alt Hacker NewsI haven't been in the market for a WiFi router for a long time so I thought all the consumer stuff still used a web server for config. Enterprise stuff is either the same or has a serial port. In any case, it doesn't make sense to require a separate app that they also have to spend resources maintaining when their users will already have a browser they can use, so I suspect the only reason is the app collects usage information that they can sell...
On the bright side, maybe someone can get Claude or some other LLM to figure out how to crack it; and perhaps even vibe-code an alternative app.
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Regular consumers increasingly use apps to do stuff instead of web browsers. They seem to prefer it this way.
And at least for connected devices at home, a dedicated app can have lower friction for initial setup for the "I'm not a computer person" crowd than other alternatives do.
(I know, I know. It's terrible. It even feels something like betrayal sometimes. But that's how it be, anyway -- and you and I are powerless to do anything about it.)
> On the bright side, maybe someone can get Claude or some other LLM to figure out how to crack it; and perhaps even vibe-code an alternative app.
LLMs are great for this, though the more people use it for blackhat style things, the more I fear they will lockdown LLMs which are useful for reversing things that are legacy as heck and abandonware.