What help is a temperature alarm if you are away. A fridge is used daily, surely you'll notice if the temperature is not what it's supposed to be.
Well yeah duh if the door was shut properly every time fridges wouldn't need door or temperature alarms at all (most have an audible one already). But it's called an alarm for a reason, sometimes shit goes wrong and it's handy to know before all the food has been at room temperature all day. We had a freezer door pop open overnight once, because one of the drawers wasn't quite shut properly... in 40+ years of interacting with a fridge/freezer, yes occasionally mistakes are made
I also have friends and family and at least one will be aware and be willing to go to the house if necessary when we are away (only happened once when our intruder alarm went off for no apparent reason) and my neighbours would also pop in if I was at work.
Seriously your response showed such a lack of thinking of real world situations and usage I can only assume you work for the Google UI team or something
Well, our parents, and for the younger, our grandparents too, and us, have managed to do fine for like 60+ years of using fridges without an fridge door alarm.
Fun fact: for an alarm for when you are away for days, and you want to know if the fridge power went off and back on in between, you can freeze a jar of water in your freezer, put a coin on top, and leave it there.
If you find the coin in the bottom of the jar at some point, the fridge power/temperature has been off for a while.
Nah, rather it's the comparison that is off.
Without cars, for example, transportation was slow and constrainted, affecting commerce, work, and lots of other things. Whether good or bad (since there are negatives too) the introduction of the car was a huge change.
Network connected fridges? The incovenience they solve is so rare and small that most people don't give a damn about, not to mention the incovenience from their assorted crappy controls, the privacy issues, and other such factors, can be even higher and more constant.
Might as well compare the invention of fire with the Shake Weight.
You make the perfect argument for a physical alarm. I agree, that makes perfect sense, and is a cheap addition that significantly improves quality of life.
Will you be woken up by a midnight phone notification that the fridge is open? I tend to sleep stuff like that.
Does a once in 40 years mistake justify carrying an app around that does god knows what else, and the extra expense and hassle of a fridge that might or might not spy on you?
Do we need to therefore instrument our stoves, ovens, baths and basins to insulate ourselves from the other common domestic nightmare scenarios?
Also, you talk about intruder alarms? I thought we were talking about "smart" wifi connected fridges? That's a completely different scenario, and I fully agree with you. I pay a security company to monitor my alarm, and they visit my house within 5 minutes of the alarm triggering. But my fridge can stay as dumb as it gets, thanks. Literally the only thing its allowed to do is go brrr.
>Do we need to therefore instrument our stoves, ovens, baths and basins to insulate ourselves from the other common domestic nightmare scenarios?
Exactly. There are a lot of things that could go wrong in daily life.
Let's say you are sleeping and one of the bed slats bends or breaks (this has actually happened to me). It's messy, especially because you wake up and putting the bed slat back is not easy. So what do you do? You either ignore the fact it may happen, or you say "well if it does happen, I guess I'll sleep on the couch or something". No one that I know, even among the most "smart home" obsessed people, has a bed which automatically beeps or sends a push notification if the slats are about to break.
Ok, now you wake up and nothing bad happened so far. You have breakfast (maybe you have a smart fridge which ensures you're not running out of yogurt or whatever). Then you go dress yourself. But then you realize your favorite shirt has a stain you didn't notice. Do you have a drawer that automatically beeps if your clothes have stains? Probably not. You either remember to watch closely your clothes and wash them properly, or say "whatever, I'll go with something else and I'll wash that later".
And so on. Life is full of minor inconveniences. That doesn't mean you should necessarily fill your life with sensors and beepers for every possible scenario. I might be getting too philosophical, but part of life is also becoming aware that things happen and you can't always be 100% safe in any possible scenario.
People are taking this waaaayyyy out of context. I said it was handy. I didn't say it was a must feature or even one that make me choose a particular model or pay more for. But the fact my current fridge/freezer does it is a nice handy extra... I already have a billion things that spy on me, gather data so no I'm not particularly worried about what my fridge knows about me, the cameras all over the country I cannot avoid know far more already.
Laughed out loud. This is gold.
(of course, where they're really useful is as office fridges, when the perpetrator wanders off oblivious but someone else gets driven mad by the just-barely-audible-beeping and hunts it down...)
It's not the end of the world if some stuff inside goes bad. Again, not worth making it talk to the internet.
Your examples aren’t really great for that reason.
And sure that you’d notice before anyone consumed unsafe food?
