Comment by breadsmasher@lemmy.world on Smart sous vide cooker to start charging $2/month for 10-year-old companion app

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.)

Friendly reminder for others that you can setup this quite easily with home assistant and conditional notification alerts. I do it with my govee. Open. Source. Everything.

I looked into that and you need to build a Bluetooth bridge out of a ESP32. Pretty easy once you have the dev platform set up, but not for your average Joe.

There is an anova integration, but depends on their cloud service. When they stop supporting old devices, they will no longer function.

That’s what I understand anyway.

No mine connects right to my pi with Bluetooth already present. Just bridge and go!

Is there a bridge? I’d definitely be interested in that.

Just need to configure Bluetooth and the govee integration.

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.

Honestly, after a decade of keeping compatibility and stuff, and that the sous vide still works fine without the apk, I don’t really see this as much of a big deal. An apk for a sous vide is nearly useless, anyhow. What are you going to do with it?

It’s more about the principle. Why is it ok for a manufacturer to remotely disable a feature that was bought & paid for by a decades worth of customers?

Now that they’ve done it once, what’s stopping future attempts to gin up higher profits using the same tactics?

I don’t think anyone here is angry enough to go all Kid Rock on their Sous Vides, but I do think there are plenty who will look at a different brand when it is time for a replacement.

Well they’re on v3 now and this ends the version 1, so I doubt they’ve sold the v1 for the past 5 years or so, but again, it’s not an apk that you need to use it. If it were a device like a garage door opener that let’s you open/close or see when the door is opened or closed I’d be bitching up a storm. Same if it were like a door deadbolt to lock/unlock your front door. But a water cooker? What do you need the apk for? It couldn’t functionally do anything over bluetooth to be of any help.

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.

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Smart sous vide cooker to start charging $2/month for 10-year-old companion app(arstechnica.com)

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