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I will never buy anything Bosch again after reading this thread. What other reason could Bosch have for hiding this functionality behind a website and user acco

I will never buy anything Bosch again after reading this thread. What other reason could Bosch have for hiding this functionality behind a website and user account if not to monetize it down the line or worse, bring more of the functionality behind a paywall. We already saw what happened with HP charging to print and even the recent Chromecast outage where something that should be handled locally is pinging back to Google and then working.

kube-system 2y ago
I think this is annoying, but given that the basic functionality works, it personally wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me. I don't normally do anything fancy with the settings on my dishwasher, I just want it to wash the dishes. I'd rather have a dishwasher that puts delay and eco mode behind an app, than some shitty dishwasher that doesn't clean the dishes well on the "normal" setting.
- amiga386 2y ago
  This reminds me of the EU regulations, which not only: 1. _require_ dishwashers to have an Eco mode, not locked behind anything, but also 2. _require_ Eco mode to be the default. If you buy a dishwasher in the EU and turn it on, and press "start", it'll be on Eco mode, the mode that uses the least water/power. If you don't care about the dishwasher other than to turn it on, and it works for you, then everybody wins. If it doesn't wash as much as you'd like, or takes longer thank you'd like, you can still have all the other dishwasher modes (express, intensive, etc.). The whole point of the regulation is to make the default mode the most energy efficient. I find it absolutely crazy that a German company, when given free rein in the USA, would actually paywall Eco mode. It's just mind-boggling.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    That sounds annoying too. I want the default to be the one that does what I want it to do, clean a normal load of dishes, and do a good job at it. My dishwasher defaults to the last mode I set it to. > I find it absolutely crazy that a German company, when given free rein in the USA, would actually paywall Eco mode. It's just mind-boggling. ... they didn't do that. There is no paywall.
    - amiga386 2y ago
      Perhaps I misspoke, but needing a network connection, needing a smartphone, giving over your details, very likely getting marketing materials you didn't want via app notifications, or email, requiring to comply with terms of service, and at any time the company is free to rescind or change the offer, to me is "paywalling". You are paying out, giving them things of real value, over and above buying the device, and if you don't then they're blocking functionality. All the functionality should be in the device itself, and require no sign-up or ongoing relationship with the company to use it.
      - kube-system 2y ago
        It's annoying, but it's not a paywall. > All the functionality should be in the device itself, and require no sign-up or ongoing relationship with the company to use it. For a dishwasher yes, but I don't agree with that as a blanket statement. There are cloud connected devices that I really like. e.g. I like to run my Roomba on-demand after I leave my house, and I think that's an entirely reasonable use case. Many other devices are useful away from home as well, which would all require internet connectivity. e.g. security systems, cameras, etc.
        btc-landlord 2y ago
        [flagged]
        jenadine 2y ago
        > not a paywall You pay with your data
        kube-system 2y ago
        Nobody uses the word that way. You give HN the ability to use all user-contributed data. Nobody would say HN is paywalled.
        alpaca128 2y ago
  - madaxe_again 2y ago
    The weird thing about eco modes is that they often don’t use less water or power. I live off grid, and just as a function of my setup I know exactly what consumes what. My Bosch dishwasher, on a normal 70C dish cycle, uses about 4.5L of water and 1.6kWh. On eco mode, it uses 8L of water, and 1.8kWh. Takes twice as long though. Similar with my AEG washer - a 40 degree cotton wash uses marginally more water than a 40 degree eco wash, but less power - and is 25% quicker. Honestly, it’s not clear what the economy is supposed to be. Intensity of demand? Except on each appliance the heater runs at the same rated wattage when it’s heating - just different patterns of usage on eco mode, more off and on.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Is 70c normal? Wont that mess up plastic items?
      - account42 2y ago
        It's fine for anything rated to be "dishwasher safe" IME.
      - randallsquared 2y ago
        Yes, it's normal (should be above 65C, anyway). Yes, even "dishwasher-safe" plastic items often warp or discolor in a normal hot dishwashing cycle. I wouldn't put anything plastic or fragile in the dishwasher, but virtually everything in the kitchen is ceramic, glass, or stainless steel, so.
    - gambiting 2y ago
      Just as an anecdote - that's not my experience, and I have a smart power plug to measure it too. On my Bosch Series 6 dishwasher, Eco Mode comes consistently in at 1.2kWh per cycle, while the intensive 70C cycle is around 1.6kWh. I have no way of measuring water usage though, but in terms of energy the ECO mode is really the most efficient.
    - amiga386 2y ago
      That's a really weird thing. In the EU, not only is Eco mode mandatory, and must be the default mode, and you can't label any other mode "default" or "normal" to sway the consumer to use that instead... but it's also how the appliance's energy rating is calculated, and it's displayed prominently on every device sold. It would be madness for a company not to put their most efficient settings on Eco mode. https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/household-dishwashers_en https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2019.315.01.0267.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2019:315:TOC#d1e41-275-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:... You can also see there that they're tracking the effects of their regulations and measuring how much less electricity and water is used. The regulations also set minimum standards for cleaning, drying and energy usage so you can't sell products that look efficient but require everything washed twice, nor can you even include a resource hog mod. And it mandates the availability of spare parts for a certain number of years, and access to repair information, so you don't just junk the whole object. I can only imagine "Eco" mode being worse than other modes in some place where there's not good market regulation. I just checked my own dishwasher, and its Eco mode uses 9L of water and 0.83kWh per cycle. Other washing modes use 9-17L water and 0.9-1.5kWh per cycle... so it does conform to the regulations.
  - account42 2y ago
    Why would a German company apply feel-good but ultimately counter-productive regulation to customers where they don't have to?
    - amiga386 2y ago
      > counter-productive The opposite, actually. Productive. Millions of litres of water and terawatts of power saved per year. End users collectively saving €1.3 billion on water and electricity costs in 2020 (in comparison to them having standard dishwashers from 1990 before any eco targets were set) https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/household-dishwashers_en#paragraph_5838 https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/...
      - account42 2y ago
        Not shown: water wasted from pre-washing dishes or having to run multiple cycles because the new eco-modes don't do the job properly. Also from manually washing dishes because the dishwasher is blocked for longer (and even longer once you add the extended drying time required due to the lower temperatures).
        amiga386 2y ago
        Shown: the regulations actually set minimum cleaning and drying requirements, for precisely that reason - the equipment has to do the job properly. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2019.315.01.0267.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2019:315:TOC#d1e41-275-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:... It's almost as if they already thought this through when making the regulation.
        account42 2y ago
        Not shown: the EU cleaning requirements are inadequate in reality which is why dishwashers previously defaulted to higher-energy modes - because those modes are the ones that actually work reliably for users. It's almost like the regulations are ideologically motivated rather than having anything to do with reality.
hansvm 2y ago
> pinging back to Google and then working I still have a bricked Android phone from nonsense like that. If you: 1. Factory reset the phone while not logged in to the last Google account on the phone 2. Have the Google account invalidated (e.g., using an identity verification app on a temp noogler account, ...) You'll never be able to access the phone again. The "factory reset" maintains some internal state despite a scary message on the screen promising everything is deleted and asking if that's really what you want, and it'll require the last working password. Alright ... annoying, buggy (the fact that there are two factory resets and one doesn't reset the device is a problem; either fix or delete the broken one, or make the scary message scarier), but fine in my case. It checks that password against Google's servers though instead of the local hash, and it doesn't even matter if you know the password; the fact that the account is inactive prevents you from accessing the phone.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  That's an anti theft feature. Intended to make the phone useless to a thief. It doesn't work very well, thieves manage to get around it somehow (not so much with Apple's version) so it ends up annoying the users more than it does deter thieves. Apple is really really difficult about getting these unlocked. The carriers can't do it, you have to show them proof of purchase and have an enterprise support contract. With Google the carriers can just do it usually. I managed a fleet of mobiles at work for a while, this is how I know. It often happened that colleagues returned a phone without unlocking it.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    It is a very good thing that Apple is tough about it, given the high value of the devices, and how people carry them around in public. I very much want my devices to be useless to thieves.
    - powersnail 2y ago
      I want to know whether this actually deters thieves. Anecdotally, from what I heard, it seems that phone stealing is very much still a thing in areas with active pickpocketing.
sillysaurusx 2y ago
I mean, is Bosch the bad guy here or the salesperson? It sounds like they either lied or were incompetent. I guess maybe both are bad. Yesterday I tried to configure a friend’s wifi router after the speed was suspiciously slow. It forced me to ask them for their Spectrum login info (the same info they use to pay the bills, not the wifi info) which nobody remembered and I gave up. Apparently this is required according to https://www.reddit.com/r/Spectrum/s/3sLnHuWgEF https://www.reddit.com/r/Spectrum/s/3sLnHuWgEF So if we’re badmouthing companies that lock physical functionality behind a cloud, add Spectrum. Not that you’ll have much choice if they’re the only provider, but still. The more I think about it, the more I agree with you. What if you have someone house sitting? You really need to download the Bosch app to their phone just to use the same dishwashing routine that you usually do? Blah. Any alternatives to Bosch that don’t do this?
- kube-system 2y ago
  Cable company "Customer Premises Equipment" normally has provisioning capabilities built in, so that they can be controlled/reconfigured/reset from the upstream provider. You could probably call Spectrum and they can reset for you. The reason they do all of this is exactly because of the scenario you ran into: people are always forgetting their logins -- and back when modems/routers didn't have remote provisioning, they spent a lot of time and money sending technicians out to physically reset people's equipment.
- monksy 2y ago
  Mesh routers are requiring an app to configure them now. TPLink and Ubiquiti is a big violator of this. (Ubiquiti you can run a docker container as a controller... but still..)
  - rblatz 2y ago
    Ubiquiti is software defined networking, so it needs software to configure it.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    How is Ubiquiti a violator of this? You can run their Java software on anything or buy a cloud key. I use an old HP thin client. There’s a good app and a well maintained webpage. If you enjoy pain, most gear has a cli. I can’t think of a better way to offer the functionality in a way that works for so many customer segments.
onewheeltom 2y ago
My relatively new Bosch dishwasher has real buttons and an LED display. No wifi required
- edoceo 2y ago
  Could you post a model number or something?
- dorfsmay 2y ago
  I have button and LEDs, and it works fine without wifi for "basic functions", but for "advanced functions" like washer deep cleaning I would need to use their website.
- zargon 2y ago
  Looks like we got lucky. My unit is a couple years old and has physical buttons, a display, and no wifi. It's been discontinued. Looking at Bosch's site now, there are no models without wifi. The cheap ones (mine was in the "300 series") now lack a display, have touch buttons and require wifi.
- tchalla 2y ago
  You could have really helped everyone here by simply posting the model number in your original message itself.
  - account42 2y ago
    That would require gp to either know the model off-hand or be in a place where he can look it up which you don't know to be the case.
- gambiting 2y ago
  Same, my mum got a new Bosch Series 4 last year and it doesn't have wifi at all. Everything is on the control panel.
- smileybarry 2y ago
  I just bought one and yes, mine also comes with WiFi but it's 100% optional: all features are available in menus or physical buttons too. (Including the infamous rinse cycle the blog post mentions) It's a European model ("SMV4HAX48E", I'm in EMEA) so it might differ by markets.

kube-system 2y ago

I think this is annoying, but given that the basic functionality works, it personally wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me. I don't normally do anything fancy with the settings on my dishwasher, I just want it to wash the dishes. I'd rather have a dishwasher that puts delay and eco mode behind an app, than some shitty dishwasher that doesn't clean the dishes well on the "normal" setting.

amiga386 2y ago
This reminds me of the EU regulations, which not only: 1. _require_ dishwashers to have an Eco mode, not locked behind anything, but also 2. _require_ Eco mode to be the default. If you buy a dishwasher in the EU and turn it on, and press "start", it'll be on Eco mode, the mode that uses the least water/power. If you don't care about the dishwasher other than to turn it on, and it works for you, then everybody wins. If it doesn't wash as much as you'd like, or takes longer thank you'd like, you can still have all the other dishwasher modes (express, intensive, etc.). The whole point of the regulation is to make the default mode the most energy efficient. I find it absolutely crazy that a German company, when given free rein in the USA, would actually paywall Eco mode. It's just mind-boggling.
- kube-system 2y ago
  That sounds annoying too. I want the default to be the one that does what I want it to do, clean a normal load of dishes, and do a good job at it. My dishwasher defaults to the last mode I set it to. > I find it absolutely crazy that a German company, when given free rein in the USA, would actually paywall Eco mode. It's just mind-boggling. ... they didn't do that. There is no paywall.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    Perhaps I misspoke, but needing a network connection, needing a smartphone, giving over your details, very likely getting marketing materials you didn't want via app notifications, or email, requiring to comply with terms of service, and at any time the company is free to rescind or change the offer, to me is "paywalling". You are paying out, giving them things of real value, over and above buying the device, and if you don't then they're blocking functionality. All the functionality should be in the device itself, and require no sign-up or ongoing relationship with the company to use it.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      It's annoying, but it's not a paywall. > All the functionality should be in the device itself, and require no sign-up or ongoing relationship with the company to use it. For a dishwasher yes, but I don't agree with that as a blanket statement. There are cloud connected devices that I really like. e.g. I like to run my Roomba on-demand after I leave my house, and I think that's an entirely reasonable use case. Many other devices are useful away from home as well, which would all require internet connectivity. e.g. security systems, cameras, etc.
      - btc-landlord 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - jenadine 2y ago
        > not a paywall You pay with your data
        kube-system 2y ago
        Nobody uses the word that way. You give HN the ability to use all user-contributed data. Nobody would say HN is paywalled.
        alpaca128 2y ago
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  The weird thing about eco modes is that they often don’t use less water or power. I live off grid, and just as a function of my setup I know exactly what consumes what. My Bosch dishwasher, on a normal 70C dish cycle, uses about 4.5L of water and 1.6kWh. On eco mode, it uses 8L of water, and 1.8kWh. Takes twice as long though. Similar with my AEG washer - a 40 degree cotton wash uses marginally more water than a 40 degree eco wash, but less power - and is 25% quicker. Honestly, it’s not clear what the economy is supposed to be. Intensity of demand? Except on each appliance the heater runs at the same rated wattage when it’s heating - just different patterns of usage on eco mode, more off and on.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Is 70c normal? Wont that mess up plastic items?
    - account42 2y ago
      It's fine for anything rated to be "dishwasher safe" IME.
    - randallsquared 2y ago
      Yes, it's normal (should be above 65C, anyway). Yes, even "dishwasher-safe" plastic items often warp or discolor in a normal hot dishwashing cycle. I wouldn't put anything plastic or fragile in the dishwasher, but virtually everything in the kitchen is ceramic, glass, or stainless steel, so.
  - gambiting 2y ago
    Just as an anecdote - that's not my experience, and I have a smart power plug to measure it too. On my Bosch Series 6 dishwasher, Eco Mode comes consistently in at 1.2kWh per cycle, while the intensive 70C cycle is around 1.6kWh. I have no way of measuring water usage though, but in terms of energy the ECO mode is really the most efficient.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    That's a really weird thing. In the EU, not only is Eco mode mandatory, and must be the default mode, and you can't label any other mode "default" or "normal" to sway the consumer to use that instead... but it's also how the appliance's energy rating is calculated, and it's displayed prominently on every device sold. It would be madness for a company not to put their most efficient settings on Eco mode. https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/household-dishwashers_en https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2019.315.01.0267.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2019:315:TOC#d1e41-275-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:... You can also see there that they're tracking the effects of their regulations and measuring how much less electricity and water is used. The regulations also set minimum standards for cleaning, drying and energy usage so you can't sell products that look efficient but require everything washed twice, nor can you even include a resource hog mod. And it mandates the availability of spare parts for a certain number of years, and access to repair information, so you don't just junk the whole object. I can only imagine "Eco" mode being worse than other modes in some place where there's not good market regulation. I just checked my own dishwasher, and its Eco mode uses 9L of water and 0.83kWh per cycle. Other washing modes use 9-17L water and 0.9-1.5kWh per cycle... so it does conform to the regulations.
- account42 2y ago
  Why would a German company apply feel-good but ultimately counter-productive regulation to customers where they don't have to?
  - amiga386 2y ago
    > counter-productive The opposite, actually. Productive. Millions of litres of water and terawatts of power saved per year. End users collectively saving €1.3 billion on water and electricity costs in 2020 (in comparison to them having standard dishwashers from 1990 before any eco targets were set) https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/household-dishwashers_en#paragraph_5838 https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/...
    - account42 2y ago
      Not shown: water wasted from pre-washing dishes or having to run multiple cycles because the new eco-modes don't do the job properly. Also from manually washing dishes because the dishwasher is blocked for longer (and even longer once you add the extended drying time required due to the lower temperatures).
      - amiga386 2y ago
        Shown: the regulations actually set minimum cleaning and drying requirements, for precisely that reason - the equipment has to do the job properly. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2019.315.01.0267.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2019:315:TOC#d1e41-275-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:... It's almost as if they already thought this through when making the regulation.
        account42 2y ago
        Not shown: the EU cleaning requirements are inadequate in reality which is why dishwashers previously defaulted to higher-energy modes - because those modes are the ones that actually work reliably for users. It's almost like the regulations are ideologically motivated rather than having anything to do with reality.

hansvm 2y ago

> pinging back to Google and then working I still have a bricked Android phone from nonsense like that. If you: 1. Factory reset the phone while not logged in to the last Google account on the phone 2. Have the Google account invalidated (e.g., using an identity verification app on a temp noogler account, ...) You'll never be able to access the phone again. The "factory reset" maintains some internal state despite a scary message on the screen promising everything is deleted and asking if that's really what you want, and it'll require the last working password. Alright ... annoying, buggy (the fact that there are two factory resets and one doesn't reset the device is a problem; either fix or delete the broken one, or make the scary message scarier), but fine in my case. It checks that password against Google's servers though instead of the local hash, and it doesn't even matter if you know the password; the fact that the account is inactive prevents you from accessing the phone.

wkat4242 2y ago
That's an anti theft feature. Intended to make the phone useless to a thief. It doesn't work very well, thieves manage to get around it somehow (not so much with Apple's version) so it ends up annoying the users more than it does deter thieves. Apple is really really difficult about getting these unlocked. The carriers can't do it, you have to show them proof of purchase and have an enterprise support contract. With Google the carriers can just do it usually. I managed a fleet of mobiles at work for a while, this is how I know. It often happened that colleagues returned a phone without unlocking it.
- kube-system 2y ago
  It is a very good thing that Apple is tough about it, given the high value of the devices, and how people carry them around in public. I very much want my devices to be useless to thieves.
  - powersnail 2y ago
    I want to know whether this actually deters thieves. Anecdotally, from what I heard, it seems that phone stealing is very much still a thing in areas with active pickpocketing.

sillysaurusx 2y ago

I mean, is Bosch the bad guy here or the salesperson? It sounds like they either lied or were incompetent. I guess maybe both are bad. Yesterday I tried to configure a friend’s wifi router after the speed was suspiciously slow. It forced me to ask them for their Spectrum login info (the same info they use to pay the bills, not the wifi info) which nobody remembered and I gave up. Apparently this is required according to https://www.reddit.com/r/Spectrum/s/3sLnHuWgEF https://www.reddit.com/r/Spectrum/s/3sLnHuWgEF So if we’re badmouthing companies that lock physical functionality behind a cloud, add Spectrum. Not that you’ll have much choice if they’re the only provider, but still. The more I think about it, the more I agree with you. What if you have someone house sitting? You really need to download the Bosch app to their phone just to use the same dishwashing routine that you usually do? Blah. Any alternatives to Bosch that don’t do this?

kube-system 2y ago
Cable company "Customer Premises Equipment" normally has provisioning capabilities built in, so that they can be controlled/reconfigured/reset from the upstream provider. You could probably call Spectrum and they can reset for you. The reason they do all of this is exactly because of the scenario you ran into: people are always forgetting their logins -- and back when modems/routers didn't have remote provisioning, they spent a lot of time and money sending technicians out to physically reset people's equipment.
monksy 2y ago
Mesh routers are requiring an app to configure them now. TPLink and Ubiquiti is a big violator of this. (Ubiquiti you can run a docker container as a controller... but still..)
- rblatz 2y ago
  Ubiquiti is software defined networking, so it needs software to configure it.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  How is Ubiquiti a violator of this? You can run their Java software on anything or buy a cloud key. I use an old HP thin client. There’s a good app and a well maintained webpage. If you enjoy pain, most gear has a cli. I can’t think of a better way to offer the functionality in a way that works for so many customer segments.

onewheeltom 2y ago

My relatively new Bosch dishwasher has real buttons and an LED display. No wifi required

edoceo 2y ago
Could you post a model number or something?
dorfsmay 2y ago
I have button and LEDs, and it works fine without wifi for "basic functions", but for "advanced functions" like washer deep cleaning I would need to use their website.
zargon 2y ago
Looks like we got lucky. My unit is a couple years old and has physical buttons, a display, and no wifi. It's been discontinued. Looking at Bosch's site now, there are no models without wifi. The cheap ones (mine was in the "300 series") now lack a display, have touch buttons and require wifi.
tchalla 2y ago
You could have really helped everyone here by simply posting the model number in your original message itself.
- account42 2y ago
  That would require gp to either know the model off-hand or be in a place where he can look it up which you don't know to be the case.
gambiting 2y ago
Same, my mum got a new Bosch Series 4 last year and it doesn't have wifi at all. Everything is on the control panel.
smileybarry 2y ago
I just bought one and yes, mine also comes with WiFi but it's 100% optional: all features are available in menus or physical buttons too. (Including the infamous rinse cycle the blog post mentions) It's a European model ("SMV4HAX48E", I'm in EMEA) so it might differ by markets.