14 ms·

Cloudy with a Chance of Lock-In

130 points by janvdberg 11y ago

LoSboccacc 11y ago
> In the case of the TV the service component wasn’t even mentioned at all until well after installing the bloody thing In europe there's a seven day money back no question answered right to protect consumers from hardware trying to pull these tricks. Won't last forever, but I could recently return a digital camera trying to pull this very trick. Vote with the wallet, educate those who don't etc etc. It wont ultimately work, but if we can postpone it enough it'll become a next generation problem.
pjc50 11y ago
The "Internet of Rentiers" argument is exactly right. Things are made unnecessarily cloud-y for monetisation reasons. In some ways this is the end of the software piracy wars. Software as a single purchase that you buy once and use forever without restriction is basically over. Besides, it needs updating to cope with both security threats and changing ecosystems. So that requires ongoing effort. But users don't want to pay for it in the first place. So the solution we've arrived at by default is for the software to remain inside the datacentre fortress where the user can't pirate it, and make the user bring their data inside the fortress instead where it can be ransomed. Quite a lot of SaaS is "free!" but with monetised privacy invasion or the questionable gimmicks of free2play games. IoT makes it possible for this untransparent renting business model to be brought to physical objects. If you buy an appliance once and then use it for 20 years, to the capitalist you're a bad customer. Why do that when you can pay for annual fridge software updates and a new fridge every 5 years when it stops being "smart"?
- brightball 11y ago
  100% correct. Side by side on sites that advocate for piracy or free everything with no advertising, you'll find complaints about the subscription business model. The subscription business model is the end result of piracy. For some applications, it's a legitimately better model. For most...it's basically just a business decision.
  - TTPrograms 11y ago
    I don't think piracy is the main driver of the subscription model. Certainly its a factor, but it's not like non-subscription models aren't viable anymore. Preventing piracy has a negligible impact on revenue for most products. There's a combination of factors that make it more appealing.
    - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
      I think it depends on who you sell to, I have very few problems with piracy but I know people with different types of customers who have horrendous problems.
- mtgx 11y ago
  If only they would keep updating the Internet of Things for many years, but I'm more worried most IoT devices will be forgotten within 2 years (although even $500 smartphones don't seem to get that much, so probably less), and you'll need to "buy the new generation device to continue to get software support". This isn't made any easier by component suppliers, such as chip makers, which also tend to support their chips for very little time. Last I checked, even Qualcomm, the dominant player in the mobile chip maker, was supporting its SKUs for only 18 months. Basically, the whole ecosystem has decided to support their hardware as little as possible.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    I love technology (and it pays me well!), but I'm rather disgusted at how much is basically just throw-a-way now.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      On the flip-side, I love how much is so cheap, it's easily disposable, which leads to experimentation. Take Arduino/Raspberri-pi for instance: There's some cool stuff being done with those, that nobody would blow $300 to try out. I agree with your point though. I wish tech was more "recyclable/upgrade-able" than "disposable".
  - sanotehu 11y ago
    I completely agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately there's no motivating factor for the companies that produce these things to continually update products that are "in the wild". I recently bought a Volkswagen 2013 model and have been playing around with its bluetooth. Unfortunately the good stuff is only available in this years models - which is a hardware upgrade as well as a software upgrade. (Think Android Auto, automatic mirroring of the smartphone onto the car console, etc) The only situations in which the Internet of Things will work is where it is acceptable to replace the Things on the same cycle as we replace phones - every year or every other year. For the vast majority of appliances, this is not the case.
- ourmandave 11y ago
  I must be unimaginative but I can't figure out what a Smart Fridge would do that a normal one doesn't already (besides the incredibly useless remind me to get milk or whatever). Will it become as annoying as my printer that tells me when it's time to order genuine non-warranty voiding ink (just click here!)? Or detect if I haven't used OEM parts or a factory certified repair service? Edit: Wait, I thought of one. A Weight Watchers tie in that detects how many times I've cheated and locks the door.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    That only works if you're the only occupant of the premises.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    How about a fridge that can detect when some food is going bad? "your eggs will be off in the next 3-5 days. here's some recipes that fit your lifestyle and taste, and will let you use the eggs vs throwing them away".
    - jkestner 11y ago
      More realistically, the manufacturer will generate extra revenue by telling you that the eggs are probably now bad, and hooking you up with suppliers so you buy more. See: Amazon.
      - CaptSpify 11y ago
        That's why we need these systems to be open and modifiable. If I could do that same thing, but point it to "awesome-egg-recipes.com" instead of "amazon.com", it'd be an awesome service. I do foresee your take on the matter being the one that wins out, unfortunately.
        jkestner 11y ago
        So how do you induce the incentives to create such open systems? Why does Roku exist to connect any TV to nearly any service, but not the same thing for IoT? Is it the insistence on making money through services rather than the lower-margin hardware? (Noting that Roku also makes money through channel placement and probably affiliate fees.) I'm afraid that the only way it's going to happen is if the government wades in. But first enough people have to give a shit about these systems, and that'll require them actually being useful to a majority of consumers.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  This started at least 20 years ago. I remember my dad complaining when I was a pre-teen about how everything was moving towards disposable or recurring-fee models, and you couldn't buy anything that was built to last and hold onto it for a lifetime anymore. It's kinda ironic - during the Bush II presidency everyone was talking about the "ownership society", but the trend today has been toward the "renters' society", where consumers own nothing, the means of production are increasingly centralized in a few specialized producers, and everybody pays out of pocket for momentary needs. It's accelerating, too: car ownership => leases => Uber, suburban homes => urban apartments, vacation homes => timeshares => prepackaged "experiences", careers => gig economy, pay for printers => pay for ink, books => the Internet, videos & DVDs => Netflix, CDs => Spotify, exercise bikes => gym membership, building companies to last => hitting quarterly numbers. I wonder sometimes why consumers put up with it, but most seem to actually prefer renting things for the short term rather than buying them for the long term. It's like the time preferences of society have compressed radically, and where people would used to think about investing in things that last for 30 years, they now focus on what they need in the next 30 minutes.
  - shasta 11y ago
    I guess you can argue that it's not worth the cost, but at least half of the trends you listed are in the direction of increasing utility for the consumer. Spotify or a pile of CDs? Are you kidding? The main problem with this trend is not that it's happening, but the way that a few companies are able to position themselves as gatekeepers. This will lead to abuse or at least monopoly pricing. Unfortunately, competition isn't really a good solution. I don't want a second Spotify.
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      I think the replacement of products with services inherently tends toward monopoly, and your last sentence illustrates why: once a business is focused on servicing the immediate need rather than providing tools to service the immediate need, then customers will naturally gravitate toward whichever service fulfills that need best. When you sell a physical product, there are inherent inefficiencies in distribution & usage that allow for some differentiation; this allows multiple firms to exist in the same market. When you sell a service, your distribution goes straight to the consumer at the moment they have a need, and you have the opportunity to tailor your service directly to the customer. It becomes more efficient to buy up small companies that offer slightly-differentiated variants of your service and incorporate them into your own offering than to maintain separate firms. Interesting. This seems like a tradeoff of efficiency vs. freedom: the more you outsource a task, the more convenient things become for yourself, but the less agency you have over the terms under which that task is conducted.
- samstave 11y ago
  >The "Internet of Rentiers" argument is exactly right. Things are made unnecessarily cloud-y for monetisation reasons. Yeah, well there is also the argument that I can run an environment of literally thousands of machines and a very complex stack with a crew of literally four OPs guys.
saturdaysaint 11y ago
I have a hard time coming up with any pressing example of this in categories of software that interest me - I wish he'd provided more?
- ctphipps 11y ago
  Adobe Creative Cloud
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    My first thought exactly. And the strategy appears to be working, at least in the shortish-term... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/11/adobe_q4_fy2015_results/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/11/adobe_q4_fy2015_resu...
    - frik 11y ago
      The guy who was responsible for this at Adobe moved on and is now the CEO of AppDynamics, a high price cloud analytics company: http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/david-wadhwani-appdynamics/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/david-wadhwani-appdynamics/
    - muraiki 11y ago
      To what extent is that because of price increases? I used to work in higher ed; I think we were able to negotiate a not-as-heart-attack-inducing increase over what we used to pay for the number of licenses we had, but since leaving there I have no idea if there have been further increases. I know the increase at one school was substantial enough that they threw the Adobe rep off of campus.
      - keithpeter 11y ago
        I teach Maths and don't make much use of Adobe CS but at one centre I teach in they are hanging onto CS v6 on the network. The UK student monthly fee for a student for their own use at home is a tad under £16. Probably ok for an undergrad but a little steep for a 16 year old in an FE College who needs access to Illustrator now and again at home...
Justsignedup 11y ago
Funny, I feel that some interesting online tools have little business being online: Email services like "SendWithUs" which allow for A-B testing of your emails... It has very little use being on someone else's servers. If your server can send an email, you can easily run a lightweight service that does more or less what they do. They sell a product, you pay for updates. There are many such examples of services which don't really need to be online, but they want that monthly payment. Furthermore, I remember buying SpaceMonkey. It was a great idea, except that I had this 2tb hard drive that was just sitting around being unable to be used because I refused to pay a yearly $50 fee. I ended up just prying it open and using the hard drive (mind you, you pay for the drive too). One positive one is WesternDigital's NAS drive (my cloud). It has a feature you can turn on to use it as a "cloud storage device", but that is an optional feature which you don't have to use, instead you can have it 100% local NAS, or turn it on (granted from a security perspective, I'd rather NOT have it open to the open internet)
- doublerebel 11y ago
  Have you ever used sendwithus to grow a startup? They are an invaluable service that does far more than A/B emails. WYSIWYG email composer, comprehensive metrics, great deliverability, super easy API. There is no way we could have spent the labor at anywhere near the low cost. Companies who don't understand the value of these services are quickly left behind by those who do. Sure, there are some overpriced SaaS, but the rest are successful because they are correctly priced.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  > Email services like "SendWithUs" which allow for A-B testing of your emails... It has very little use being on someone else's servers. If your server can send an email, you can easily run a lightweight service that does more or less what they do. They sell a product, you pay for updates. I have only experimented a bit with these services and am not actively marketing, but it is my understanding that there are several reasons to use them: > you can easily run a lightweight service that does more or less what they do. They sell a product, you pay for updates. * You can run your own git/github repo, make your own irc setup and write your own javascript framework but you can get to market faster using React, github and slack. * Mail is annoying from what I understand. You can have your servers blacklisted pretty quickly even if you are simply trying to do casual email, this is abstracted away. * I have build email templates, and it is pretty annoying because cross compatibility is hell. The assumptions and basic template I used to put together my email was from a service like this, I think mailgun. They keep updated info on compatibility and provide free templates and inline tooling to get this done quick even if you don;t use the service. However, if no one used the service these resources would have to be found from various blogs, etc. More time not developing. * Building tracking and programatic email generation and transactional logic is probably not so trivial that the free for < 10K email limit most providers have would make the engineering spend worth it. So the point is, some services are useful because they provide more value than building them in house. I have never used spacemonkey but the value prop is you can keep your data locally and back it up yourself. If you didn't want to pay the fees you could just buy 1 (or if you wanted redundancey) 2 drives and do it yourself. The value propositions are presented up front. The real issue is when these services pivot or change and you are left in the lurch.
cptskippy 11y ago
It really irks me that I can't find a high end television set that isn't Smart. I'd rather not have a bunch of features baked into my TV that are going to stop working in months or years. I received an email from Roku just the other day telling me about buttons on my remote that will no longer work, I doubt TV manufacturers would even be bothered to give you that courtesy.
- coldpie 11y ago
  I agree with you, but this particular issue can at least be worked around by never hooking the thing up to the Internet in the first place. Given the massive security concerns about Internet-enabled devices not created by software firms, I think this is just the right decision anyway even if you'd find those features useful.
- Semaphor 11y ago
  There are some higher end no-name china TVs that are simple dumb TVs. Or mid range. Mine was 150€ and reviews compared it to smart TVs of more than double that price in build, audio and video quality.
- amorphid 11y ago
  I don't see the point of a Smart TV. My TV is a 40" monitor for my Chromecast. I don't know what value a Smart TV could offer me.
  - cubano 11y ago
    Nothing at all, but I'm sure the target consumer for one doesn't post on HN.
    - SyneRyder 11y ago
      I just bought one - I planned to get a non-smart TV, but found a Smart TV on sale for the same price. I expected to use my Chromecast for everything, but instead I'm using all the built-in Smart apps and the Chromecast very rarely. The usability of controlling everything from one remote (and even having a remote) is better, and means everyone can watch Netflix etc regardless of whether they brought a phone with a Netflix account or not.
rdtsc 11y ago
> In the case of the TV the service component wasn’t even mentioned at all until well after installing the bloody thing Yap same here. Bought a TV (Vizio). Without agree-ing to their "we'll monitor everything about you" disclaimer couldn't connect it to the wifi, couldn't start any of the apps. So agreed to it. Then had set up rules in the router's firewall to block it and have to un-block it if I want to watch Netflix for example. What a pain. Supposedly I could make a more complicated rule to allow only netflix traffic and no other traffic from it... There was no, "let me connect to Netflix" but don't auto-update anything, don't phone home, don't send metrics etc. It was all or nothing. And then of course the apps are slow, crappy, and buggy.
- parennoob 11y ago
  Wow, that makes me never want to buy a Vizio, ever. Although from what I hear, their apps are pretty bad anyway, so you'd probably be better off using an external box (Roku or AppleTV or Chromecast) for your Netflix et cetera. This assumes that said devices are not phoning back to their home, which might be a slippery assumption.
  - chadgeidel 11y ago
    "Phone home" is default for both Roku and AppleTV. Roku requires a username/password to enable the box. Same goes for AppleTV - you need to be signed into iTunes to even get anything to work. At least Apple provides regular updates.
  - jkestner 11y ago
    Of course they are. But it's interesting that you and I care about who phones back home - why do we trust Roku more than Vizio? Is it that it feels "unnatural" for an existing object like a TV to change the relationship? And of course, most people actually don't care about this.
    - rdtsc 11y ago
      That is a good point, I have Roku as well in another room (connected to a "dumb" older TV). And yeah, I trust Roku more. And I trust Google -- I have a Gmail. Heck old work trusted Google with their internal discussion and files! Thinking about it, I guess I made a (perhaps bad) bargain -- you can have my data if you give me something useful and working that I want back. Roku works and gives me something useful, working apps and I expected I had to do it when I bought it. Google gives me Gmail, so it can spy on me. Vizio gave me a TV, but I paid for it, and I didn't expect that it would need an invasive home phoning agreement to be usable.
mnutt 11y ago
Ignoring the fact that a lot of software/hardware with cloud components is about lock-in, lately I've been on a quest to replace as many cloud components as I can with sandstorm.io apps. Some things just work better with centralized cloud-based storage, but there's no reason users shouldn't be in control of that data. Social networks are the big exception. People are working on decentralized social networks, but it's a much harder problem. Many cloud services are just data storage, though.
Animats 11y ago
Autodesk recently went this way. All their products, even old AutoCAD, are now rented, not sold.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  In a way this is a golden opportunity for open source.
  - gavazzy 11y ago
    Ha! Good luck creating open-source CAD software that engineers and manufacturers will trust and use.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      You would have said the exact same thing about schematic capture and layout not that long ago, about compilers and operating systems a while longer ago than that.
      - AlexeyBrin 11y ago
        The real question is, given how much work is involved in implementing a CAD system, how can a person/business make money from an open source CAD ?
        bsder 11y ago
        You can't. And that's why all the open source CAD systems suck. People pay $10K per license to Altium or Solidworks for a reason.
        Spivak 11y ago
        The thing I don't really understand is why not just opensource it at that point? Keep the rights to the source, but let customers audit, modify, and distribute those modifications to the community. Being able to audit the calculations your software is doing seems like it would bring a lot of confidence to engineers even if a small minority actually look, privacy and FOSS advocates would tolerate it, and they get bug reports and possibly a few free patches. Businesses and professionals would still pay for valid licenses and enthusiasts get a 'community edition' to get them hooked. It seems like it's a win-win.
jamiesonbecker 11y ago
I agree, but only mostly: there will always be companies that 'get it' and offer both a cloud and a standalone version. For example (plug), we offer a product called Userify (ssh key management for the cloud) but we also offer a (rather expensive) enterprise version for people to deploy it on-site. In fact, we recommend that, since it's more secure for you to deploy and lock down your own version in your own VPC or DC. And this is good for us, since the cloud version is free in its base form, and the enterprise version is currently the only way we're driving any revenue. As time goes on, these models will stabilize and companies will go back to giving people what they actually want. You can't optimize for yourself forever; at some point, you lose customers. So, as a counterpoint, large mobile providers have largely stopped subsidizing phones (which was blatant lock-in) in order to give people what they really want, which is choice. It makes more sense for the customer, and therefore automatically makes more sense for the company. Unless they have absolute market power, they can't throw their weight around that much. So I'm not worried about TV manufacturers that require a monthly subscription. Those will get returned to the store fairly quickly and the ones that hide their costs will have a growing black stain on their brand and eventually fade into oblivion. It's said that customers are fickle, but customers as a whole are really quite rational. (Counterpoint to this counterpoint: Apple and everything they make.)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mathgeek 11y ago
> All this of course to ‘better serve you’ and ‘for your convenience’, those two sentence fragments are like little alarm bells that you’re about to be screwed. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks this way when I see those words.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  I've taken to looking at marketing statements in general as from "opposite-world". If a sales-blurb is about how great their customer-service is, I'm guessing they are trying to clean up a bad reputation, without fixing the problem. Same thing when they say their product is "reliable". When I see "to better serve you", all I can think of is: "we found a way to make things better for us"
danieltillett 11y ago
I offer two version of my software - a system that can be run offline at your faculty and a version that is basically cloud based. The two versions are aimed at different types of users. It works well as an approach. The cause of Jacques complaint is that it is very hard to sell a perpetual offline version at the true economic value of the software. In my case the customer would need to pay 72x the monthly cost for the value to me to be equivalent. Everytime I discuss this with a customer they don't want to pay anywhere near this amount. I know much more about how likely a customer is to keep using a product long term than the customer :)
overgard 11y ago
The worst offenders, in my opinion are operating systems. Every time I start my computer I get an annoying prompt to sign into iCloud, which will reappear immediately on cancel, so I end up having to close it about five times. Apple is trying to browbeat me into using their service by being as annoying as possible. At this point, even if iCloud was great I wouldn't use it on principal. Microsoft is even worse, not only do they have their own annoying cloud "features" they opt you into, now they've decided to administer your computer for you from afar. I had to wait an hour yesterday for Windows to install a giant update that requires multiple reboots because they tried to install it overnight. Worse, it was applying it at the boot screen, so I couldn't even pause it or read the web while I waited. If Microsoft can just put my laptop out of commission for hours on a whim, with no warning, I can't trust their os for anything important. I'm not a Linux fanboy in the least, but since both major os's make me feel like I'm just renting my own computer I might make the switch.
meesterdude 11y ago
I bought omnigraffle several years ago, and have been using it a lot ever since. But really, it works for me. I know it. There is a new version, which adds some needed features, but I just don't need them enough to upgrade for $100 or so. So, they only ever made the original $120 off of me, years ago. But they obviously still need to be making money in the meantime; but short of incompatibility in some way, i doubt i'll ever upgrade. So, I'm a huge fan of their software, but they could go out of business for being so good, if nobody ever upgrades. But if they went to a cloud solution, I wouldn't pay for that either, because I don't use it THAT much, and already have the app which works fine. Same goes for Sublime Text; I paid for 2, but I doubt I'll buy 3; or even use it. But yet there's a company behind it that obviously needs to keep making money. The answer, classically, seems to be new users, and new versions. If your software is really good, different products. Or just target Enterprise and charge a ton. It's a tricky situation if you're trying to make money in software. But on the web, you can build one thing, and people can pay you every month to use it. You don't even have to change anything, just keep it running. That's a pretty attractive model in contrast. I don't like office in the cloud, and I don't like adobe in the cloud. I think there is probably a market of people who do, and that's great. But for those things, I prefer them on the desktop. Same goes for music. I like having it with me; not tied to a music service. But movies and TV shows are often watch-once for me, so a service like Netflix works well for something like that. But as someone launching a collaborative SaaS, I can appreciate both sides. For me, the immediate need is SaaS, and secondary to that is offering buy once, use forever, once the economics are in place. I think there will always be some people who just want to pay for a SaaS, and others who refuse to but will pay for onsite. So, I think the best thing you can do is target both. People usually want to pay for something, if its worth it and fair. But what's fair and reasonable is different for everyone, so cast a wider net and you'll catch more fish. And maybe one day, I'll buy that new version of Omnigraffle.
jensmittag 11y ago
Great article, it expresses my own thoughts and attitude very well. I understand why companies aim for this lock-in, but I believe that the question to ask is: why are such companies successful with such lock-in based products? I believe that they are successful with such strategies because of the lack of matching alternatives that offer the same usability for the majority of users. And when talking about usability I explicitly include the aspect of operation management. With cloud-based solutions, operation management is effectively zero from a user perspective. During the past 10-20 years, the web has evolved significantly w.r.t. content rendering, content authoring, and content transport solutions. Today people can very easily watch movies, read articles, listen to music, or write articles, upload movies, and share music themselves. At the same time, the web did not (or only slightly) evolve in its underlying architecture. It does not provide the primitives required to bring content producers and consumers directly together. If you are a content producer, you either need to use a centralized service operated by a third party, or you need to have the technical skills to setup and operate your own IT-infrastructure. The effect of this gap is even more significant if you look at todays users. Since they have multiple devices, the become content producers on one device, and their own content consumer on the next device. While technically skilled people could easily implement own alternatives (that run on their desktop) in the past to get away from online services and protect their privacy, they are faced with the challenge that such an application needs to feature smart synchronization among multiple devices in order to provide the same level of usability.

130 points by janvdberg 11y ago

> In the case of the TV the service component wasn’t even mentioned at all until well after installing the bloody thing In europe there's a seven day money back no question answered right to protect consumers from hardware trying to pull these tricks. Won't last forever, but I could recently return a digital camera trying to pull this very trick. Vote with the wallet, educate those who don't etc etc. It wont ultimately work, but if we can postpone it enough it'll become a next generation problem.

pjc50 11y ago

The "Internet of Rentiers" argument is exactly right. Things are made unnecessarily cloud-y for monetisation reasons. In some ways this is the end of the software piracy wars. Software as a single purchase that you buy once and use forever without restriction is basically over. Besides, it needs updating to cope with both security threats and changing ecosystems. So that requires ongoing effort. But users don't want to pay for it in the first place. So the solution we've arrived at by default is for the software to remain inside the datacentre fortress where the user can't pirate it, and make the user bring their data inside the fortress instead where it can be ransomed. Quite a lot of SaaS is "free!" but with monetised privacy invasion or the questionable gimmicks of free2play games. IoT makes it possible for this untransparent renting business model to be brought to physical objects. If you buy an appliance once and then use it for 20 years, to the capitalist you're a bad customer. Why do that when you can pay for annual fridge software updates and a new fridge every 5 years when it stops being "smart"?

brightball 11y ago
100% correct. Side by side on sites that advocate for piracy or free everything with no advertising, you'll find complaints about the subscription business model. The subscription business model is the end result of piracy. For some applications, it's a legitimately better model. For most...it's basically just a business decision.
- TTPrograms 11y ago
  I don't think piracy is the main driver of the subscription model. Certainly its a factor, but it's not like non-subscription models aren't viable anymore. Preventing piracy has a negligible impact on revenue for most products. There's a combination of factors that make it more appealing.
  - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
    I think it depends on who you sell to, I have very few problems with piracy but I know people with different types of customers who have horrendous problems.
mtgx 11y ago
If only they would keep updating the Internet of Things for many years, but I'm more worried most IoT devices will be forgotten within 2 years (although even $500 smartphones don't seem to get that much, so probably less), and you'll need to "buy the new generation device to continue to get software support". This isn't made any easier by component suppliers, such as chip makers, which also tend to support their chips for very little time. Last I checked, even Qualcomm, the dominant player in the mobile chip maker, was supporting its SKUs for only 18 months. Basically, the whole ecosystem has decided to support their hardware as little as possible.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I love technology (and it pays me well!), but I'm rather disgusted at how much is basically just throw-a-way now.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    On the flip-side, I love how much is so cheap, it's easily disposable, which leads to experimentation. Take Arduino/Raspberri-pi for instance: There's some cool stuff being done with those, that nobody would blow $300 to try out. I agree with your point though. I wish tech was more "recyclable/upgrade-able" than "disposable".
- sanotehu 11y ago
  I completely agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately there's no motivating factor for the companies that produce these things to continually update products that are "in the wild". I recently bought a Volkswagen 2013 model and have been playing around with its bluetooth. Unfortunately the good stuff is only available in this years models - which is a hardware upgrade as well as a software upgrade. (Think Android Auto, automatic mirroring of the smartphone onto the car console, etc) The only situations in which the Internet of Things will work is where it is acceptable to replace the Things on the same cycle as we replace phones - every year or every other year. For the vast majority of appliances, this is not the case.
ourmandave 11y ago
I must be unimaginative but I can't figure out what a Smart Fridge would do that a normal one doesn't already (besides the incredibly useless remind me to get milk or whatever). Will it become as annoying as my printer that tells me when it's time to order genuine non-warranty voiding ink (just click here!)? Or detect if I haven't used OEM parts or a factory certified repair service? Edit: Wait, I thought of one. A Weight Watchers tie in that detects how many times I've cheated and locks the door.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That only works if you're the only occupant of the premises.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  How about a fridge that can detect when some food is going bad? "your eggs will be off in the next 3-5 days. here's some recipes that fit your lifestyle and taste, and will let you use the eggs vs throwing them away".
  - jkestner 11y ago
    More realistically, the manufacturer will generate extra revenue by telling you that the eggs are probably now bad, and hooking you up with suppliers so you buy more. See: Amazon.
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      That's why we need these systems to be open and modifiable. If I could do that same thing, but point it to "awesome-egg-recipes.com" instead of "amazon.com", it'd be an awesome service. I do foresee your take on the matter being the one that wins out, unfortunately.
      - jkestner 11y ago
        So how do you induce the incentives to create such open systems? Why does Roku exist to connect any TV to nearly any service, but not the same thing for IoT? Is it the insistence on making money through services rather than the lower-margin hardware? (Noting that Roku also makes money through channel placement and probably affiliate fees.) I'm afraid that the only way it's going to happen is if the government wades in. But first enough people have to give a shit about these systems, and that'll require them actually being useful to a majority of consumers.
nostrademons 11y ago
This started at least 20 years ago. I remember my dad complaining when I was a pre-teen about how everything was moving towards disposable or recurring-fee models, and you couldn't buy anything that was built to last and hold onto it for a lifetime anymore. It's kinda ironic - during the Bush II presidency everyone was talking about the "ownership society", but the trend today has been toward the "renters' society", where consumers own nothing, the means of production are increasingly centralized in a few specialized producers, and everybody pays out of pocket for momentary needs. It's accelerating, too: car ownership => leases => Uber, suburban homes => urban apartments, vacation homes => timeshares => prepackaged "experiences", careers => gig economy, pay for printers => pay for ink, books => the Internet, videos & DVDs => Netflix, CDs => Spotify, exercise bikes => gym membership, building companies to last => hitting quarterly numbers. I wonder sometimes why consumers put up with it, but most seem to actually prefer renting things for the short term rather than buying them for the long term. It's like the time preferences of society have compressed radically, and where people would used to think about investing in things that last for 30 years, they now focus on what they need in the next 30 minutes.
- shasta 11y ago
  I guess you can argue that it's not worth the cost, but at least half of the trends you listed are in the direction of increasing utility for the consumer. Spotify or a pile of CDs? Are you kidding? The main problem with this trend is not that it's happening, but the way that a few companies are able to position themselves as gatekeepers. This will lead to abuse or at least monopoly pricing. Unfortunately, competition isn't really a good solution. I don't want a second Spotify.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    I think the replacement of products with services inherently tends toward monopoly, and your last sentence illustrates why: once a business is focused on servicing the immediate need rather than providing tools to service the immediate need, then customers will naturally gravitate toward whichever service fulfills that need best. When you sell a physical product, there are inherent inefficiencies in distribution & usage that allow for some differentiation; this allows multiple firms to exist in the same market. When you sell a service, your distribution goes straight to the consumer at the moment they have a need, and you have the opportunity to tailor your service directly to the customer. It becomes more efficient to buy up small companies that offer slightly-differentiated variants of your service and incorporate them into your own offering than to maintain separate firms. Interesting. This seems like a tradeoff of efficiency vs. freedom: the more you outsource a task, the more convenient things become for yourself, but the less agency you have over the terms under which that task is conducted.
samstave 11y ago
>The "Internet of Rentiers" argument is exactly right. Things are made unnecessarily cloud-y for monetisation reasons. Yeah, well there is also the argument that I can run an environment of literally thousands of machines and a very complex stack with a crew of literally four OPs guys.

saturdaysaint 11y ago

I have a hard time coming up with any pressing example of this in categories of software that interest me - I wish he'd provided more?

ctphipps 11y ago
Adobe Creative Cloud
- keithpeter 11y ago
  My first thought exactly. And the strategy appears to be working, at least in the shortish-term... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/11/adobe_q4_fy2015_results/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/11/adobe_q4_fy2015_resu...
  - frik 11y ago
    The guy who was responsible for this at Adobe moved on and is now the CEO of AppDynamics, a high price cloud analytics company: http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/david-wadhwani-appdynamics/ http://fortune.com/2015/09/29/david-wadhwani-appdynamics/
  - muraiki 11y ago
    To what extent is that because of price increases? I used to work in higher ed; I think we were able to negotiate a not-as-heart-attack-inducing increase over what we used to pay for the number of licenses we had, but since leaving there I have no idea if there have been further increases. I know the increase at one school was substantial enough that they threw the Adobe rep off of campus.
    - keithpeter 11y ago
      I teach Maths and don't make much use of Adobe CS but at one centre I teach in they are hanging onto CS v6 on the network. The UK student monthly fee for a student for their own use at home is a tad under £16. Probably ok for an undergrad but a little steep for a 16 year old in an FE College who needs access to Illustrator now and again at home...

Justsignedup 11y ago

Funny, I feel that some interesting online tools have little business being online: Email services like "SendWithUs" which allow for A-B testing of your emails... It has very little use being on someone else's servers. If your server can send an email, you can easily run a lightweight service that does more or less what they do. They sell a product, you pay for updates. There are many such examples of services which don't really need to be online, but they want that monthly payment. Furthermore, I remember buying SpaceMonkey. It was a great idea, except that I had this 2tb hard drive that was just sitting around being unable to be used because I refused to pay a yearly $50 fee. I ended up just prying it open and using the hard drive (mind you, you pay for the drive too). One positive one is WesternDigital's NAS drive (my cloud). It has a feature you can turn on to use it as a "cloud storage device", but that is an optional feature which you don't have to use, instead you can have it 100% local NAS, or turn it on (granted from a security perspective, I'd rather NOT have it open to the open internet)

doublerebel 11y ago
Have you ever used sendwithus to grow a startup? They are an invaluable service that does far more than A/B emails. WYSIWYG email composer, comprehensive metrics, great deliverability, super easy API. There is no way we could have spent the labor at anywhere near the low cost. Companies who don't understand the value of these services are quickly left behind by those who do. Sure, there are some overpriced SaaS, but the rest are successful because they are correctly priced.
vonklaus 11y ago
> Email services like "SendWithUs" which allow for A-B testing of your emails... It has very little use being on someone else's servers. If your server can send an email, you can easily run a lightweight service that does more or less what they do. They sell a product, you pay for updates. I have only experimented a bit with these services and am not actively marketing, but it is my understanding that there are several reasons to use them: > you can easily run a lightweight service that does more or less what they do. They sell a product, you pay for updates. * You can run your own git/github repo, make your own irc setup and write your own javascript framework but you can get to market faster using React, github and slack. * Mail is annoying from what I understand. You can have your servers blacklisted pretty quickly even if you are simply trying to do casual email, this is abstracted away. * I have build email templates, and it is pretty annoying because cross compatibility is hell. The assumptions and basic template I used to put together my email was from a service like this, I think mailgun. They keep updated info on compatibility and provide free templates and inline tooling to get this done quick even if you don;t use the service. However, if no one used the service these resources would have to be found from various blogs, etc. More time not developing. * Building tracking and programatic email generation and transactional logic is probably not so trivial that the free for < 10K email limit most providers have would make the engineering spend worth it. So the point is, some services are useful because they provide more value than building them in house. I have never used spacemonkey but the value prop is you can keep your data locally and back it up yourself. If you didn't want to pay the fees you could just buy 1 (or if you wanted redundancey) 2 drives and do it yourself. The value propositions are presented up front. The real issue is when these services pivot or change and you are left in the lurch.

cptskippy 11y ago

It really irks me that I can't find a high end television set that isn't Smart. I'd rather not have a bunch of features baked into my TV that are going to stop working in months or years. I received an email from Roku just the other day telling me about buttons on my remote that will no longer work, I doubt TV manufacturers would even be bothered to give you that courtesy.

coldpie 11y ago
I agree with you, but this particular issue can at least be worked around by never hooking the thing up to the Internet in the first place. Given the massive security concerns about Internet-enabled devices not created by software firms, I think this is just the right decision anyway even if you'd find those features useful.
Semaphor 11y ago
There are some higher end no-name china TVs that are simple dumb TVs. Or mid range. Mine was 150€ and reviews compared it to smart TVs of more than double that price in build, audio and video quality.
amorphid 11y ago
I don't see the point of a Smart TV. My TV is a 40" monitor for my Chromecast. I don't know what value a Smart TV could offer me.
- cubano 11y ago
  Nothing at all, but I'm sure the target consumer for one doesn't post on HN.
  - SyneRyder 11y ago
    I just bought one - I planned to get a non-smart TV, but found a Smart TV on sale for the same price. I expected to use my Chromecast for everything, but instead I'm using all the built-in Smart apps and the Chromecast very rarely. The usability of controlling everything from one remote (and even having a remote) is better, and means everyone can watch Netflix etc regardless of whether they brought a phone with a Netflix account or not.

rdtsc 11y ago

> In the case of the TV the service component wasn’t even mentioned at all until well after installing the bloody thing Yap same here. Bought a TV (Vizio). Without agree-ing to their "we'll monitor everything about you" disclaimer couldn't connect it to the wifi, couldn't start any of the apps. So agreed to it. Then had set up rules in the router's firewall to block it and have to un-block it if I want to watch Netflix for example. What a pain. Supposedly I could make a more complicated rule to allow only netflix traffic and no other traffic from it... There was no, "let me connect to Netflix" but don't auto-update anything, don't phone home, don't send metrics etc. It was all or nothing. And then of course the apps are slow, crappy, and buggy.

parennoob 11y ago
Wow, that makes me never want to buy a Vizio, ever. Although from what I hear, their apps are pretty bad anyway, so you'd probably be better off using an external box (Roku or AppleTV or Chromecast) for your Netflix et cetera. This assumes that said devices are not phoning back to their home, which might be a slippery assumption.
- chadgeidel 11y ago
  "Phone home" is default for both Roku and AppleTV. Roku requires a username/password to enable the box. Same goes for AppleTV - you need to be signed into iTunes to even get anything to work. At least Apple provides regular updates.
- jkestner 11y ago
  Of course they are. But it's interesting that you and I care about who phones back home - why do we trust Roku more than Vizio? Is it that it feels "unnatural" for an existing object like a TV to change the relationship? And of course, most people actually don't care about this.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    That is a good point, I have Roku as well in another room (connected to a "dumb" older TV). And yeah, I trust Roku more. And I trust Google -- I have a Gmail. Heck old work trusted Google with their internal discussion and files! Thinking about it, I guess I made a (perhaps bad) bargain -- you can have my data if you give me something useful and working that I want back. Roku works and gives me something useful, working apps and I expected I had to do it when I bought it. Google gives me Gmail, so it can spy on me. Vizio gave me a TV, but I paid for it, and I didn't expect that it would need an invasive home phoning agreement to be usable.

mnutt 11y ago

Ignoring the fact that a lot of software/hardware with cloud components is about lock-in, lately I've been on a quest to replace as many cloud components as I can with sandstorm.io apps. Some things just work better with centralized cloud-based storage, but there's no reason users shouldn't be in control of that data. Social networks are the big exception. People are working on decentralized social networks, but it's a much harder problem. Many cloud services are just data storage, though.

Animats 11y ago

Autodesk recently went this way. All their products, even old AutoCAD, are now rented, not sold.

jacquesm 11y ago
In a way this is a golden opportunity for open source.
- gavazzy 11y ago
  Ha! Good luck creating open-source CAD software that engineers and manufacturers will trust and use.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    You would have said the exact same thing about schematic capture and layout not that long ago, about compilers and operating systems a while longer ago than that.
    - AlexeyBrin 11y ago
      The real question is, given how much work is involved in implementing a CAD system, how can a person/business make money from an open source CAD ?
      - bsder 11y ago
        You can't. And that's why all the open source CAD systems suck. People pay $10K per license to Altium or Solidworks for a reason.
        Spivak 11y ago
        The thing I don't really understand is why not just opensource it at that point? Keep the rights to the source, but let customers audit, modify, and distribute those modifications to the community. Being able to audit the calculations your software is doing seems like it would bring a lot of confidence to engineers even if a small minority actually look, privacy and FOSS advocates would tolerate it, and they get bug reports and possibly a few free patches. Businesses and professionals would still pay for valid licenses and enthusiasts get a 'community edition' to get them hooked. It seems like it's a win-win.

jamiesonbecker 11y ago

I agree, but only mostly: there will always be companies that 'get it' and offer both a cloud and a standalone version. For example (plug), we offer a product called Userify (ssh key management for the cloud) but we also offer a (rather expensive) enterprise version for people to deploy it on-site. In fact, we recommend that, since it's more secure for you to deploy and lock down your own version in your own VPC or DC. And this is good for us, since the cloud version is free in its base form, and the enterprise version is currently the only way we're driving any revenue. As time goes on, these models will stabilize and companies will go back to giving people what they actually want. You can't optimize for yourself forever; at some point, you lose customers. So, as a counterpoint, large mobile providers have largely stopped subsidizing phones (which was blatant lock-in) in order to give people what they really want, which is choice. It makes more sense for the customer, and therefore automatically makes more sense for the company. Unless they have absolute market power, they can't throw their weight around that much. So I'm not worried about TV manufacturers that require a monthly subscription. Those will get returned to the store fairly quickly and the ones that hide their costs will have a growing black stain on their brand and eventually fade into oblivion. It's said that customers are fickle, but customers as a whole are really quite rational. (Counterpoint to this counterpoint: Apple and everything they make.)

deleted 11y ago
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mathgeek 11y ago

> All this of course to ‘better serve you’ and ‘for your convenience’, those two sentence fragments are like little alarm bells that you’re about to be screwed. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks this way when I see those words.

CaptSpify 11y ago
I've taken to looking at marketing statements in general as from "opposite-world". If a sales-blurb is about how great their customer-service is, I'm guessing they are trying to clean up a bad reputation, without fixing the problem. Same thing when they say their product is "reliable". When I see "to better serve you", all I can think of is: "we found a way to make things better for us"

danieltillett 11y ago

I offer two version of my software - a system that can be run offline at your faculty and a version that is basically cloud based. The two versions are aimed at different types of users. It works well as an approach. The cause of Jacques complaint is that it is very hard to sell a perpetual offline version at the true economic value of the software. In my case the customer would need to pay 72x the monthly cost for the value to me to be equivalent. Everytime I discuss this with a customer they don't want to pay anywhere near this amount. I know much more about how likely a customer is to keep using a product long term than the customer :)

overgard 11y ago

The worst offenders, in my opinion are operating systems. Every time I start my computer I get an annoying prompt to sign into iCloud, which will reappear immediately on cancel, so I end up having to close it about five times. Apple is trying to browbeat me into using their service by being as annoying as possible. At this point, even if iCloud was great I wouldn't use it on principal. Microsoft is even worse, not only do they have their own annoying cloud "features" they opt you into, now they've decided to administer your computer for you from afar. I had to wait an hour yesterday for Windows to install a giant update that requires multiple reboots because they tried to install it overnight. Worse, it was applying it at the boot screen, so I couldn't even pause it or read the web while I waited. If Microsoft can just put my laptop out of commission for hours on a whim, with no warning, I can't trust their os for anything important. I'm not a Linux fanboy in the least, but since both major os's make me feel like I'm just renting my own computer I might make the switch.

meesterdude 11y ago

I bought omnigraffle several years ago, and have been using it a lot ever since. But really, it works for me. I know it. There is a new version, which adds some needed features, but I just don't need them enough to upgrade for $100 or so. So, they only ever made the original $120 off of me, years ago. But they obviously still need to be making money in the meantime; but short of incompatibility in some way, i doubt i'll ever upgrade. So, I'm a huge fan of their software, but they could go out of business for being so good, if nobody ever upgrades. But if they went to a cloud solution, I wouldn't pay for that either, because I don't use it THAT much, and already have the app which works fine. Same goes for Sublime Text; I paid for 2, but I doubt I'll buy 3; or even use it. But yet there's a company behind it that obviously needs to keep making money. The answer, classically, seems to be new users, and new versions. If your software is really good, different products. Or just target Enterprise and charge a ton. It's a tricky situation if you're trying to make money in software. But on the web, you can build one thing, and people can pay you every month to use it. You don't even have to change anything, just keep it running. That's a pretty attractive model in contrast. I don't like office in the cloud, and I don't like adobe in the cloud. I think there is probably a market of people who do, and that's great. But for those things, I prefer them on the desktop. Same goes for music. I like having it with me; not tied to a music service. But movies and TV shows are often watch-once for me, so a service like Netflix works well for something like that. But as someone launching a collaborative SaaS, I can appreciate both sides. For me, the immediate need is SaaS, and secondary to that is offering buy once, use forever, once the economics are in place. I think there will always be some people who just want to pay for a SaaS, and others who refuse to but will pay for onsite. So, I think the best thing you can do is target both. People usually want to pay for something, if its worth it and fair. But what's fair and reasonable is different for everyone, so cast a wider net and you'll catch more fish. And maybe one day, I'll buy that new version of Omnigraffle.

jensmittag 11y ago

Great article, it expresses my own thoughts and attitude very well. I understand why companies aim for this lock-in, but I believe that the question to ask is: why are such companies successful with such lock-in based products? I believe that they are successful with such strategies because of the lack of matching alternatives that offer the same usability for the majority of users. And when talking about usability I explicitly include the aspect of operation management. With cloud-based solutions, operation management is effectively zero from a user perspective. During the past 10-20 years, the web has evolved significantly w.r.t. content rendering, content authoring, and content transport solutions. Today people can very easily watch movies, read articles, listen to music, or write articles, upload movies, and share music themselves. At the same time, the web did not (or only slightly) evolve in its underlying architecture. It does not provide the primitives required to bring content producers and consumers directly together. If you are a content producer, you either need to use a centralized service operated by a third party, or you need to have the technical skills to setup and operate your own IT-infrastructure. The effect of this gap is even more significant if you look at todays users. Since they have multiple devices, the become content producers on one device, and their own content consumer on the next device. While technically skilled people could easily implement own alternatives (that run on their desktop) in the past to get away from online services and protect their privacy, they are faced with the challenge that such an application needs to feature smart synchronization among multiple devices in order to provide the same level of usability.