fridge, washing machine, oven etc, [...] Some didn't know how to handle that
I am surprised, all the European brands like Miele, Siemens, Bosch, etc. household appliances work fine without an app. Most that we have now do have an option to connect to WiFi, we never connected them and they all work fine with good old buttons like it's 1985.
There is a dishwasher from Bosch, that misses some features if you are not using the App - cost-cutting measures. Jeff Geerling made a video about that:
https://youtu.be/5M_hmwBBPnc