alt Hacker NewsI don't mind the app functionality of my air purifier. I get a push notification when air quality degrades, and I can see data and charts of air quality over time. I can change the settings remotely, which is nice because I have a small child and keep the "lock" function set for the actual controls.
It's easier to setup and maintain schedules, routines, or more complex functionality.
It's certainly not critical functionality, but it's nice. Same with my laundry machine and dryer sending a push notification when the cycle ends. Unnecessary, but nice.
Replies
It's one of those things quite interesting to see the difference in response from one consumer to another. I can't stand the washer/dryer notifications and finally turned them off a few weeks ago. Especially when I'm on the road half the time, why should I care my wife did 8 loads of laundry in a day? When I'm home, the chime is enough to hear from the other room anyway and the notification on the phone usually just backlogs and gives me a load of red badges I need to clear at the end and beginning of every day for notifications I didn't even get because the phone wasn't with me and I changed the laundry anyway.
For an air purifier, I feel like I'd probably want to see outcome-level statistics convincing me it actually matters to lifespan, healthspan, quality of life, something, anything at all, to know and adjust minute-by-minute the exact air quality going through a purifier, or for that matter what the purifier is able to detect even reflects the quality of air elsewhere in a house with a whole lot of air volume not going through that purifier very regularly.
> It's easier to setup and maintain schedules, routines, or more complex functionality.
Complex like wanting to hit the "Good night" button in Apple Home and have it turn the purifier to full blast for white noise, the workflow in TFA that wasn't possible with the app experience?