Control freaky household appliances - (Pet Peeve #15)

Joared (of Along the Way) posted about a member of her household that went to eternal rest - her Hotpoint Refrigerator (1962-2017). Oh, how many of us long for the simple, old days, eh? At one point in my life, the only setting on the ice box was the insertion or removal of a block of ice. Now, each shelf of our refrigerator adjusts position/location, some refrigerators have various drawers for various temperature settings, there are multiple temperature settings, some feed water and/or ice cubes to the exterior without opening a door/drawer, and various vanes may be adjusted to control humidity and/or air flow. Oh, me!

The newer of our refrigerators (perhaps vintage 2005?) is another Kenmore. The controls are shown in the photos, below. The first photo shows the main temperature controls for refrigerator and freezer compartments.

 The next photo shows the main chilled air distribution controls.

There are secondary air-flow controls - one for the fruit drawer, another for the vegetable drawer.

Although we don't have external delivery of cold water and/or ice, we do have an ice maker - with controls.

Even worse, these days, are laundry appliances. Hunky Husband's current clothes washer and clothes dryer include more control settings than the V-2 Rocket launch system that sent the first American critters into space - fruit flies in the launch from White Sands Missile range that reached 63 miles in altitude according to Wikipedia, qualifying the travel as space travel. Of course, that flight took place in 1947, well before the birth of any of my own major household appliances, at any point in my adult life, so it should have been simple, eh? (I was making a point about the complicated control systems on current major household appliances, so perhaps you'll forgive me?)

First, the washer:

 
Then the dryer:

 
Further, the water softener and the heating-ventilation-air conditioning-humidifying system controls:

When asked if we wished to have wireless control of the HVAC system, I said a pleasant but firm, "No!" Who wants the Russians turning up the heat?

Finally, only to show you that I can be pleased with controls, a fine example of simple but effective controls on the microwave oven that I bought my mother (her only microwave) just a few months before her death. After Mother died (June 1994), I took the microwave to my office. Most of my subsequent lunches were taken from home (not a change) and heated in that microwave (cleaner than the communal microwave available to us - and saving me time by its close proximity.)

To use the little microwave oven (aptly named "Half Pint"), one places the container of food inside (I had purchased a spring-driven turntable for it), sets the spring-driven timer, and (when the soft click indicates that the time has elapsed and the power to the magnetron has been switched off) pushes down on the handle to open the door to retrieve the food. Can't get much simpler than that. Mother had never purchased (or allowed anyone else to purchase for her) a microwave oven believing their controls to be too complicated.

Can you tell that one of my pet peeves is over-complication of consumer products? Note that I didn't even mention cell phones, not wishing to bring on a stroke. For 50 years I kept preaching that there was no reason that computers couldn't be more user friendly. We've made some progress on that front (we consumers don't normally have to worry about using hexadecimal location codes); but, there is much more to be made. Just because we engineers take pride in our facility with our products is no excuse for inflicting overly complicated products on our consumers.

P.S. No, I've no desire to go back to the "good old days". They weren't that good. I don't want us to go back to pre-penicillin days or to the days when an interviewer had no qualms about denying a job to a person because he or she (depending upon the job) was the wrong sex. I don't want us to go back to the days when gays were even more horribly maligned - and transgender didn't even appear on the horizon. I guess I can still preach for simplicity without sending us back to the stone age.

Comments

[Hattie]

We always buy the simplest appliances we can. If we have to buy more complicated ones we don't use all the functions.

[Joared]

Oh, this is great! Had a few laughs along the way! But, oh, laudy -- what a complicated device is your hsband's washer....talk about control. Simple -- right -- that's what I want in my appliances and devices. I think it's wonderful techies can have all those bells and whistles they like to play with, but just make a few with simple basic functions for me, please.

[Joared]

I don't use all the functions on the devices I use either.

[Cop Car]

Does anyone use the entire capability of any electronic device? As long as I know how to do the few things that I want to do, I ignore the rest. I've had the same cell phone (a Treo 700Wx - similar to the "original" Blackberry)for 10 years, now - a smart phone. I use only the phone part and the storage of Excel/Word/photo files. I used to use the calendar and contacts; but, when my computer went to Windows 10, I lost the ability to synchronize. I've never subscribed to the data service. These days, one can't get a smart phone without subscribing to a data service - which explains why I still have the same phone.

[bogie]

Yeah, my washer and dryer have more settings than I know what to do with (but not nearly that many - Holy Moly that is a lot of controls!). The washer I could live with if it were the old dial types. I love it being a front-loader though, as my previous two before were).

I am glad my dryer senses when the clothes are dry instead of just stopping when the timer is done (whether that is while they are still damp or inversely after they have been dang near burned to a crisp). Of course my only recent exposure to dryers (recent being from 1981-2013) was laundry mat dryers since I mostly dried clothes on racks or outside lines, so I probably missed a generation or two that were simpler but could sense the dryness.

The only thing I want in a microwave besides a timer is the ability to add 30 seconds on the fly, or a popcorn mode. All the rest of the modes are wasted on me.

I do like my smart phone, but mainly use it for emails, calendar, taking pictures or as a GPS. Sometimes I text my boss and I get notices of package deliveries by text, but it is very rare for me to use it as an actual phone.

[Ole Phat Stu]

I once owned a shoe-box sized device whose only function was to switch itself off.
Move the one switch to "ON" and the lid opened to reveal a plastic hand which came up and pulled the switch back to "OFF" before going back into the box and closing the lid again. ;-)

[Ingineer66]

Stu that box sounds awesome.

As for Russian control of network enabled devices, I recently switched from RF remote controlled switches for my outdoor landscape/mood lighting to wifi network switches. The old system often didn't work well and I had to move around the house or patio while pushing the remote buttons numerous times to turn the lights on or off. Also the switches had to be replaced every year or two. So I changed to wifi with the controller now being an app on my iPhone. Worked great while testing. The very first night that I actually wanted to use it, the Internet goes down for the entire neighborhood. So I had to walk out to the switches and push the button anyway.