Who needs any of this digital feces? Not want, but need? I don’t have a single problem that can be solved with technology these days.
Logitech used actually be good at this. Look at their squeezebox software and Logitech media server, they were open sourced, released to the public and are still under active development and in widespread use.
how many times does logitech specifically, and these companies in general, have to do this before idiots stop buying this shit?
There need to be strong regulations to prevent this sort of Ewaste. As long as companies can get away with this they will.
And no, voting with your pocket book isn’t going to change their behavior.
While I agree that something needs to be done, stronger regulations will just be in an added requirement for the development of these devices, which will make it more expensive.
You can’t have fast development, cheap things, and longevity. Companies will not invest in making those products because they’ll be out of business by the time their market is saturated.
That’s the point. If your business has to create a mountain of un-recyclable trash in order to thrive, it should absolutely fail.
There has to be some sort of reasonable balance between new developments and longevity.
Asking any engineer for a device that’s near indestructible but will continue to have software updates for 10 years is a hard ask.
For a lot of devices right to repair would work just fine. Being able to swap out battery extends the life of most cell phones. But it’s an unreasonable request for that cell phone, for example, to be able to be supported for 10 years worth of software updates.
It will slow the development cycle for a lot of devices down quite a bit. Which honestly is fine. I feel like a lot of products have reached maturity, and companies are reinventing them just for the sake of reinventing them and selling a “new” product with a new battery. I’m looking at you, Apple.
The problem with determining what is an acceptable lifecycle for a product is that there will be no one left to support the product in 10 years if the company folds in the meantime. It is a significant drag on companies to support legacy products while also innovating and creating new products. It’s just a fact a fact.
And from a consumer perspective, If you want cool, new fancy, shiny shit every year and for it to be reliable and last for 10 years, it’s just not gonna happen. We have been trained To buy new shit every year and desire that new shiny upgrade Without understanding that we’re getting cheap shitty products for a premium.
Your $100” iPhone is now going to become a $3000 iPhone that lasts for five years instead of two. Tell me how that’s a win for anybody?
if idiots stop buying this shit, they wont keep making it.
the problem is the idiots keep buying
That doesn’t work. The amount of research people need to do to get enough information which product can currently just be shut down by the manufacturer is crazy…also it doesn’t matter: the corps can just change the contract afterwards and you loose access to the features anyway…it needs regulations to stop this.
Are you buying these u/a_random_idiot? /Jk
Honestly though how are consumers supposed to know which ones will be a bust and which ones won’t?
No, this requires regulations to prevent massive amounts of Ewaste. Consumers can’t change this behavior.
Like right to repair or privacy. We need real regulations. Corporations are too big and powerful and even something like choice has been turned into choosing which shitty corp you want to buy from.
You know how the US government has 3 branches that are supposed to check and balance each other? We should teach that Corporations, Government, and Individuals/Unions operate similarly.
Corporate terms of service check individuals against abusing others. So do government laws.
Government is supposed to check corporations from abusing their customers. And customer boycotts moderate corporate behavior.
And corporations… Apparently moderate the flow of information to individuals so the companies always manufacture consent. And lobby for their own advantage.
If nothing else, by describing how it is, we can have a real conversation about how fucked/okay all of this is, and examine what parts of this framework are actually functioning.
And in that, we can explore where Unions fit - as 3rd party bosses steeped in corruption, or as genuine representatives of their people. And explore how to rebound in just the one context, because we are good citizens. 😇😅😉
Blaming consumers for the behavior of corporations is a fallacy of capitalism… consumers act in their best interests, not necessary in everyone’s best interests, so we all suffer if everyone does that.
if consumers acted in their best interest, none of this shit would exist.
Oh yes, advertising doesn’t work, which is why it’s fucking everywhere
You don’t even have to, squeezebox owners never got a choice. It was cool that a hacker community built it even better after logi abandoned it 😁
Sad news, I’m still impressed that they didn’t kill their Harmony servers though, fingers crossed !
Ive hated logitech for a while. Looks like my opinion of them wont be changing any time soon. I get no longer supporting products, but bricking them? And then giving a 15% off coupon for some products that they could later brick as well? Youd have to be a right fucking mug to buy anything logitech after this.
Nest bricked my security system (after magically installing Assistant on it [oh by the way it has an undocumented microphone]), at least they gave you $100… in gift cards to the fucking google store. Logitech isn’t even that smart.
I get no longer supporting products, but bricking them?
I think what’s happening in the background here is these “Internet of Trash” devices hook to cloud infrastructure for which the business no longer wants to pay.
If they were interested in actually building something useful, they would open up their API layers and add a way to link them to different services. But since they don’t give a fuck about you as a customer, they plan poorly as a business, and they have no ability to produce well-engineered software, instead they code everything so that it is hopelessly coupled (probably through hard-coded things up to and including certificates) with specific garbage they made, make it impossible to move to anything else, and then brick your shit.
Can’t brick my G500 and my Z5500s. Best in class, approaching decades old at this point.
But as with every company, profits over quality. Fuck em.
I had the Z680s, they were amazing. Easily had them for like 15 years or something
There’s a good reason all stuff you buy is zigbee or zwave.
Otherwise this is an inevitably
or Matter
Isn’t matter just a standard, that runs on multiple Protokolls like ZigBee or wifi?
It’s a protocol that runs over WiFi, Ethernet and Thread. So not Zigbee. Though the Zigbee alliance was part of the group that designed the Matter spec. Many Zigbee hubs also support Matter but the two protocols are on two distinct networks. And if you want to use Matter over Thread you need a device that can act as a Thread Border Router. Like an AppleTV or a Home Assistant instance with a Thread antenna.
That’s the reason why I never buy a smart device I don’t control.
That’s any smart device. Unless you’re the one.doimg the updates.yoirself, they will all become obsolete as technology evolves. This is the case here too; sounds they just don’t have enough people using them to justify figuring out how to keep them working as new devices and platforms roll on. 9.5 years is an alright run, comparatively.
Just because it’s a “smart” service doesn’t mean it has to connect to the Internet or a server or the manufacturer. If it does neither, it can’t be turned off by them.
All my devices run local-only protocols. Nothing leaves my house. The devices that would be proprietary were reflashed to tasmota (fully open source, local only). Others are either Zigbee or Shelly. While Shelly has a cloud connection, it’s fully optional and disabled by default (including automatic updates). The hardware is also supported by tasmota, and reflashing is always just 5 minutes of effort away.
There is absolutely nothing that any manufacturer has to do to keep my stuff working. I have to do a little something (keep my tiny server on, basically). But more importantly there is nothing any manufacturer can do to stop my stuff from working.
Thats what I did for 10 years.
To get my wife or parents or kids to use these often hacky and clunkier UIs was pain. I eased up and decided not to care. All iot shit are now in their own vlan with only :443 outboud allowed and I have integrated them to hassio. If my wife wants to use those million different cloud apps, I install those for her.
Decided just not to care.
Depends on your definition of "smart’ I guess. ZigBee stuff like buttons and the like probably won’t become obsolete for a long time. I guess you could argue that ZigBee protocol updates could eventually brick them though. Good thing a lot of it is open source
The trick is to buy reasonably open devices, then provide the smarts yourself.
If it can talk to / be configured by HomeAssistant, and doesn’t require internet to work, it’ll probably be fine.
9.5 years is ancient in smart home devices.
Though, any company that stops supporting a device should be legally required to open source all dependencies required to operate it, or provide a full refund.
9.5 years is ancient for smartphones, not for something that is supposed to work indefinitely like a switch
Also, that time is the best case scenario. When they stopped selling those switches? 3 years ago? Unless they discontinued them almost immediately after launch, there are customers with a much shorter timeframe
9.5 years is ancient in smart home devices.
Note to self. Don’t buy smart devices. 9.5 years is like a sneeze to me. I still have a Nintendo NES from the late 1980s still in working order. I mean, I modded the video out, and replaced the pin connector. But it works.
Except for a fairly tiny niche community of users still using them for nostalgia reasons, the NES is absolutely also ancient and obsolete in every way and has been for several decades.
Is it? It still works while so-called newer/better technology goes to the landfill within years.
Yes it is, because the HW is completely unnecessary, you can emulate it perfectly on a potato. It only serves a nostalgic purpose, which is also fine, but in all other aspects it is completely obsolete.
emulate it perfectly
This is a far stronger claim than any of the developers for these emulators claim.
I have two Yale Zwave locks that are at least 11 years old and still kicking. The key factor to this is the non reliance on the cloud.
Zigbee, Zwave, Esphome and other non-cloud will always work longer than any cloud based solution that is at risk of being shutdown, use a outdated or no longer available app, become a subscription, etc.
I agree with you that they should be required by law to open their code and unlock the devices but I doubt this will happen any time soon.
It’s a switch, there shouldn’t be anything to go obsolete.
We absolutely need this to be illegal. The discount coupon they offered to customer ws insulting.
Not true, zwave and ZigBee are not required to use the manufacturers apps and you can setup a home assistant server on a raspberry pi in about 20 minutes and never worry about planned obsolescence like this. This is why I never buy WiFi only smart devices that need internet access and an account on an app to control.
It’s one thing to become obsolete because a new technology appears. It’s another thing for the rug to pulled from under you. You can still use old tech just fine, but not if the publisher decides to brick all your devices.
9.5 years is pretty good if you think of it as tech, but the problem is that smart home products are often home appliances. Some are even home fixtures. So yeah people feel cheated when something like a light switch gets dropped from service or demands a subscription
That’s exactly what I do. I also have IoT devices that are still trucking along a decade later. I fully expect them to likely do a decade more.
Both Tasmota and ESPhome provide open source firmware for many IoT devices. They throw up a local API interface that other systems can talk to. Providing legacy support is as hard as using HTML put and get commands.
15% off a logitech device purchase for the complete removal of a 100$ smart switch. that’s a slap to the face “Thank’s for being a customer here’s a coupon you can only use if you continue being a customer”
And can only use that 15% off in their boutique store where stuff is more expensive than other outlets
This is why it’s a great idea to refuse to install everything that’s possible, including smart switches, cameras, lights etc. that rely on the good will of some company to keep running.
Honeywell wifi thermostats worked great until they didn’t. Now their servers are often slow or down. TCP-Link smart bulbs reset regularly if their Internet access is blocked because TCP-Link desperately needs to keep track of when everyone’s lights are on and off. Plex wants us to log into their servers to watch content we’re hosting ourselves. Too bad if their servers are down. Security camera companies have been disabling local storage options without warning for years.
Logitech actually planned to introduce a subscription mouse. Hopefully at some point people will get sick of this shit, refuse to put up with it and their sales will tank.
Not to be pedantic, but you mean TP-Link (Kasa) smart lights right? I have these but haven’t bothered to block any sort of telemetry with my adguard home server. I see several domains queried that match .tplink.com but I wouldn’t want to reduce functionality as you mentioned
Yes. I had them blocked via my firewall because of the constant traffic they generated and blocking Internet access causes constant bulb resets. The resets are known to TP-Link and according to a couple of sources they created a private firmware release that fixed it. TP-Link failed to publically release that firmware, and last time I checked deny it ever existed. I replaced the bulbs with 3rd Reality Zigbee bulbs that work perfectly.
Plex wants us to log into their servers to watch content we’re hosting ourselves.
I hate Plex as much as the next Jellyfin user but you can just whitelist your local network, although people who understand that aren’t the target audience are they? …
I didn’t get that far. When they demanded I log in I just removed it. Jellyfin is working OK without having to figure out how to bypass defaults.
This is why it’s a great idea to refuse to install everything that’s possible, including smart switches, cameras, lights etc. that rely on the good will of some company to keep running.
Even then you can get fucked over. I’ve used Hue smart lights for years, and back when I bought them, you didn’t need an account to use them, just an app and network connection. Years later, they forced an online login for the app, requiring you to be online to interface with the bulbs. You can kind of work around it with Home Assistant, but you still need the account now to add the bulbs, and I don’t think scenes work without an account either now.
But you can buy a 10-20€ zigbee stick and connect them directly to home assistant. No hue bridge or account required.
I have a Zigbee antenna. Will have to double check. I’m pretty sure the lights work with the antenna, but scenes are only possible if you’ve integrated them (generally via hue through something like Homekit).
Zigbee2mqtt can do scenes, no problem.
The only thing you miss is the hue app.
When I was in the market for bulbs Hue was just starting that BS. They lost that sale and I’ve been in the process of removing network access for everything possible and severely restricting it when not. My old Honeywell wifi thermostat is gone, smart appliances are disconnected from wifi, and TVs are blocked by my firewall when they aren’t actually being used. Next up, Graphene OS.
Sometimes I’d like to move to a tropical island with no news or Internet at all.
I want to move to a cabin in the mountains near the ocean. Maybe the northern fjords of scandinavia. Somewhere cold. Fuck sitting still and sweating. But otherwise I’m on board with this idea too. lol
And this is why i stick with Z-Wave/Insteon/etc. I have a local hardware controller that doesn’t have to be connected to the internet to work. It can be cloud controlled remotely, but if their service shut down tomorrow, it’d still be fully functional locally or if I exposed the server endpoint myself.
Remember when the stuff we bought actually used to be owned by us, to be used by us, was able to be repaired by us? Now everything is scamware, licenses, and utter crap with threats of legal retaliation if you open, manipulate, or in any way change the product you “bought” from them.
So basically, Logitech sold these devices, decided nah, we’re done, and has given you garbage, while your ROI will never be captured.
Boycotting Logitech is easy moving forward; Don’t buy their crap.
Vote with your wallet.
Boycotting Logitech is easy moving forward; Don’t buy their crap.
You’re like 5 years too late on that for me. I bought a mouse in 2019. And in 2020 the mouse died. Wouldn’t even turn on. Wouldn’t charge. Dead.
I call up logitech, and ask what my options are. Basically my options are “fuck you”. Couldn’t even send it in for repair at all.
Compare this to 2005. I had a mouse in those days I paid $200 for. Which in those days was quite a bit. My then girlfriend broke my mouse. So I called logitech to ask how much it cost to fix. I had the mouse about 2-3 years at that point. So I knew it wasn’t under warrenty, but I figure maybe repair is cheaper than buying a new one.
Guy on the phone says “Nah, I’ll just ship you one”. And I was confused. I asked “Oh. How much is that?” And he says “Don’t even worry about it. Lets just send you a replacement.”
Week later I had a free replacement on my doorstep. Instant recurring customer.
But now? Between deminishing product quality, disappearing customer service, and enshitified policies, I no longer feel like I’m a logictech customer for the past 5 years. This after being a huge cheerleader of theirs since the early 2000s. Maybe late 90s.
These companies do not seem to get that the easiest way to generate consistant revenue is with repeat business. I’m no longer a logitech customer, but I still have a lot of logitech products. Whenever they die, they’ll be replaced with something else.
I would buy a G5 every few years until the end of time if they still made them. Profit clearly isn’t the driving motivator of the post capitalist world we inhabit.
And what exactly will you replace your logitech stuff with? they’re all going down this path now.
honestly if they still make the only mice that don’t look like a gaming router they might still have me … on the second hand market at least.
Looking forward to Louis Rossmann’s inevitable video on this.
A certain operating system whose name I won’t mention is ending support a day before and now this? WTF is wrong with this world?
I think that was the operating system they told us was going to be the last version of that operating system ever. And then they released another one. Weird
That was said by one random, rather insignificant Microsoft employee who had no capacity to make such a claim. Not in a position to even have that kind of information on the company’s future plans.
And even if they did have the capacity, if you actually go look at what really was said, it’s reasonably clear that they wanted to say latest version but fucked up the sentence. I hate defending Microsoft but that thing has become a meme at this point.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. Thanks for correcting me. I’ll try to remember and not spread that factoid anymore. But Microsoft can still eat the fattest of cocks.
I read the title as "Logitech will bring new smart home buttons on October 15” and I thought “hmm new proprietary iot shit, I wonder when they’re going to brick them”
They’re also bricking the vertical mouse I got in 2022 because apparently it’s too much to ask to expect a $75 mouse to work for 4 years.
How? Is the mouse reliant on their servers to operate?
How are they bricking it? Is that something that other Logitech vertical mouse owners need to worry about?
I wasn’t clear but I meant that their build quality has gone down significantly since the 90s when they developed a good reputation and market share. A single click starts to randomly register as a double click over time.
That’s not them bricking it though. Yes it’s shitty build quality, but that is an entirely different issue than them bricking equipment that still is very much functional from a HW perspective.
Personally, I see planned obsolescence as the same thing. It’s all to force you to buy new stuff whether you want to or not.
Right, it’s using a metaphor, drawing a link between the classic definition of bricking and an overall pattern of otherwise selling a product that becomes non useful. Implying that this outcome is fundamental and spans specific vehicles for getting there.
Yeah no you’re just using the wrong words to describe your issue.
Metaphor is based on license. Right and wrong don’t apply. Come back to this discussion when you’ve finished high school freshman English.
Ah, well, if you’ve got an hour and are fairly handy…
Thank you! I’ll check that out.
Ploopy time!
