I mean, is Bosch the bad guy here or the salesperson? It sounds like they either lied or were incompetent.
I guess maybe both are bad. Yesterday I tried to configure a friend’s wifi router after the speed was suspiciously slow. It forced me to ask them for their Spectrum login info (the same info they use to pay the bills, not the wifi info) which nobody remembered and I gave up. Apparently this is required according to https://www.reddit.com/r/Spectrum/s/3sLnHuWgEF
So if we’re badmouthing companies that lock physical functionality behind a cloud, add Spectrum. Not that you’ll have much choice if they’re the only provider, but still.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with you. What if you have someone house sitting? You really need to download the Bosch app to their phone just to use the same dishwashing routine that you usually do? Blah.
Any alternatives to Bosch that don’t do this?
Cable company "Customer Premises Equipment" normally has provisioning capabilities built in, so that they can be controlled/reconfigured/reset from the upstream provider. You could probably call Spectrum and they can reset for you.
The reason they do all of this is exactly because of the scenario you ran into: people are always forgetting their logins -- and back when modems/routers didn't have remote provisioning, they spent a lot of time and money sending technicians out to physically reset people's equipment.
Mesh routers are requiring an app to configure them now. TPLink and Ubiquiti is a big violator of this. (Ubiquiti you can run a docker container as a controller... but still..)
How is Ubiquiti a violator of this? You can run their Java software on anything or buy a cloud key. I use an old HP thin client. There’s a good app and a well maintained webpage. If you enjoy pain, most gear has a cli.
I can’t think of a better way to offer the functionality in a way that works for so many customer segments.