June promises to fix smart ovens that are preheating accidentally
It'll take months for a long-term fix.
As convenient as smart ovens can be, they also introduce their own hassles -- namely, technical hiccups. June plans to update the software for its signature oven after multiple reports of the devices accidentally preheating overnight. CEO Matt Van Horn attributed them to user errors, such as forgetting to remove food, tapping a button by accident or inadvertently issuing an Alexa command. The company isn't taking chances, mind you, and has both immediate and long-term fixes in the works.
Van Horn told the June Owners Facebook community that the first fix, coming "soon," would let you disable remote preheating. If you switch it off, you'll be told if a recipe requires it before you can start. The long-term fix is decidedly more sophisticated. It'll use the door and internal camera sensors to determine when there's no food in the oven, and automatically turn off the heat after a certain amount of time. As this will demand "intelligence work," June is currently planning to release this second fix in January 2020.
While it's comforting that June can address the risks purely through software, those risks were quite serious in the first place. The ovens were preheating beyond 400F, sometimes with food inside. It would only take the wrong meal to start a fire. While this isn't strictly a glitch, it's also clear that June (and likely its competition) needs to account for potential incidents like these going forward.
