Anthony B,Things I want from a kettle: make water hot.
Things I do not want from a kettle: an engaging interactive experience.
Things I do not want from a kettle: an engaging interactive experience.
Speaking as someone who was the father of a new born having to do the every 4 hour trip to the kitchen to boil the kettle and prepare formula, drop the previous bottle into boiling water, repeat. I had a system worked out. If the kettle had tried to offer my sleep addled brain witty bromides, well that kettle would be an ex fucking kettle and I'd be staring at the microwave going "you wanna start something, or will you just heat water and shut up?"
If I wanted to have a conversation with my home appliances, I would buy a fucking Furby. No one wants to have to deal with "the fridge can't get an Internet connection". It's a box that makes things cold.
Kettle: make water hot
Fridge: make things cold
Toaster: make bread hot
Oven: make many things hot
Dishwasher: make things clean
Lights: makes things visible
Rice Cooker: make rice hot and damp
None of these should require a fucking internet connection, generative (not actually) AI, or a fucking app.
modulux@swearyanthony Can't agree more, with one quibble.
A lot of this kit has touch screens now. Even when it's not connected to anything. I don't want an app, I want physical buttons, knobs, and so on. But for kit with touch screens, an app might be the only way I get to use the device (due to accessibility issues).
It's a weird world for sure, and I'd rather no app and no touch screen of course.
And I suppose for other accessibility considerations different from mine (I'm blind) other people might benefit from an app. The pity is that we don't have some kind of universal API for this and have to install weird per-device applications.
@modulux I like buttons with one exception that our toddler likes pushing buttons and I would very much like the way to have a toddler lockout
@swearyanthony Yep, some sort of lock system is good, maybe a difficult to move slider or a combo of buttons far apart that need to be pushed at the same time.
@modulux I mean our little tiny monster will sort out how to subvert it, but it might slow him down a little
@modulux a very dear friend of mine who's no longer with us tweeted "have been locked out of my lightbulbs, the future is great"
@swearyanthony Seriously, it's a mess. With most things one can get the right thing with some care, but for example induction stoves are almost always touch screen driven. Hard to get a TV that isn't "smart" and so on.
@modulux that's grimly interesting. I dont mean that dismissively, at all. It took me having a baby and a pram to start reporting all of the accessibility fails around our suburb, because I hadn't even noticed them
@modulux re TVs we didn't even realize our TV has physical controls until our toddler found them and he would turn the TV off and we spent weeks trying to find how he was able to do it
@modulux holy lack of affordances batman.
@swearyanthony Haha, they do touch everything, don't they? Of course so do I, pretty much the only way I can learn my environment. I'm sure it was a hassle for my parents.
HollieK@swearyanthony @modulux Toddlers will find the buttons on anything!