I'm shopping for a dishwasher and finding that some -- several Whirlpool brands -- have a Kosher-Friendly Mode. Upon first hearing of this, I thought that the Kosher-Friendly Mode might be a timer that automatically caused the dishwasher to start at, let's say, midnight on Friday night, so that if you loaded the dishes after dinner on Friday and put in detergent, you could hope for clean dishes by lunch.
It seems like that's not it at all. As far as the Whirlpool customer service people can determine, the Kosher-Friendly Mode simply makes the lights and controls inoperable.
I don't really understand that. My brief informal survey suggests that we're all loading the dishwasher on Shabbos already, with the intention of running the machine on Saturday night, although nobody's heard of Kosher-Friendly Mode.
So what's with this new feature that seems to amount to an "off" switch?
And would there be any objection to my brainchild, a timer that washes the dishes at a pre-set time? How is it different from a timer in any other machine whose operation without a timer would be forbidden?