I haven’t used the app in a while and opened it and saw this… Well never buying Anova again
But hey at least they gave me a coupon that expired two months ago.
Imagine seeing that message and buying another product from them.
“It’s time to artificially create waste. Don’t worry, you won’t see this message again. Our new cookers are designed to not last 10 years.”
100%. They’ve just guaranteed that the sous vide unit that I have now is the last Anova product I will ever buy.
Ung
(Don’t) hope they did their math right and the “well, it’s just $2/mo” crowd is large enough to offset the principled crowd
That notice doesn’t even say there is a $2/mo option. App just won’t work at all.
Imagine Goodyear 500 tires!..for just 30 bucks a month you too can get the most inexpensive tires of all. 500 mile tires!. After 500 miles they don’t spin or hold air so we recommend setting your odometer properly.
Actively encouraging people to toss perfectly good hardware to fuel their subscription bullshit… and these guys weren’t even recently bought by a VC firm or anything?
They were bought by Electrolux in 2017, and have been enshittifying ever since. Cheaper, lower quality parts, etc. They’re just profiting from the brand as they turn it to shit. Never buy their products.
Unrelated but how would you rate sous vide cooking? I am tempted for a bunch of reasons but I’m worried it’ll be just another kitchen appliance that I rarely use.
I was using it for steaks and it’s been great - sous vide then cast iron pan - but I moved somewhere where the smoke alarm is extremely sensitive so haven’t used it much lately 😞
There are different type of smoke alarms. Some detect smoke. There are two ways of doing that. Near a kitchen area it’s usually best to get a completely different one that just uses changes in temperature. Though they will only notify you way matter. So highly recommend keeping the existing one and moving that one somewhere else.
I would see if there’s a way to disable updates for that app.
Translation:
“Fuck you for not replacing your perfectly fine and still working 10 year old machine and making our line go up more. We’re gonna do our best to brick it because we want all of your money.”
Fuck capitalism. I will (and have been) doing my absolute to avoid buying any kind of physical device that requires an app to function
Yeah, I need to start being better about this. It’s a shame because I bought my joule sous vide because I like the simplicity and ability to monitor and program it remotely (helpful when cooking for 5-6h). App stopped working properly and now they’ve been purchased by breville and if I want to use it I need to switch and I’m guessing it won’t be long before they start to drop functionallity or require some sort of subscription. There are things like this where the app is much more than a gimmick. But it sucks to have some company pulling the strings of what you can or can’t do with your own hardware.
water+heat proofing is hard, or I’d suggest a DIY solution.
if I see something requires an app, no matter how good it is otherwise. the product is dead to me. I know it is, effectively, going to break within a year or two.
I have one of these, and I use it just fine without an app fwiw
you never know for sure until you try though, so if it requires an app, it’s dead to me and I don’t trust anything else the company makes.
if it has an API i get very wet very fast.
That’s fair, but the point I was trying to make was that I have tried and, for the one I’ve got at least, the app isn’t required. I’m not trying to defend them or anything, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
Tbh I’m kinda glad it doesn’t have an API, because I’d end up wasting a lot of time playing with it haha.
see, if it had an API, I could integrate it into an open smart home app, and it would be cool as FUCK.
About two phone changes ago I never reinstalled the anova app.
It’s like pressing the buttons on top of the cooker with extra steps.
yeah there are apps I want on my phone, but if anything says ‘there is an app’ I’m instantly averse.
even the things I do want phone apps for, I have to browse on fdroid because default options are all terrible. basic shit like file browsers and media players in commercial OS’s are just, like, vile and do not function. even if I didn’t care about the endoscopes they try to snake up every orifice, they are deliberately nonfunctional.
I’m getting that same way.
Currently trying to chase down some automatic sun shades that don’t need an app to do time-based cycles. Shouldn’t be this hard, but every band wants you to use absolute garbage apps.
Switchbot (hardware) and home assistant (controlling server) might fit your needs. It still would require an app, but home assistant is self hosted and is a fantastic automation platform. It won’t be as smooth as an all in one setup, but I find the tinkering is half the fun.
I’ve installed so many hardware items that are either “appless” and are controlled by home assistant or home assistant is compatible and replaced the app. Absolutely worth it IMO. I have been able to make a full self hosted/controlled and offline functional smart house.
if its not open source; it doesn’t exist.
Wait
“Our community has literally cooked 100s of millions of times with our app. Unfortunately, each connected cook costs us money.”
The cooker, It’s FUCKING Bluetooth. It doesn’t need to call home, it can’t call home. The App, It has a list of 35 different sous vide recipes that could live on the app. The app has no business calling home, they don’t need a server.
This is the absolute worst possible way for me to first hear about a product and company that I would have otherwise been interested in
It is utterly bullshit. But is the app required for using the device?
Also
The subscription fee will only apply to people who make an account after August 21. Those who downloaded the app and made an account before August 21 won’t have to pay. But everyone will have to make an account; some people have been using the app without one until now
I have one and I can use it without the app
Better make an account in the next 5 days
You can set the temperature and the cook time on the device without having the app at all. The biggest benefit of the app is that you get a notice when the water is to temperature, which for certain more sensitive foods is needed to put the food in. (If you’re doing a 24 hour slow cook, it’s not really needed, but if you’re trying to do something with more precise cooking lengths, you don’t want the variance of starting water temp affecting how long the food is in the bath.)
So it’s not as bad as it seems, at least.
Unless these people paid a premium for this kind of “smart” device vs. the cost of a basic version.
I think the bigger issue is that they’re bricking all support for the oldest models, trying to force customers to abandon a fully functional device just because they want more money.
The app subscription fee is obnoxious as all get out, but punishing your oldest customers for your profit margins is what’s a bit infuriating.
At least, imo.
Except, prior to this announcement, there was apparently another statement from Anova that you can’t control the first gen ones.
the announcement follows an Anova statement saying it will no longer let users remotely control their kitchen gadgets via Bluetooth starting on September 28, 2025.
Lemmy.world needs an internet-of-shit community. This could be a solid first contribution.
I passed on a lot of the fancier apartment buildings for requiring an app and a cell phone to gain access to your own home. I shouldn’t have to agree to an arbitration/class action waiver to use my own front door, I don’t feel comfortable with management getting a notification on their phone every time I come or go, I don’t like the fact that 20+ listed partner companies have access to sensitive personal data, and I shouldn’t have to wait for maintenance to show up in the middle of the night because I couldn’t make it back home before my personal tracking device died on me.
The sad thing is that most of these locking units cost these apartments hundreds of dollars each on top of a monthly subscription.
What the actual fuck. In what country do you live?
U.S… Not an actual tracking device, just a cell phone. I usually leave it at home, which would have been impossible to do at many of those buildings.
Other than my computer, phone and xbox, I own nothing at all that can connect to the Internet. It’s incredibly stupid.
I have a smart TV and a Bluray player as well, but other than that, only phones, computers, and my Switch connect to the internet. My next TV will likely not be smart, because screw ads, and I’ve ripped all of my Blurays.
I’ve stopped buying TVs. It’s difficult to find a dumb one nowadays. I watch on my phone or my computer monitor.
I just dont connect the TV to the internet and hook a separate media center up to the HDMI port.
Would be nice, but I have kids, and it’s really hard to watch a movie together on a phone. I need another soon-ish, so I’m going to look into hospitality TVs and projectors.
Why not just buy a TV and not connect it to the internet?
That’s the backup plan, yes. I haven’t looked at newer TVs recently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they still had some kind of ads even if they don’t connect to the internet, or they require connecting to the internet to activate the TV or something dumb like that.
My current TV only connects for Netflix, and I’m this close to cutting that out (just need my wife to finish her series). Everything else is on my Jellyfin server, and if I can get everyone to switch to that, I won’t need any kind of internet connection for the TV.
My last two TVs were dumb ones.
It is getting harder find dumb TVs because the smart stuff included with most TVs subsidizes keeping the initial price low. Manufactures are betting millions of dollars purchasers will sign up for the monthly apps.
Buy smart TV. Open the back. Remove WiFi card.
Purchase cheap Chinese mini PC, put Kodi on it.
That’s all you need
That’s not always easy, sometimes the WiFi is on the board itself and not just an add-in card. Or you get annoying warnings or something on the TV.
Commercial TVs will probably last a lot longer than regular retail TVs, so if I’m not going to be using all the features of the TV, I might as well spend a bit more and get something that’ll last.
Why does a Blu-ray player need to connect to the Internet?
It can play Netflix and a few other streaming services. But more importantly, I was able to stream videos to it through DLNA.
Oh, that’s cool!
Oh ffs… This is the one I have…
And, you know what? The firmware sucks.
You can’t even connect to wifi if you have two AP’s with the same name (which is literally everyone).
I haven’t even installed the app in ages because it’s a PITA and has never worked 100%.
But, they can guarantee my next one won’t be an anova again. There are much cheaper alternatives now
I’d recommend anova brand
deleted by creator
ah they were making a nice and lame pun (anova brand == another brand)
Oi bruv, it’s anova kitchin appluiance asking for moy woyfoy passwood.
Damn autocorrect was fighting me on every word lol
The subscription fee will only apply to people who make an account after August 21. Those who downloaded the app and made an account before August 21 won’t have to pay. But everyone will have to make an account; some people have been using the app without one until now.
“You helped us build Anova, and our intent is that you will be grandfathered in forever,” Svajian wrote
Fuck everything about this, but at least they have the decency not to pull the rug on people who bought it without this stupidity.
The only real benefit of the app to me is the push notifications, but losing those would be douchey. It would be far better to allow that basic functionality and put all the recipe shit behind the wall.
I have one of their’s that can connect to your phone. It’s not needed, it just adds extra cook book functions. It even hosts it so you can control the sous vide when you’re not at home, almost like a reverse proxy.
But yea the physical buttons work fine without the app.
My car works fine without a seat warmer, but if you sold it to me as part of the car then later it started charging me a subscription I’d be pretty pissed.
Yeah, I barely use the app, but this is a bullshit anti-consumer move that leaves me with zero reason to trust the company going forward.
What I like about having the Bluetooth connection to the app, is mostly just to see when the water has come up to temperature.
But that was apparently too much to ask, since it says that they are also removing the Bluetooth functionality from the app…
yeah…ummm…no
The wifi ones work with Home Assistant so you won’t lose remote features. The bad news is you have to run home assistant and set it up.
As for the BT only version you need more work and a BT proxy. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/anova-ble-control-via-ble-proxy/550295
I have never bought an appliance or physical product that requires an app to use, and I never will until our society has deteriorated to the the point where there is no alternative to that in order to get by in it. It’s almost at that point already with smartphones but for now it’s still possible to get by without one.
