and then decide what they really meant was “bend over”.
I may be channelling a bit of Louis Rossman here.
That said, the other comments here suggest that the device in question still has all features when accessed from the front panel, which is a step up from a lot of other IoT behaviour. Owners who don’t want to pay for the app should still disconnect it from any connectivity and keep it that way just in case the manufacturer decides to remove that functionality as well.
And if it stops working altogether without network connectivity, take the L and maybe mail it back to the company’s head office with no return address. Let them deal with the e-waste.
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.
This is lemmy and so I understand it but flashing an esp32 is not super easy for 99.9% of the population.
Yup! I have the stuff, just haven’t gotten around to flashing one yet. Working on a wind meter at the moment.
