I could see cases where connected toasters could be useful. It'd be a marginal amount of added value, but it would be there.
The problem is that in the current context, almost any IOT device has an additional negative value attached to whatever positive value its features give, because basically every company doing it makes overcomplicated crap.
In a perfect world, you might be able to plug in an IOT toaster and have it automatically connect to your Amazon/Google/Apple/whatever hub (with a simple "I found <yourname>'s hub, is this correct?" interface). At that point the hub would track the toaster status and the household context, and then do stuff like say, via your phone or a set of discreet speakers throughout the house, "The toast was burning, so I stopped the heat" or "You left your toaster on when nobody was home, so I turned it off".
None of this would be impossible to implement today, but it would require thinking about long-term holistic benefits instead of being able to slap "IoT device" on something to try and sell more to nerds.
> But how do you leave a toaster on when nobody's home?
Start toast, go and grab the mail, get distracted by a neighbor, forget about the toast, go over to look at their new riding lawnmower.
> And it's possible for a toaster to detect burning without requiring an internet connection.
Nothing about the scenarios I described would require an internet connection for anything but communicating outside the house (e.g. phone notifications).
I think the point of the comment you replied to was that almost every toaster automatically shuts off after an adjustable time. Unless you have drastically misadjusted your toaster settings the worst case for a toaster is burnt toast (or perhaps some smoke if you really didn't get it right).
The problem is that in the current context, almost any IOT device has an additional negative value attached to whatever positive value its features give, because basically every company doing it makes overcomplicated crap.
In a perfect world, you might be able to plug in an IOT toaster and have it automatically connect to your Amazon/Google/Apple/whatever hub (with a simple "I found <yourname>'s hub, is this correct?" interface). At that point the hub would track the toaster status and the household context, and then do stuff like say, via your phone or a set of discreet speakers throughout the house, "The toast was burning, so I stopped the heat" or "You left your toaster on when nobody was home, so I turned it off".
None of this would be impossible to implement today, but it would require thinking about long-term holistic benefits instead of being able to slap "IoT device" on something to try and sell more to nerds.