American dream
The Americans have long held a fantasy that their fridges should be connected to the internet and be the 'hub' of the house. Bill Gates once said something along those lines. A fridge is a place to pin childrens' drawings, post-its and lottery tickets to. I cannot understand why you'd need a screen on one. None of it makes the slightest bit of sense to me. If you want a screen in the kitchen, there are lots of 'assistant' type things available with screens.
The thing is, and this is the crux of the matter, that most devices last a long time - Fridges, washing machines, dishwashers, cars, boilers, kettles, TVs even USED to be able to last 10-15 years, or even longer - maybe 20+ in some cases. But stick a screen on it, give it wifi and call it 'SMART' and you've just reduced its useful lifespan to 3-5 years at most. After that, the manufacturer won't support any updates, the wifi will be too slow, the OS out of date, and it'll be time to throw it away. I've just read about older Tesla cars where the flash storage has worn out because so many gigabytes a day are written as logs. Cars out of warranty will see a $3000 bill for replacing the flash!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
