After a whole load of empty promises from Anova, it seems to me that they have stopped any development on the app. It is still utterly and completely rubbish. Hardly any of the feedback given over the past year has resulted in any improvements. The list of issues is too long to repeat here.
@AlyssaWOAH care to explain what’s happening? Excuse the insinuation that we have been lied to (it sure feels that way from where we sit) but please be honest in your response this time.
hey @zqushair.
We’ve been making a pile of under-the-hood improvements for connectivity to accommodate additional server load, stability and tightening up response times.
We’ve got updates in our pipeline that are fixing app bugs, adding requested features and continued connectivity improvements.
While I’m not the product lead / engineering lead (I’m part of the CS team), I can say with confidence that the team is extremely focused on delivering a best-in-class product, including the app.
We’re excited about the next set of features and bug fixes we’re releasing in the coming months. We’re a small team and our focus is always going to be doing what is most important for our customers.
Thanks for the input, it is appreciated and we do hear you.
Bill
Hey @Bill. Thanks for responding. Where’s @AlyssaWOAH? Seems she’s too embarrassed to even reply. Last summer, she said everything would be sorted out “soon” and that you guys are working hard on fixing the app. Do you guys even know what you’re doing? If anything, I have more connectivity issues now than I had when I bought it last summer. So it is actually getting worse, not better. Just go through this forum and do a quick survey of how many people complain about the crap connectivity and terrible app. You’ll find that most people have given up on using the app and just do it manually.
Yeah, we get that you’re a small team. If you think that buys you sympathy from customers, it doesn’t. Welcome to the real world. We paid good money for your product and IT DOES NOT WORK AS ADVERTISED. The app is still utterly worthless. Many of us here have warned you (not you specifically) against venturing into launching new products (the nano) while what you have on the market is 1) perfectly fine from a hardware point of view and 2) unfinished from a software point of view 3) you’re a small team! Stupid stupid decision. Now you’re unable to deliver anything since your small team is in over its head. Speaking of which, hows the nano coming along? Are you yet to fire the guy who came up with that stupid idea? I would!
There are two ways out of the hole you’re in, hire some more people and get the job done asap! or ditch the nano altogether and focus your efforts on finishing what you started.
Lastly, SET YOURSELF A DEADLINE AND STICK TO IT! Talking about fixing things in the “coming months” will not get you anywhere… Ask Alyssa… She’s been telling us that for a year.
Z
Be careful what you ask for–the last so called “upgrade” to the IOS app puts a “what are you cooking?” box over top of the information I need. I can’t figure out anyway to make it go away. So the “upgrade” was actually a downgrade in usability.
@ssif21 What kind of iOS device are you using with the app? Is it with mobile or iPad? I’ve pinged our team about this issue.
Wow. Such hostility. Is that necessary?
Somewhat understandable though, given the history.
I saw an update roll out today on the Play Store so I thought great, maybe they’ve fixed some of the issues they promised they would… and they sure didn’t disappoint. It’s just as I expected… nothing! Still the same old crap. The people at ANOVA still seem to think that this is the best way to categorize food. Bravo! Keep it up.
I submitted the bug for this (bothers me too). I’ll get you an update when I hear back why.
Any news on this? 3 months passed but the situation is still the same.
I would like to point out that I am fine with the device at the moment, it is working fine, and also the recipes section of the app is not bad, it is graphically nice and informative.
Talking about the app to control the device, it is simply annoying to use, so much that I just use it to monitor the device, while I still prefer to set it up manually.
To not make this a destructive comment without any reasoning I will tell you what is wrong with the app.
Starting with the ‘I cannot believe it works this way’ things.
The app is substantially a timer, so I would expect to hear a notification when the timer runs out, this doesn’t happen, it isn’t possible to set a sound, or delay the end.
Using the timer doesn’t activate an alarm sound on the phone, but when the app timer runs out, the device start making a notification sound, forever, and I mean forever, it kept playing for more than a hour the first time when I realized I needed to stop it manually.
To me, personally, this two ‘features’ make the timer unusable, I set the device manually and I set another timer app on my phone, so I get actually notified by my phone when the cooking is done.
These are really two problems huge for me.
Talking about other design problems.
I don’t understand why the app has to cycle between the current temp and the set temp, there is so much unused space I cannot understand why aren’t they booth showed at the same time, if it is a problem related to the server pooling time, just make it refreshes every 5-10 seconds, really none needs a second to second real time temperature monitoring, but to me sometimes I want to check what temp I set, but I need to wait for the current temp to go away and cycle to the set temp, annoying, not a deal breaker.
Another design problem with the app is that it is really easy to cancel the current cooking settings while watching preset recipe and set the recipe settings, if the device is already set and cooking, if a recipe is selected, the app should show a prompt asking if you want to stop the current cooking and start a new recipe, another annoying but not a deal breaker, pretty annoying if it happens on very long cooking time and you cannot remember the current timer setting.
These are the four main issues I have with the app, everything else is minor, like the graphic being average, overall the now cooking tab is something I can make in 10 minutes in paint, really average graphic, but this is a personal taste matter.
Really to me doesn’t seem to ask for crazy features, fixing the app would be incredibly simple, watch how any other timer app works and do exactly the same for the timer on the now cooking time, overall insert a notification shade and a notification sound, then add simple features, alarm at a set time, stopwatch and timer, allowing people to change the notification sound and delay it.
Let the cooking continue allowing people to silence the device, this is really essential, the device should never keep playing a notification for hours, you might not be on your phone and people in your house could not know what to do, they will go crazy.
A bit of a redesing of the now cooking tab, it would be a cool touch, not an extremely needed one.
Personally I love the device, I had no issue with it, but the app is below average, some features are unusable (timer) and really the support/develop of the company has been below acceptable (only considering the app, cause I had other contacts with the support for the device and they were fast and friendly).
When I saw the title of this post I thought that really that is the best way to express what Anova and the app relationship is.
I apologize for my english I am not a native english speaker.
I can agree with most of the posters. I can start a cook and NOT touching any control, the cook shuts down. I purchased this wifi connection for the reason that I could check the cook from a remote distance. DOES NOT WORK. I had contact with an Anova person and was instructed on how to reset my unit. It worked at first but it didnt last. It seems that they are saying it will be forthcoming. NOT. They need to fix what they have. No one can say they are fixing it when all this time goes by. Are they in the field or do they get high school IT people to do the work. Please fix it.
3 months since my original post yes, but I posted my comments on the App waaaaaay back in 2017 sometime. I joined this forum exactly a year ago (+ 3days) which is around the time I bought it. I must have posted my feedback within weeks of my initial use, so it’s in fact about a year ago that I complained about those things.
It’s gone waaaaaaay beyond a joke by now. The categories issue would take any half-wit programmer a day (MAX) to fix the mess, but not at anova. No.
The irony of it all. I have bought two, and 4 people bought based on my recommendation. I did warn them however. The device is good but the APP sucks.
Hopefully Electrolux (who bought Anova recently) will step in to fire some lazy programmers and get things back on track.
The funny thing is competition also has its issues. Chefsteps have an equally good device (if anything it looks nicer than the anova) and a fantastic APP… but they only make them for the US market with 110/120v. No European 220/240v version. I would jump over to the Joule by Chefsteps in a heartbeat had they had a 220/240v model.
@nybreath I’ve given this feedback to my dev and product teams. Short of me saying “we’re aware of it” , this is very useful feedback. I can say with regards to the usability of the app, the team is currently heavily focused on improving the basic WI-FI connectivity side of things. We’re still focusing on the bugs and active features (not new features), so I’d expect to see some of these issues resolved as we move along.
Regarding the beep, its a function of the firmware of the device. You can manually turn it off for WIFI via app settings, but for Bluetooth it requires a physical push of the start/stop (play/pause) button on the unit itself. For the timer issues itself, the team is aware and its on the radar.
Thanks again.
Bill
No need to apologise for your english - it’s excellent!
