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Imagine you're the CEO of a hardware company that refreshes their products every year. Last year, you overestimated the demand for your premium product and end

Imagine you're the CEO of a hardware company that refreshes their products every year. Last year, you overestimated the demand for your premium product and end up with thousands of extra units. Now, you're planning to launch this year's line of products. You have a brand new premium product that's slightly better than last year's, and it's priced $50 higher. What do you do with all your extra stock of last year's premium offering? You can't sell them side-by-side, otherwise everyone will just buy last year's stuff and you'll have the same problem next year. You can't throw them away because you can't afford the losses (GoPro was trading at $8 in 2017). So you take last year's premium product, and install some software to turn it into this year's entry-level product. You have to sell it for way less, but hey — you might break even. Consumers are content because they're getting what they expect: entry-level features at a reasonable price. It's not necessarily evil. Perhaps it was mismanagement. Ultimately, GoPro found out that the market for action cameras isn't as big as they hoped.

GuiA 7y ago
That's a wonderful excuse, but it still is mismanagement, shitty product design, and disrespectful to your customers. EDIT to all the downvoters: if your customers, like the poster above, feel cheated, you suck at product design and management. That's it. If you don't see the problem with that, please don't design products.
- pc86 7y ago
  How exactly is it "disrespectful" to sell something to your customers that they want to buy?
  - falcor84 7y ago
    Because they're lying about the specs of the product you're purchasing.
    - pc86 7y ago
      Are they? Sure, the hardware is capable of x, but if you want to save money by having software limit it to x/2, how is that a lie? And before the "but they didn't tell me!" argument, we may care on HN, but 99% of consumers don't care whether a limit is hardware-enforced or software-enforced, and probably 80% of consumers couldn't tell the difference if they had to.
    - dangwu 7y ago
      If they advertise ability to record at 1080p and it's possible to push the hardware to 4K, that's not lying. This is not any different than an ISP selling a 10 Mbps plan when gigabit is available.
- imtringued 7y ago
  How is it disrespectful? They might be cutting features but they are also cutting the price at the same time. Savvy customers can get superior hardware for a lower price if they decide to patch the firmware themselves.
- MisterTea 7y ago
  Okay think about the positive aspect of this: Imagine you bought a Ford Focus only to find out it was a leftover GT chassis and driveline with a focus body and a crippled computer. I'd call that a fucking win. The reality is you are getting what you want but you got a lot more, only they tried to hide it. But if you find it, hack it, their loss is now an amazing gain. It's actually a great bargain. Dishonest in my book would be if they simultaneously sold a high and low end model which contain the exact same internals save for a few software flags and model number. That would be shitty. edit: Most CPU's are sold this way too. Remember the Intel Celeron, what was it 300 or 333? They were crippled 450/500MHz Celerons or possibly Pentuium 3 cores which didn't make their spec so they were derated and sold as lower end. So You bought two and plugged them into the famous Abit BP6 (I had one), overclocked and got a badass dual processor machine for half the price. I think with decent fans you could push 550MHz. Powerful rig circa 2001 or so.
  - gmd63 7y ago
    Imagine you bought a house from someone, went bankrupt and foreclosed, then heard from someone else that the previous owner had hardwood placed over a solid gold living room floor.
    - rovr138 7y ago
      You never saw that so you never accounted for it. You didn’t see it when you bought it. You didn’t make decisions on it. You didn’t know about it when you sold it. If the price didn’t reflect it, what did you loose?
      - gmd63 7y ago
        You lost the alternate life where you didn't have to pull your kid out of school and move cross country. You lost the business you could have started. Buyers of gold lost the option to purchase from you and bought from further away at a higher total cost. As CEO of the world, would you want idle resources sitting around or would you want them to be in the hands of someone who would use them? It seems like it would be best to reassign people who work in destructive roles that diminish/obscure value to more productive roles that create value.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
gmd63 7y ago
Depends on your definition of evil. IMO taking an already-produced product and spending actual resources to weaken it / rebrand it as inferior is worse for everyone as a whole overall, and looks like a really selfish move. It's a stereotypical "late-stage capitalism" meme that betrays the good parts of capitalism and its place in public opinion.
sudo-i 7y ago
I mean... this is what Tesla does? All their cars come crippled if you don't pay them more money? Maybe the only difference is Tesla let's you pay to upgrade and not buy a new Tesla to get some feature?
- philwelch 7y ago
  How hard is it to jailbreak a Tesla?
  - outworlder 7y ago
    Cars are expensive and have warranty. I wouldn't mess with that. Besides, Tesla will know the moment you connect to the ethernet port.
    - viklove 7y ago
      It is a bit odd for a car though, you have to admit. Imagine buying an ICE car with a fuel tank that had an artificial limiter. Add 4 gallons to the tank for $x (120 miles). Would people accept that?
      - waste_monk 7y ago
        I cannot find it, but a few years back I saw a car hack whereby you could buy a basic model car and enable some premium trim features (I think it was underbody LEDs) via CAN bus hacking - the hardware was present in the basic model car but disabled. So yes, people do accept this even if they don't realise they're accepting it.
      - rovr138 7y ago
        Having only one model would mean you can streamline everything since you’re always doing the same. The cost of every car is the same in terms of hardware and Human Resources. Easier to work with. If you ever decide to upgrade, you’ll just pay them. 0 effort on their part. Repairs are also easier regardless of upgrades since there’s only one model. If the car is resold, they can enable more features too.
Nextgrid 7y ago
> You have a brand new premium product that's slightly better than last year's If it's better then it will sell just fine alongside the previous generation. If it's not actually better they shouldn't have made the next generation to begin with.

GuiA 7y ago

That's a wonderful excuse, but it still is mismanagement, shitty product design, and disrespectful to your customers. EDIT to all the downvoters: if your customers, like the poster above, feel cheated, you suck at product design and management. That's it. If you don't see the problem with that, please don't design products.

pc86 7y ago
How exactly is it "disrespectful" to sell something to your customers that they want to buy?
- falcor84 7y ago
  Because they're lying about the specs of the product you're purchasing.
  - pc86 7y ago
    Are they? Sure, the hardware is capable of x, but if you want to save money by having software limit it to x/2, how is that a lie? And before the "but they didn't tell me!" argument, we may care on HN, but 99% of consumers don't care whether a limit is hardware-enforced or software-enforced, and probably 80% of consumers couldn't tell the difference if they had to.
  - dangwu 7y ago
    If they advertise ability to record at 1080p and it's possible to push the hardware to 4K, that's not lying. This is not any different than an ISP selling a 10 Mbps plan when gigabit is available.
imtringued 7y ago
How is it disrespectful? They might be cutting features but they are also cutting the price at the same time. Savvy customers can get superior hardware for a lower price if they decide to patch the firmware themselves.
MisterTea 7y ago
Okay think about the positive aspect of this: Imagine you bought a Ford Focus only to find out it was a leftover GT chassis and driveline with a focus body and a crippled computer. I'd call that a fucking win. The reality is you are getting what you want but you got a lot more, only they tried to hide it. But if you find it, hack it, their loss is now an amazing gain. It's actually a great bargain. Dishonest in my book would be if they simultaneously sold a high and low end model which contain the exact same internals save for a few software flags and model number. That would be shitty. edit: Most CPU's are sold this way too. Remember the Intel Celeron, what was it 300 or 333? They were crippled 450/500MHz Celerons or possibly Pentuium 3 cores which didn't make their spec so they were derated and sold as lower end. So You bought two and plugged them into the famous Abit BP6 (I had one), overclocked and got a badass dual processor machine for half the price. I think with decent fans you could push 550MHz. Powerful rig circa 2001 or so.
- gmd63 7y ago
  Imagine you bought a house from someone, went bankrupt and foreclosed, then heard from someone else that the previous owner had hardwood placed over a solid gold living room floor.
  - rovr138 7y ago
    You never saw that so you never accounted for it. You didn’t see it when you bought it. You didn’t make decisions on it. You didn’t know about it when you sold it. If the price didn’t reflect it, what did you loose?
    - gmd63 7y ago
      You lost the alternate life where you didn't have to pull your kid out of school and move cross country. You lost the business you could have started. Buyers of gold lost the option to purchase from you and bought from further away at a higher total cost. As CEO of the world, would you want idle resources sitting around or would you want them to be in the hands of someone who would use them? It seems like it would be best to reassign people who work in destructive roles that diminish/obscure value to more productive roles that create value.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

gmd63 7y ago

Depends on your definition of evil. IMO taking an already-produced product and spending actual resources to weaken it / rebrand it as inferior is worse for everyone as a whole overall, and looks like a really selfish move. It's a stereotypical "late-stage capitalism" meme that betrays the good parts of capitalism and its place in public opinion.

sudo-i 7y ago

I mean... this is what Tesla does? All their cars come crippled if you don't pay them more money? Maybe the only difference is Tesla let's you pay to upgrade and not buy a new Tesla to get some feature?

philwelch 7y ago
How hard is it to jailbreak a Tesla?
- outworlder 7y ago
  Cars are expensive and have warranty. I wouldn't mess with that. Besides, Tesla will know the moment you connect to the ethernet port.
  - viklove 7y ago
    It is a bit odd for a car though, you have to admit. Imagine buying an ICE car with a fuel tank that had an artificial limiter. Add 4 gallons to the tank for $x (120 miles). Would people accept that?
    - waste_monk 7y ago
      I cannot find it, but a few years back I saw a car hack whereby you could buy a basic model car and enable some premium trim features (I think it was underbody LEDs) via CAN bus hacking - the hardware was present in the basic model car but disabled. So yes, people do accept this even if they don't realise they're accepting it.
    - rovr138 7y ago
      Having only one model would mean you can streamline everything since you’re always doing the same. The cost of every car is the same in terms of hardware and Human Resources. Easier to work with. If you ever decide to upgrade, you’ll just pay them. 0 effort on their part. Repairs are also easier regardless of upgrades since there’s only one model. If the car is resold, they can enable more features too.

Nextgrid 7y ago

> You have a brand new premium product that's slightly better than last year's If it's better then it will sell just fine alongside the previous generation. If it's not actually better they shouldn't have made the next generation to begin with.