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This problem isn't unique to Philips Hue, and I'm not sure Philips is necessarily a bad actor here. They are, after all, just acting in their best interest (and

This problem isn't unique to Philips Hue, and I'm not sure Philips is necessarily a bad actor here. They are, after all, just acting in their best interest (and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse). Perhaps the problem is more related to the ZigBee standard, or more specifically, what ZigBee doesn't cover. As I understand it, the fact that Hue products conform to the ZigBee standard only applies to the protocol between the hub and lights; it says nothing about communication between control interfaces and the hub. With that in mind, I feel that anyone who expected to use the Hue hub for controlling anything other than Hue lights had incorrect expectations. I certainly don't remember seeing Philips advertising any kind of third-party interoperability with the product. Of course, it would be awesome for consumers if Philips did make that guarantee of interoperability, but from a business standpoint, once you start going down that road, you effectively have to support everyone else's products (whether or not they conform to the spec), and any failing of another product then reflects poorly on Philips' brand - even if they aren't the ones at fault. So maybe if we put more pressure on these companies to adopt a common home automation control standard (not Apple's, not Google's, but something vendor-neutral), then we might start to see home automation interoperability in a consumer-friendly way.

marcosdumay 11y ago
> and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse The idea used to be that companies served the consumer interest, and then billed some money in exchange. When was it that companies become some self sustaining beings, with their own interest to be served? (Yeah, surely when they discovered they could take their clients as hostage. The question was rhetorical.)
- dperfect 11y ago
  That was true at least as far back as the 1790's when James Wilson described a corporation as "a person in a political capacity created by the law, to endure in perpetual succession." To "endure in perpetual succession," companies by definition must operate under a fundamental premise of self-interest.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I don't know if that idea was ever true. Maybe it worked back in the times when customers and sellers knew each other personally, but that must have been way before we first invented cities. The idea is certainly being taught to kids though, and it's also used to argue that the market can solve everything in a nice way.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Companies (or similar things) are probably doing this since they exist. But people used to expect them to behave and even reasonably recently (like the end of the XX century) people (normal people, even on government) used to display outrage when companies made defective products to push their bottom-line. Nowadays that seems to be the expected behavior. But in a second thought, that looks like one of those cyclic features in society, that get worse only until people react, then get better until people get complacent.
tehwebguy 11y ago
Removing features from something I already bought is bad acting every time.
- dperfect 11y ago
  To be fair, did Philips ever list that as a feature when you bought it? I purchased a few Hue products myself, but never once expected it to be an open platform or even compatible with non-Hue products (even if I wish that were the case).
  - bradyd 11y ago
    "The Philips Hue system can be easily integrated with other ZigBee-based systems for additional home automation." http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/about-hue/what-hue-is/ http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/about-hue/what-hue-is/ Edit: Found a post about this block from Philips: http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-...
    - FriendsofHue 11y ago
      >Unrelated to the 'Friends of Hue' program, the changes we made in 1.11 to our implementation of scenes exposed a compatibility issue with a limited number of 3rd party lights which stop them properly responding to scenes created in the Philips Hue app. >Philips will not fix this issue as it relates to the implementation of standard ZigBee scenes functionality in the light and would expect this software to be changed in the light as part of 'Friends of Hue' certification process. This is an example of precisely the reason we have taken these steps. TL;DR: Only "Friends of Hue" lights are guaranteed to be compatible.
      - fader 11y ago
        Yes, as of the changes they just made and disabled all third party lights. Prior to this update there was no 'Friends of Hue' program and third party lights worked. It's a bit disingenuous to act like this was an established program that people knew about prior to intentionally breaking systems that were previously working.

marcosdumay 11y ago

> and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse The idea used to be that companies served the consumer interest, and then billed some money in exchange. When was it that companies become some self sustaining beings, with their own interest to be served? (Yeah, surely when they discovered they could take their clients as hostage. The question was rhetorical.)

dperfect 11y ago
That was true at least as far back as the 1790's when James Wilson described a corporation as "a person in a political capacity created by the law, to endure in perpetual succession." To "endure in perpetual succession," companies by definition must operate under a fundamental premise of self-interest.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
I don't know if that idea was ever true. Maybe it worked back in the times when customers and sellers knew each other personally, but that must have been way before we first invented cities. The idea is certainly being taught to kids though, and it's also used to argue that the market can solve everything in a nice way.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Companies (or similar things) are probably doing this since they exist. But people used to expect them to behave and even reasonably recently (like the end of the XX century) people (normal people, even on government) used to display outrage when companies made defective products to push their bottom-line. Nowadays that seems to be the expected behavior. But in a second thought, that looks like one of those cyclic features in society, that get worse only until people react, then get better until people get complacent.

tehwebguy 11y ago

Removing features from something I already bought is bad acting every time.

dperfect 11y ago
To be fair, did Philips ever list that as a feature when you bought it? I purchased a few Hue products myself, but never once expected it to be an open platform or even compatible with non-Hue products (even if I wish that were the case).
- bradyd 11y ago
  "The Philips Hue system can be easily integrated with other ZigBee-based systems for additional home automation." http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/about-hue/what-hue-is/ http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/about-hue/what-hue-is/ Edit: Found a post about this block from Philips: http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-...
  - FriendsofHue 11y ago
    >Unrelated to the 'Friends of Hue' program, the changes we made in 1.11 to our implementation of scenes exposed a compatibility issue with a limited number of 3rd party lights which stop them properly responding to scenes created in the Philips Hue app. >Philips will not fix this issue as it relates to the implementation of standard ZigBee scenes functionality in the light and would expect this software to be changed in the light as part of 'Friends of Hue' certification process. This is an example of precisely the reason we have taken these steps. TL;DR: Only "Friends of Hue" lights are guaranteed to be compatible.
    - fader 11y ago
      Yes, as of the changes they just made and disabled all third party lights. Prior to this update there was no 'Friends of Hue' program and third party lights worked. It's a bit disingenuous to act like this was an established program that people knew about prior to intentionally breaking systems that were previously working.