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Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025

16 points by FridayoLeary 4y ago

adhesive_wombat 4y ago
> Hive, we've got big plans to make... homes greener, so we've made the tough decision to... Throw millions of devices into landfill for no reason. I hate this mealy-mouthed corporate bullshit. Just 'fess up. You fucked your planning and your customers who foolishly trusted you to provide something for the longer term are going to pay the price. Don't pretend this is about climate change. No one is falling for that, it's just insulting. And that's as someone who deliberately has tried to avoid home automation for this exact reason, I haven't even handed them cash and it's annoying. Besides, if they felt remotely bad they'd open the hardware APIs.
BeefWellington 4y ago
It seems as though every month or two we're seeing IoT vendors go belly up or abandon the area entirely, leaving their customers in the lurch. Three years seems like a decent amount of time at least but it would be nice if they would actually open up the hardware rather than bricking perfectly good cameras or sensors. There needs to be regulation around this kind of thing -- make it so any product that is dependent upon the cloud must have its server and device source code released to the public no less than 180 days prior to any end of life date. It may chill new entrants into the market but it will definitely be a pro-consumer move and maybe encourage more openness all around.
ptersilie 4y ago
It's been clear for a while now that Hive neither cares about the environment nor their customers. The Hive home hub, which you need to connect to your devices via an app, is locked to your name and email address, which can't be changed. If you sell your system, or your home where it's installed in, a new user is required to buy a new hub for £70, even though the old one is perfectly fine. When I asked them for a reason, they talked nonsense about privacy, which didn't make any sense. I believe you can now change your email address, but still not your name. I see no technical reason for this other than that they want to squeeze some extra money out of new customers that inherit a system. So it's hard to take their "big plans to make homes greener" PR speech seriously. It's disrespectful. As others have said, if they cared they would open up the devices for local use.

16 points by FridayoLeary 4y ago

> Hive, we've got big plans to make... homes greener, so we've made the tough decision to... Throw millions of devices into landfill for no reason. I hate this mealy-mouthed corporate bullshit. Just 'fess up. You fucked your planning and your customers who foolishly trusted you to provide something for the longer term are going to pay the price. Don't pretend this is about climate change. No one is falling for that, it's just insulting. And that's as someone who deliberately has tried to avoid home automation for this exact reason, I haven't even handed them cash and it's annoying. Besides, if they felt remotely bad they'd open the hardware APIs.

BeefWellington 4y ago

It seems as though every month or two we're seeing IoT vendors go belly up or abandon the area entirely, leaving their customers in the lurch. Three years seems like a decent amount of time at least but it would be nice if they would actually open up the hardware rather than bricking perfectly good cameras or sensors. There needs to be regulation around this kind of thing -- make it so any product that is dependent upon the cloud must have its server and device source code released to the public no less than 180 days prior to any end of life date. It may chill new entrants into the market but it will definitely be a pro-consumer move and maybe encourage more openness all around.

ptersilie 4y ago

It's been clear for a while now that Hive neither cares about the environment nor their customers. The Hive home hub, which you need to connect to your devices via an app, is locked to your name and email address, which can't be changed. If you sell your system, or your home where it's installed in, a new user is required to buy a new hub for £70, even though the old one is perfectly fine. When I asked them for a reason, they talked nonsense about privacy, which didn't make any sense. I believe you can now change your email address, but still not your name. I see no technical reason for this other than that they want to squeeze some extra money out of new customers that inherit a system. So it's hard to take their "big plans to make homes greener" PR speech seriously. It's disrespectful. As others have said, if they cared they would open up the devices for local use.