Yes and no, my assumption is that the company only cares about the programs being useful enough to sell the washing machine.
There is no incentive to be any better than that. When the average washing machine lives long enough that the majority of consumers will come back to their next purchase without feeling annoyed about software related issues. Extra frills that pushed them over the line into purchasing a particular model didn't quite work out how they hoped, the iPhone app didn't get updates and looks bad on their new phone, etc ... these things wont factor into their next purchase. It's a psychological time horizon thing, enough water passes under the bridge and the customer stopped caring long enough ago.
So as long as it was otherwise a solid washing machine that didn't have mechanical issues mechanically or wash poorly they aren't likely to hold the manufacturer to account for their poor software quality breaking the "nice to haves".
There is no incentive to be any better than that. When the average washing machine lives long enough that the majority of consumers will come back to their next purchase without feeling annoyed about software related issues. Extra frills that pushed them over the line into purchasing a particular model didn't quite work out how they hoped, the iPhone app didn't get updates and looks bad on their new phone, etc ... these things wont factor into their next purchase. It's a psychological time horizon thing, enough water passes under the bridge and the customer stopped caring long enough ago.
So as long as it was otherwise a solid washing machine that didn't have mechanical issues mechanically or wash poorly they aren't likely to hold the manufacturer to account for their poor software quality breaking the "nice to haves".