Why? Because it's CES 2016!
Samsung's T9000 smart fridge is a Wi-Fi connected food-cooling device that has a 10-inch touchscreen running a proprietary OS; available apps include Twitter, Epicurious, a Google Calendar client, and more. It's not the company's first effort in this space, but it's the biggest and most impressive to date. If you're into this kind of thing, which I am as much as anyone but I don't have several thousand dollars to drop on a smart fridge.
So, Evernote on your fridge. For an example given by Samsung of how this might play out in real-world use, picture the scene: someone is out shopping, and their partner stays at home. They're using Evernote for a shared shopping list, as many people do, but the person at home can see that something is missing — and it isn't in the fridge. So, by entering in the missing item on the shopping list, the shopper won't forget to buy anything as it is instantly updated to their smartphone.
Why couldn't you just do that on your phone? Or, heaven forbid, use the actual phone function of your phone? Well, if you're as diligent a customer as Samsung wants you to be, you'd have been cataloging the contents of your fridge all along, and would have known from the screen that you were out of milk. But this seems like a ludicrous amount of effort to glean information that you could get in a few seconds simply by opening the door. Samsung's representative said it was designed to slot into the busy lives of parents shuttling their kids from school to sports practice and so on. I thought about the prospect of my wife navigating this Rube Goldberg-like software, painstakingly recording the state of the cabbage in her digital fridge. It didn't last long as it was amusing, scary, and surprisingly intriguing.
Even if you do buy into Samsung's concept of advanced fridge management software, things remain slightly with confusing. One useful-sounding feature is the ability to track expiry dates, for example, letting you know when you'll need to use up items. Trouble is, expiry dates are set by regulatory bodies, and Samsung says its fridges' advanced cooling technology can keep food fresh for far longer than others. So, you'll be looking at inaccurate information that isn't actually calibrated to your fridge, all because of the supposedly sophisticated "smart" features.
So, Evernote on your fridge. For an example given by Samsung of how this might play out in real-world use, picture the scene: someone is out shopping, and their partner stays at home. They're using Evernote for a shared shopping list, as many people do, but the person at home can see that something is missing — and it isn't in the fridge. So, by entering in the missing item on the shopping list, the shopper won't forget to buy anything as it is instantly updated to their smartphone.
Why couldn't you just do that on your phone? Or, heaven forbid, use the actual phone function of your phone? Well, if you're as diligent a customer as Samsung wants you to be, you'd have been cataloging the contents of your fridge all along, and would have known from the screen that you were out of milk. But this seems like a ludicrous amount of effort to glean information that you could get in a few seconds simply by opening the door. Samsung's representative said it was designed to slot into the busy lives of parents shuttling their kids from school to sports practice and so on. I thought about the prospect of my wife navigating this Rube Goldberg-like software, painstakingly recording the state of the cabbage in her digital fridge. It didn't last long as it was amusing, scary, and surprisingly intriguing.
Even if you do buy into Samsung's concept of advanced fridge management software, things remain slightly with confusing. One useful-sounding feature is the ability to track expiry dates, for example, letting you know when you'll need to use up items. Trouble is, expiry dates are set by regulatory bodies, and Samsung says its fridges' advanced cooling technology can keep food fresh for far longer than others. So, you'll be looking at inaccurate information that isn't actually calibrated to your fridge, all because of the supposedly sophisticated "smart" features.
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