There's useful technology, like computer controlling your engine to make it more fuel-efficient or whatever. And then there're "smart appliances", like a fridge with a screen. Do we really need it? The companies try to sell us more useless stuff, that's what it is.
Just to add on to this (because I think it's interesting)... the Engine Computer (PCM - Powertrain Control Module) does so much! Just to name a few:
- Coordinates the engine and the transmission for smooth shifts
- Holds a gear while the engine is in the power band if the throttle position meets a certain threshold
- Makes diagnosing complex problems much easier, even remembering data so it can be diagnosed when the problem is not happening at the time you drop your car off with a technician
- Shuts the engine and fuel pump off if it receives a message on the vehicle bus that an airbag was deployed
- Can advance or retard ignition timing depending on the grade of fuel you put in the tank
- Reads/Adjusts combustion parameters thousands of times per second on each cylinder (prioritizing fuel economy, power output, and emissions depending on the situation).
If people do not want a screen on the fridge, then the sales numbers will tell manufacturers not to make that model. So much of product is experimentation, and often times the research and experiments ends up being wrong. So many products and companies fail when they go to market and find out nobody wants it. The other side of the coin are the products that are unexpected hits... There are so many things that have to go right... and it takes so few to go wrong.
First, sales numbers can only really ever tell you part of the story. If every fridge has a screen, sales numbers won't tell you about the demand for screenless fridges. If, at that point, some manufacturer tests a screenless fridge, the sales numbers might tell you about a lack of demand or might tell you about a failure in marketing. Additionally, if fridges with screens can be used to advertise to customers, get them to sign up for subscription services, steal their data, avoid the expense of bifurcating the line of fridges, or otherwise increase profit or decrease costs, they will be manufactured anyway.
> then the sales numbers will tell manufacturers not to make that model
Doesn't really matter... if Fridge with a Screen makes 4x the profits or simply has a recurring revenue per unit where Fridge Without a Screen does not, then the market will become purely Fridge With a Screen.
I think it's rather short-sighted to refer to one application of technology as useful and another as not needed. Is the computer controlling the engine to be more fuel-efficient needed? No. Is the car even needed? No. But we have found a use for that technology that improves our daily lives.
Perhaps for you a fridge with a screen is not useful; however for others it may be.
> Is the computer controlling the engine to be more fuel-efficient needed? No. Is the car even needed? No.
We can continue ad absurdum, but it's clear that more screens is added to our lives to:
1. Consume more content
2. As a result, see more ads
3. Finally, buy more stuff
I'm not against technology, but electronics producers have been going out of their way to continue growth. That's fine, but I'd love to have a robot doing dishes and cooking for me. Instead, there's a fridge that "Cameras recognize the food in your fridge so you can search for recipes based on what you have." [0]. That's such a marginal benefit.
With those gimmicky features there's also only a slim chance that anyone is actually using them because it's often hard to impossible, especially for people with less interest in tech.
For example, in a large company like Samsung some product manager might show up and require that users of the food scanning feature have a Samsung account. Now you have to register for a Samsung account on your fridge, but the embedded web view is being redirected to a new thing with 35% heavier Javascript which doesn't really run on your fridge anymore and that's the end of that.
This example is made up but it wouldn't surprise me if things very close to this have happened on these fridges, and they definitely happen all the time in consumer electronics.
> especially for people with less interest in tech
Hum... I can program in something around a dozen languages, can find my way around the Linux kernel code as well as enterprise software, can administer OSes...
Yet, I am completely unable to set my fridge's clock (why does it have one?) since I lost its manual. I have spent some time trying.
IoT and smart things are a great equalizer. Nobody can handle them. Some times it's even not possible.
> With those gimmicky features there's also only a slim chance that anyone is actually using them because it's often hard to impossible, especially for people with less interest in tech.
True life example: I have a washer. It was sold as being internet-connected. There are some mildly interesting use cases I could see for being able to control or check the status of a wash remotely.
Well, it's internet-connected, sure, but you can only connect it to your network with WPS, many app reviews suggest the remote app doesn't work, the feature set is small, and the features it does have are hobbled in ways that make even that set pretty useless—seemingly in order to prevent lawsuits.
