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software experiences with Kenwood, Kitchenaid and other cooking machines (feddit.de)

submitted 9 months ago by Freeman@feddit.de to c/food

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

As a satisfied KitchenAid owner I have to ask:

Why would a stand mixer need an app, or even software? Professional mixers get by fine with a simple timer.

[–] harry315@feddit.de 5 points 9 months ago

Yeah, I'd rather not. Just stir the damn thing.

If their quality doesn't go to shit, I'll be a lifetime Kitchen Aid dumb stand mixer customer.

[–] Freeman@feddit.de 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I mean, integrated recipies seem helpful, as it can tell you what when to add and with the scale already integrated it seems convinient. No? And some models have an integrated induction heater (up to 180°) so they can cook as well. So if you are alone and cooking a onepot or sth. you dont have to get out the pans or use the oven. I even heard of a device which is connected to a recipie database and an shopping-list-app. It seems convinient if everything is connected.

[–] Dalraz@lemmy.ca 15 points 9 months ago

This is just another thing to break and to be monetized.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 7 points 9 months ago

The scale and cooker feature sound useful, but the recipe DB is a stupid gimmick.

Screens and apps are just things to break. Buttons and dials last forever.

[–] Goopadrew 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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 9 months ago (1 children)

Why does this feel like an AI comment?

[–] Goopadrew 4 points 9 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

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 5 points 9 months ago

I don't understand why a mixer even needs an app? Do you struggle that much to follow a recipe, that you need an app to tell you when and where to add ingredients?