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submitted 8 months ago by Freeman@feddit.de to c/food@beehaw.org

geteilt von: https://feddit.de/post/9297752

Has anyone experience how bad the proriatary software is on such machines? For Kenwood there is an app (Kenwood World App) which apparently guides you through the cooking-process. Does anyone have a idea for how long this app or other apps from similar machines will be maintained? Does anyone have experience of using such a device without an internet connection?

I am sure that there wont ever be a simple foss app which can connect to such a device, but how bad is it? I am worried that the new Kenwoods wont be as durable as the old one I had (had it handed down, was around 30yo), because the software will be discontinued.

Looking for people with experiences with such machines and their software-side.

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[-] Goopadrew@beehaw.org 6 points 8 months ago

Cooking is an inherently manual task, and as such any meaningful improvements to cooking tools are enhancements to the manual capabilities of the tools. These are improvements to things like speed/precision/durability of mixing, heating, weighing, etc. Often times the most meaningful improvements are improvements in mechanisms in cooking machines or the materials they are made of, but there are definitely examples of electronics or software contributing in this way. Good examples would be fuzzy logic applied to electric kettles to make the act of heating to a specific temperature more precise by controlling the heating element so the water is brought to temperature without overshoot, or PID controllers in espresso machines controlling pumps to follow a specific pressure curve instead of requiring complex mechanical systems to accomplish the same thing. The problem with many of these internet-connected or heavily software-dependent appliances is that their added features do not improve the manual capabilities of the appliance in any way, sure the machine will tell you how much weight of flour you need for your cake, but your cake won't be better than one produced by a "dumb" machine because the scale isn't any more precise than any other scale that would be used for that purpose.

The other issue with these devices is a fallacy that's really common in kitchen equipment, which is the idea that more functions = better. Fundamentally, a device designed to do both task A and task B will be worse than an equivalently priced combination of one device for task A and one device for task B, because there is a cost associated with engineering the device to accomplish both tasks. This effect is especially noticable on all-in-one devices that mix, weigh, and heat because there's a lot more complexity, and thus a lot more cost spent on integrating the components together

[-] Fudoshin@feddit.uk 2 points 8 months ago

Why does this feel like an AI comment?

[-] Goopadrew@beehaw.org 4 points 8 months ago

Probably because I rambled for way too long and didn't give sources lol, here's a couple examples from America's test kitchen demonstrating what I mean:

Review of a combo Dutch oven/slow cooker that's not great at either job, and is more expensive than buying the two items separately https://youtu.be/llPyDvfHx3k

Gear roundup for 2023, the best things were ones that innovated in materials or tech that was actually useful, worst things were overcomplicated equipment that didn't actually try to use tech to improve the mechanics of the cooking equipment https://youtu.be/AU3mUjIF3A8

this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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