I disagree whole-heartedly here. I think that’s what Fixed Days might specifically be intended for restricted scheduling, but not Fixed Intervals. I set up Fixed Intervals after installing purely because I was a novice and it was easy. I don’t have watering restrictions so that was a non-issue for me.
The problem is the ‘fullest potential’ part. That requires information about your lawn, your plant types, maturity, sprinkler head types, soil, etc. People that live in a tropical, humid environment that has lush plants in a rich soil have vastly different needs than those that I have, so how will the system know that unless it’s told ? Two sliders just don’t tell it everything it needs, to reach it’s fullest potential. Two sliders might tell it enough to reach a happy compromise however.
In our world of growing data repositories I’m guessing that this issue of populating the system with more optimal data will certainly get better, and I’m sure the Rachio team will be all over it. If Rachio had a databank to access that had soil, commonly planted vegetation type, etc. per region, it would be much easier. Even then, it won’t be complete as it doesn’t know your irrigation system, or what you have planted versus your neighbor. I might have a lush desert landscape while my neighbor has xeriscaped his yard. I just changed my sprinkler heads to a low-rate nozzle that puts out water 4 times slower than my older heads, so my water duration increased by 4x when I made the change to the nozzle setting. That info. wouldn’t be available in a database and is user specific. Moisture sensors buried at the depth of the roots would take care of that issue, but that technology isn’t quite mature yet, at least not enough to be reliable. I think some day the industry will get there, but as a whole the industry just isn’t there today.