I remember reading somewhere that only the clock and calendar icons update, because they can do so without requiring internet connection and draining battery life in order to update. At least that was supposed to be the reading a long time ago (I think still in the Steve Jobs era)

How did they reattach the finger to the washing machine?

You should give Home Assistant a go! It’s an open-source Home automation platform, managing all your smart home device from a single place. Being open source, it supports almost everything out there, and anything that is not supported out of the box is provided by the community.