[h00k]

"I bought the fridge so my wife could keep up with my calendar. I hope this gets fixed soon. That is a lot of wasted money if no one can use this anymore."

If only there were other ways of checking or sharing an electronic calendar! The future is now.

[exelius]

Yeah, you WOULD kind of be better off (both financially and feature-wise) just gluing an iPad Mini to the front of the fridge...

[Someone1234]

No need to even glue. They sell things like "FridgePad - Magnetic Refrigerator Mount for iPad" that is what it says. Magnets that hold an iPad (Mini or full) to a standard fridge. You can also get 3M mounted ones which allow you to slip in an iPad.

Typically it is cheaper to buy a regular fridge and add an iPad than a smart fridge.

Also it is cheaper to buy four(!) iPads and back-seat tablet holder for a minivan than an integrated DVD player. Easier to replace when it dies too. Those DVD players can easily run $1500+.

[exelius]

Most high-end fridges these days are stainless steel, which is non-magnetic. So you'd need to glue it on (or find some other way).

[sib]

It turns out that the high-end stainless steel fridges actually have ferrous metal components that enable the use of magnets. It's only the mid-tier stainless steel ones that are non-magnetic. (Source: research for a product launched last year which includes a fridge-mountable magnetic remote)

[cglace]

With what I paid for my fridge I would hate to see what a high end fridge costs. . .

[Raphmedia]

Mounting strips. $1 at the store.

[EliRivers]

Those don't fit an iPad, and if you try to make it fit, you'll invalidate the warranty. You'll have to buy the special ones that fit iPads, at the Apple store. 50 dollars. Per strip.

[Raphmedia]

Sorry, we are not talking about the same product. I am talking about rolls of strong double-sided foam tape.

[justinsaccount]

No, you would be better off financially to not waste your money on the iPad.

iPad mini: $399

kindle fire: $49.99

[exelius]

I'm thinking that if you're in the market for a $3600 Internet-connected fridge, you can afford and would just rather have the iPad.

I don't know enough about the Fire to say whether it's a piece of garbage or not; all I know is that I have a bunch of iPad apps that I've paid for and Apple's ecosystem makes it easy to add another iPad and transfer my settings over.

[jerf]

I have a 2013 Nexus 7, and we just got the $50 Fire for the kids while it was on sale. The Nexus 7, even for the "2013", is still a perfectly credible Android tablet, with "full HD". The $50 Fire is 720P, so the display is noticeably worse, but, that probably actually helps with its performance. Otherwise, that $50 Fire is really only slightly slower than the Nexus 7. I even played some MinecraftPE on the Fire, and it was just fine. I didn't have an FPS meter but it was at least 20-30. (I wouldn't be surprised for battery reasons that the game is capped at 30 anyhow. Given the nature of the game and the input I can't tell if the FPS is going much higher on any of those two devices or my last-year's Moto X, the most powerful Android device I own; not enough action.)

It may not meet a techy's high-end needs, but the $50 is perfectly credible now. Not like a $50 tablet two years ago, which was slow, had an immediately-noticeably-crappy touchscreen, and was latent in everything it did. I suspect Amazon's still subsidizing it a bit even at that price, but probably not that much. Those SoCs are really pushing things along. (Pity they're so proprietary.)

[RyanZAG]

Humans are pretty funny!

Going off the usual price for apps ($2.99?), and a 'bunch' is probably about 25 apps, then replacing all your paid iOS apps with paid Fire apps would probably cost you $75.

So ignoring anything else, a lot of people would actually value their $75 sunk app costs greater than the $350 difference between that iPad and the Fire. It's a pretty interesting lesson in humanity.

[qb45]

Except that it takes some time and effort to look up substitutes and install and configure them again.

And there is always this one little app whose substitute would be perfect if only it didn't miss this one little feature.

[exelius]

App store availability aside (many apps are available on iOS that are not available on Fire's outdated Android derivative), Android tablet apps are kind of crappy. Apple wouldn't be able to get away with their premium pricing if the experience on Android were better.

Every review of an Android tablet complains about how the software is buggy and the ecosystem isn't there yet. Still. Again, I was never convinced there was a larger market for tablets; just a market for iPads.

[praneshp]

>>>then replacing all your paid iOS apps with paid Fire apps would probably cost you $75.

In my experience, it's very difficult to find the same apps in the Fire store.

You can just install android on the Kindle Fire and be happy, though.

[mangeletti]

Pertaining the sunk cost fallacy you fell victim to in your second paragraph, unless you have $350 of apps that you need on the iPad (or if you plan to play music from your fridge, which actually would be cool), you're going to be better of paying $49 and spending another $50 for accessories and apps that you "need".

[cdubzzz]

I actually looked up the price of this fridge thinking that maybe it wouldn't be that much more than a mini... $3,600 for the current revision of that model, haha.

http://www.samsung.com/us/appliances/refrigerators/RF28HMELB...

[dasboth]

"What do you mean it can also keep my food cold? I don't need all these useless features, I only bought it for the calendar", he didn't add.