There's no particular incentive for the changes made after the sale to improve functionality, particularly if the nominal owner of the machine can't detect them. If your wash efficiency is better this month than last month, wouldn't you like to know what change caused that? How about if it's worse? What if it accidentally breaks your dishwasher? Or the new, more efficient settings no longer get your dishes fully clean?

I don't think there's a terribly strong incentive for Miele to actively break their customers' deployed machines, since those customers might buy a Bosch next time, but there isn't a terribly strong incentive for them to improve them either.

There is a strong incentive for Miele to find ways to sell their customers' personal information, for example to insurance companies, collection agencies, or police forces, and this is functionality that can be added later in a firmware update.

Better to leave update functionality under the control of the people who are most directly affected by it: the users.

In theory, but in practice it doesn't actually matter enough for it to make a difference. What software-only advances are being made in wash efficiency these days?

Improved detection of unlicensed dishwasher tablets.

or as Nintendo puts it "Improvements to system stability"

None, because they didn't have OTA updates... until now!

Release notes state they added and extra "dub" to the "scrubba-dub" routine. It is now a scrubba-dub-dub routine.

Release Notes v3: Accidentally added too many dubs leading to "scrubba-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub" routine. Rolled back to a reasonable number of dubs.

I've used Miele appliances for 3 decades now. Somehow, until recently, they managed to provide excellent quality and durability without spying on their users and releasing half baked firmwares in need of updates.

This is what happens when you hire / promote an overly ambitious VP and don't tell them "No" when they pitch.

This can easily been spun the other way around: There was a firmware upgrade that would save 10% energy / water / time in certain circumstances, but that evil corp hasn't provided us with a way to upgrade, because they want us to buy a brand new dishwasher.

Except that they clearly never tried to incentivize customers into frequent upgrades. Quite unlike most other brands that have a habit of dying months out of warranty.

Anecdata: In my wive's house, we have a Miele wasching machine from the year 2000. Its been used daily. It is as good as on the day it was purchased - quiet, and does not vibrate even when spinning at its max 1600 rpm. Its pretty amazing.

I believe when it was last cleaned they did install new firmware -- though to be entirely hoenest, I doubt a lot of people really know or care how efficient their wasching machines are -- water is way too cheap.

Every dishwasher I've ever used, your best bet is to put everything on full blast, least efficient settings. Otherwise the dishes get "almost" clean. I always imagine the engineers standing around patting themselves on the back after testing, and marveling how their ideas worked so well most of the dishes got clean.

The dishes all need to be totally clean, every time, or it's useless to me.

I can guarantee that the majority of the ineffective cycles are there because of environmental regulations (energy star in the US; there are equivalents in other western countries).

The big one that drives me nuts on new cars are all the auto start/stop at idle systems. They eat car batteries and starters (increase wear from oil starvation on startup too - consumer car engines are not positively lubricated; pressure has to pump back up every time the engine starts) and there is no way to disable them other than pushing a button every time you start your car (or hacking around with the wiring), but I'm sure they are critical in obtaining higher gas milage requirements so expect them to proliferate. It's crap that happens when you focus on one metric - gas milage - to the exclusion of "the big picture" such as total carbon footprint over the life of the car including the manufacturing and replacement costs/environmental impact of replacing prematurely worn out parts from "energy efficient" design decisions.

Regardless of the reason for these "ineffective cycles", I use them. They work well. Not sure what the big deal is.

Isn't this the truth. Over Christmas family was around and someone loaded the dishwater and put it on economical or whatever the 'easy wash' mode was called, i chuckled knowing they might as well waved the dirty dishes in the sky for an equilavent wash. Its like, why are the other options even there...Intensive wash, every time.

Does not match my experience. I have a fairly regular Bosch dishwasher and use the ECO mode almost exclusively without any issues.

Same experience here. This can’t be right though. Surely we are the exceptions and there really are idiotic committees forcing manufacturers to include eco settings that don’t work - rather than the other explanation of some dishwashers being crap?

My Mum has a Hotpoint because she skimped on it during a kitchen refit. It's complete crap compared to a mid-tier Bosch: the cleaning is worse, the tablet often gets stuck in the tray, and it doesn't dry properly.

That said, even the Bosch needed a new heat pump after 3 years which was an adventure in unreasonably complex disassembly.

Probably also depends on if or how carefully you rinse before putting stuff in there.

I rinse things pretty well beforehand and use quick wash and it works well.

Don't use detergent pods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

Yup - the amount of excess detergent alone that is being washed into the wastewater systems is staggering when you think about how much is extra detergent in fixed size pods is wasted across the board.

My parents had a GE dishwasher that auto dosed a liquid paste dishwashing detergent. It worked great, only dispensing what the dishwasher sensed the dirt load called for. For some reason my mom hated it and they replaced that dishwasher with one that they now use pods with. Sigh - I don't think she liked the feeling of not being in control.

We humans can be so annoying sometimes.

EDIT: that GE also did it without requiring a wifi connection or firmware updates :p

Super informative! Saying that I use pods and my dishes come out perfect. Might be because we do them daily so nothing is ever too crusted on.

tl;dw (but you really should watch this):

- Don't use pods

- Fill the main and prewash cups every time. The prewash is intended to be used every time, not just when the dishes are exceptionally dirty.

- Run the hot water in the attached sink to full heat to ensure the washer gets filled with hot water

Until we use the last of the pods up I've found if you put a squirt or two of Dawn Powerwash in for the prewash it works amazingly well. And before the inevitable comments come up: unlike regular dish soap (do NOT put in a dishwasher) it doesn't suds up either. Yeah, it does a little at first but by the end of the prewash cycle the foam is gone - yes, I have checked.

As an aside: Dawn Powerwash is flat out amazing in general, especially for really crusty/baked on stuff. Spray some on, come back in 15 minutes and it will more than likely wipe right off - if it hasn't dissolved whatever was crusted on and ran off already. If you haven't tried it and it's available in your area give it a try! Amazing degreaser. Works on laundry with grease stains, carpet, oil stains on the driveway (mop up with kitty litter/towels; don't wash down the street!) and all kinds of other non-kitchen uses too.

As long as I clean my dishes before I put them in the washer, I never have any issues.

I don't have any issues putting dirty dishes in my dishwasher. Do you use pre-wash detergent in your machine? I highly recommend you watch this video by Technology connections[1], I too used to think I had to rinse my dishes before putting them in the machine.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

Mom? Is that you?

Was that intended to be ironic?

Nope, that's how you're "supposed" to use them.

Seriously, you too can save a bunch of electricity and wasted time by pre-washing stuff before putting it in the dishwasher.

I do agree that it sounds like satire, though.

I have a Bosch dishwasher and in the manual it actually states not to pre-rinse the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. Of course I rinse the bigger pieces of food off anyway because otherwise the filter will need to be cleaned more often (doesn't have a grinder/disposal), but it does also waste a ton of water, and energy heating that water, to pre-wash your dishes.

I believe the real trick is not to overfill the machine with dishes, and ensure your dishes are arranged properly.

> I believe the real trick is not to overfill the machine with dishes, and ensure your dishes are arranged properly.

This. Filling a dishwasher is an art of binpacking in itself. I'm pretty satisfied by my Bosch one, unless it is just a1-2 cycle before asking for the cleaning cycle, 95% of the times everything come up perfectly clean, even with the "eco" program. When something comes out dirty (if everything was properly placed), usually it will nag you to clean the dishwasher on the next cycle or the other.

Says who? This is from Miele's user manual:

> There is no need to rinse items under running water!

Dishwashers already pre-wash with an initial rinse cycle, the whole point is that they do the washing for you. It's also a whole lot more efficient in terms of water waste.

The problem is when you don't give that first cycle any powder to work with, ie. if you're using pods.

> The problem is when you don't give that first cycle any powder to work with, ie. if you're using pods.

That is really interesting, as I do use pods. I need to look into this more.

More generally, I have had a lot more success with not needing to re-wash things if I rinse before hand (but I don't have a miele).

The secret is to put powdered detergent into the pre-wash tray. That and make sure it starts out with hot water...

I've never pre-washed dishes unless it is rice. Everything else goes straight into the dishwasher as it was collected from the table. Always comes out clean and never had problems (unless it is rice... which seems to never get fully rinsed away).

I never do, and my dishwasher works fine? What am I doing wrong? Why would I "prewash" and waste precious water and time when it's going to be washed just fine?

A bit of both, I think.

Some people put the dirtiest dishes in the history of humanity in their washer and then complain it doesn’t clean very well. A quick rinse with water to get the chunks, or the really caked on stuff off works wonders.

We just run the normal eco program without any extras. The dishes get perfectly clean every time as long as nothing hinders the rotating arms that spray water.

This is the big cause of issues for us (Bosch 800). Either the arms are blocked or the holes clogged, or the middle rack's hose junction hasn't properly mated with the water source at the back of the machine.

Overall I'm really happy with this machine though; worth the pretty penny it costs.

Depends on the size of your household a bit. If it runs every second day, it should not be a problem. If you save dishes for a week or two, the additional water from the intensive program really helps to get rid of dried out dirt.

In that case it's called not a dishwasher, but a Cockroach Breeding System.

No, for that you have the rats eating the cockroaches.

Ours runs 2-3 times a day, but even still, I typically soak all the cutlery in a tall glass or pitcher full of water in the sink, and load it last minute. There are just too many nooks and crannies for stuff to get stuck in on a fork or knife, and they cleaning they get in a three-rack machine is too gentle for anything other than a sterilizing rinse.

My Bosch gets everything sparkling every time on the eco mode (50 degrees, but takes nearly 4 hours).

The only time it ever fails is when something blocks a rotor and half a tray doesn't get any water on the underside.

But I don't think spraying more, hotter water at the clean half will help that.

Does your dishwasher have a water softening system?

> Maybe a new cleaning powder comes with a new algo.

Or it is treated by the same algorithm like all the other cleaning powders, which is: "mix with water then spray through nozzles". Strangly enough, this has worked great for decades without firmware updates. For the longest time it even worked without firmware.

mile dishwasher has detergent disk with 400g of powder. amount of powder to be dispensed per cycle is configurable.

Mine has a little compartment where I put in a block of pressed powder (a "tab") and then close it.

If I want more, I put in 2 tabs.

If I want none, I put in no tab.

If I want my dishes to smell like soup, I put in a buillon cube. (Not recommended by whoever built the Dishwasher)

Maybe a silly question, but does Miele require a specific kind of cleaning powder or packet, or does it have an option to tell it what kind of cleaning powder you're using?

My dishwasher you just dump any boxed powder in and I can use any brand I want. I'm assuming that for a machine this expensive and geared at long-term usage Miele would have the same capabilities, and it's not like a Keurig thing where the user is forced to use individual pods.

But if that's the case then I'm not sure how this would work unless the user enters a config setting or something for what soap they're commonly using. Water hardness the washer could measure itself, I guess.

Edit: another commenter below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30147979) links to the manual (https://www.mieleusa.com/pmedia/ZGA/TX2070/10546880-000-01_1...), which answers most of these questions.

> does Miele require a specific kind of cleaning powder or packet

No.

But they do have an auto-dosing capability on some models that take a disk and dispense the right amount of powder for the given wash.

Which? reviewed this and concluded it's a gimmick: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/09/is-this-miele-dishwashe... . I agree with this verdict.

The washing machine auto-dosing though... that isn't as bad, being more cost-efficient overall.

My take on it all: Miele dishwashers are so-so... their washing machines and fridges excellent, the ovens above average, the hobs exceptional, the hoods well made but over-priced.

Entire dishwasher it's a gimmick. you can wash dishes yourself. or you can use dishwasher in order to save some time. same with auto-dosing - it's a convenience and it's really convenient. with regards to pricing: machine comes with 6 disks. You can refill them later with usual powder in a couple of minutes.

Another gimmick that machine has, it's auto-opening at the end of the cycle in order to vent off steam.

I had many different dishwashers over the years, but Miele one is so far the best I ever had

it's manual for older miele. in new one you can either use standard detergent (pod, liquid, powder) or you can insert special 400g disc of powder and it was be auto-dispensed

Do they? Because that's literally the only kind of update I'd be interested in. If they actually regularly improve the way the dishwasher washes dishes, then that justifies the connectivity, but if these updates are rare, then I don't really care about them.

Doubt they would have any incentives to do anything but the bare minimum considering it doesn't appear to be a paid service?

Because it'd be too easy to just invest some time beforehand to figure out the optimal process beforehand.

Maybe there's some new dirt-sensing algorithms that can use crowd-sourced info to improve the efficiency for your specific dirt patterns and water type and detergent combination.

Amazing anybody had any clean dishes with dishwashers before the advent of the internet and wifi so the dishwasher could connect to them.

please click on three dirty coffee cups

Man if it could sense when the dishes are loaded so poorly that there’s no chance they get clean and just refuse to run until they’re rearranged, that would be so nice!

> Maybe a new cleaning powder comes with a new algo.

Ah, fantastic. "Now that we have updated the firmware, we have determined that you need the new proprietary cleaning powder. For your convenience, the dishwasher is disabled until you supply the proper cleaning powder."

The cynic in me would be really surprised if this were the case. I imagine it's more about collecting data, and updating so it can collect more data, better.

I would expect them to eventually be pressured into shortening the drying cycle to hit some green goal, making you dry more dishes by hand.

We used to get this right before stamping them out in the factory. Instead, everything is all appy now, for the benefit of the manufacturer. They are riding the hype to normalize their shitty behavior. Sort of like when banks inconvenience you for thier sake and say it's to protect you (the person under no risk of liability).