It's totally valid and was obviously written with tongue firmly in cheek - the author (or their editor) is just having a little fun and suggesting that adding wifi to e.g. a stove is a consumer-hostile move.

Consumers have the luxury of voting with their money.

Already it's getting difficult to find dummy versions of consumer appliances such as televisions. They all have Craproid or CrapOS now and all the bugs and problems, security breaches and vulnerabilities that come with it.

A fridge has a 10-20 year expected life span as it is. Anyone think that any manufacturer is seriously commited to maintaining software for that duration of time? In fact I'm going to speculate that having the software become unmaintained would be used as a marketing incentive to have people renew their fridges every couple of years.

No, currently they seem to be really bad at this, judging from cases like "Can't sign in to Google calendar on my Samsung refrigerator"[1].

But, isn't this exactly how big names get replaced by more modern and technologically savvy alternatives? or at least, the big names gets forced to adopt?

[1]. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/Uhfp...

Only while there are comparable manufacturers offering devices with a feature set they do want.

I strongly doubt if the average western consumer has any problem of choice.

On that topic, Barry Schwartz has a very interesting TED talk, aptly titled: The Paradox Of Choice. [1]

PS. See the toothbrush phone example? Yeah, that is now a thing. [2]

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c...

[2] https://twitter.com/internetofshit/status/817531891494457345

I think that's difficult to conclude. A good example might be the implementation of 'smart' features on televisions. I'd love to buy a no-nonsense television that I could simply plug in to an HDMI cable and have display whatever I throw at it. I have a cable box, AV receiver etc. that provide the necessary source content. But it still takes up to a minute for my TV to boot; it displays adverts; it needs software updates; it contains a microphone. That's a bunch of sully features I'd rather not have, but I can't exactly vote with my money here!

(It's technically possible to do that, but I'd have to pay a massive, huge premium for a mediocre product. I don't think that situation counts.)

Try and buy a small television that doesn't suck, I tried and couldn't find anything.