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I want to see meaningful pushback on this indefensible move of forcing customers to establish and maintain a relationship with the manufacturer in order to use

• spindle 3y ago
  And many car manufacturers, right?
  • heleninboodler 3y ago
    BMW now hides features behind signing into their absolutely atrocious online "app store." When I first got my car and was excited about exploring the features, I went through the incredible pain of logging into my account by typing my email and password with that little knob, and then one day it just logged me out and wanted me to do it all over again, and I can't be bothered so I just dismiss the dialog whenever I see it. So the upshot is they've created a set of features that aren't worth the trouble of the awful UX (and potential privacy issues), plus an occasional nag to remind me of that fact. You also can't get a software update without installing their terrible mobile app (and logging in), so I take it to the dealer and make them do it.
    • pmarreck 3y ago
      Tesla has none of these issues.
      • heleninboodler 3y ago
        Unfortunately I find Tesla's UX unbearable in other ways.
      • nemosaltat 3y ago
        I have to admit, begrudgingly, that the Tesla App experience “JustWorksTM.” This is the 3rd I’ve picked up (3, Y, Y) and this time, I didn’t even have to pair my phone. I was signed into my existing app and my new Y just changed from an order number to a VIN and started working. All my preferences synced to my driver profile immediately. If every experience with Tesla was like the initial buying experience I’d recommend it to anyone, however, let me assure anyone interested the honeymoon phase definitely ends.
    • ddtaylor 3y ago
      How the fuck is it possible they don't let you do all the authentication in the app and then pair it with the car?
      • heleninboodler 3y ago
        Maybe they do, but I don't install apps for horseshit like this. I especially don't install apps from companies that are obviously terrible at software development, like car manufacturers.
    • brucethemoose2 3y ago
      > so I take it to the dealer and make them do it. Won't they charge you through the nose for this? We recently went to a Lexus dealer for something random but specific on an old Lexus, and they did basic service like an oil change. When we stepped inside, it was like a 5 star hotel lobby with ordurves and fancy hosts a bunch of weird junk. We got the bill, and never even considered going back.
      • heleninboodler 3y ago
        I had them do it when I was in for my (free) oil change, and they didn't charge me for it. I suppose they might if I brought it in for just the software update.
• narrator 3y ago
  You will own nothing and be happy.
  • mr_toad 3y ago
    Sometimes when I’m updating multiple devices a day and/or trying to figure out what’s not working I think I might be happier not owning them.
• stefan_ 3y ago
  Wahoo was great, the benefit to the forced app signup was that they deleted all the device settings
• ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Good luck. I called out Logitech for forcing users to log into some bullshit online account to maintain their Harmony remotes, and was attacked by apologists on Reddit (take that for what you will). A couple months later Logitech shitcanned the entire product line (which I had already returned after discovering their scam), and screwed all the apologists. I wonder what they think today... if they even do. Don't underestimate the cognitive dissonance (and resulting apologism and shilling) that you'll face when you call out defects and scams in someone's pet product or belief system. And yes, it happens right here on HN too often as well.
  • Spoom 3y ago
    FWIW Logitech continues to run the Harmony servers, and I've bought a couple of used hubs since. I hate that you have to login, so don't call me an apologist; Logitech made some real mistakes here. Still, the Harmony products work well enough. I hope eventually either Logitech open sources the server and database, or that someone emulates the server somehow.
  • brucethemoose2 3y ago
    > attacked by apologists on Reddit Sometimes people get into niche communities and get really obsessive in a ridiculous way, like spending inordinate amounts of time defending a junky Logitech software suite. I know, because it has happened to me. I see it happen with particular frequency in Discord. I am not a psychologist, but it seems like a trap humans are predisposed to fall into.
    • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
      This is what industrialization has freed us up to do.
  • Sylamore 3y ago
    Logitech still supports the Harmony devices, for how much longer remains to be seen. I just recently replaced some that had broke so I'm good till the next device failure as long as I don't make any major replacements either. I know I'm part of a dwindling customer base that still uses separate A/V gear and not just built-in streaming apps and a soundbar, but it seems like there would have still been a market for competent universal remotes that you could customize. I hated how almost every generation of their remotes got harder to use and program compared to pre-Logitech Harmony. The Touch remotes were practically unusable because you had frequently used buttons in poor locations and a touch screen that you had to scroll through to find the correct soft touch button for that wasn't especially responsive, the old models with all hard buttons were vastly more usable.
• Daz1 3y ago
  Don't use their products then? Nobody is forcing you to.
  • simonw 3y ago
    Sounds like you're suggesting "meaningful pushback" as well then.
  • pockybum522 3y ago
    Unfortunately, that doesn't work. If Reddit is any indication, the moral of the story is they can get away with it because there's a million idiots all ready to take your place.
    • ddtaylor 3y ago
      I think the difference here is that Reddit wasn't bought at a retail location and you couldn't just return it to the store and get your money back. People can and SHOULD return this garbage to the retail store the minute they get home and realized it's encumbered in this way.
  • benkillin 3y ago
    except every single manufacture is going down this road pretty much, they want to monetize all that data because more money equals more better, privacy be damned.
    • incongruity 3y ago
      Laws. We need the force of law protecting us when entire industries work against the public good.
  • HWR_14 3y ago
    What about when you already purchased a product and an automatic update moves functionality, possibly core functionality, behind their app wall?
    • 3y ago
• strangesmells02 3y ago
  [dead]
• sarchertech 3y ago
  I bought a Miku baby monitor because it had the features I wanted but didn’t require a subscription. It was pretty expensive ($399). Then Miku sold to another company (they either filed or were planning on filing for bankruptcy), and the first thing the new company did was send a letter demanding $10 a month to keep using most of the monitor’s features.
  • geph2021 3y ago
    Without knowing the particulars, that's an interesting example. The fact that Miku was going bankrupt suggests that they did not have a viable/sustainable business, and perhaps they could have been profitable with a different (i.e. subscription fees) business model. In either case, new company seems like they do not much value existing Miku customers, as demanding more money for a product that was bought/paid seems pretty outrageous.
    • anotherhue 3y ago
      It was marketed directly based on 'no subscription fees', and had a heftier price to boot. So they're having their cake and eating it too.
    • sarchertech 3y ago
      They pushed out an over the air update the bricked nearly every device and had to swap them all out right before sending out a letter warning they were going to file. The lesson that it drives home to me is that if a company can force updates to your device, it doesn’t matter what the terms of service are or how much you trust the company. They can go bankrupt, sell off the assets, and some new vampire company can come along and remove your ability to use your product.
      • anotherhue 3y ago
        > if a company can force updates to your device Worse, if your device requires remote services then they can control access to those. Stallman was right.
  • 3y ago
• HarryHirsch 3y ago
  Ring doorbells, because the microphone heard the citizen say the N-word and locked him out of the Amazon account. Back then, we thought legal questions about discrimination silly - if the baker won't bake cakes for lesbians, who cares, there are dozens of bakers in town who are not silly, why fight with the one who is, especially since the only recourse you will get is a birthday cake. But now with the app monopolies it's different. If Lyft bans you over a justified chargeback and Uber bans you over another justified chargeback you are going to have a problem.
  • nickthegreek 3y ago
    Not what happened. The driver thought they heard the nword come from a Eufy doorbell. Which was them mishearing the automated response. No person uttered an nword and no ring doorbell was involved. Amazon did lock the guys account for the report from their driver. That did lock him out of his other IoT devices.
    • HarryHirsch 3y ago
      The thing is - even racists have a right that their devices work. They paid money for it. Amazon's duty is to protect their driver, and if they refuse to deliver because a driver has been threatened that's OK. But they can't lock him out of their alarm system or automated door opener. It's worse because when you choose a camera doorbell because you have a choice between Ring and Nest, which is not much of a choice.
      • nickthegreek 3y ago
        Sure, but your original post made this man to be out as a racist. He isn’t. There are other doorbell choices, like Eufy by Anker. The one this man used.
        • HarryHirsch 3y ago
          The point is that Amazon has no business locking even racists out of their Amazon account.
• neilv 3y ago
  As people who understand these things, we can choose the role of "citizen technologist", to benefit society. Some off-the-cuff ideas of how: 1. Make our own purchases "on principle", and hope that enough other techies do that, that economic pressure is applied to brands. 2. Make our own non-purchase technology adoptions "on principle". 3. Inform other techies, both on specifics of individual devices/architectures/vendors/etc., and to bring everyone up to speed on the basics (e.g., reasons for open standards, user-oriented products/services, avoiding lock-in, privacy-respecting, responsible security, etc.). 4. Inform non-techies, such as by pointing them at solutions in their interest, and in the interest of society. 5. Advise lawmakers, to complement whatever they're hearing from lobbyists. 6. Contribute code and other effort to open platforms, and actually use them. 7. Be careful about helping to prop up society-hostile platforms, such as by using them to the exclusion of something else, making them more palatable to the exclusion of something better, implicitly endorsing them, etc. 8. Keep principles a factor in who we go to work for, how we work while there, and whether we stay there.
  • hackernewds 3y ago
    These are great ideas, that a tax paying citizen should not be burdened with in a first world country. Our administration needs to step up from hiring dinosaurs, to actually hiring technology-competent legislators that can compose effective legislation.
  • dustyharddrive 3y ago
    I’d question whether our techie peers can be bothered to care about these principles. IME most are too complacent.
• jlokier 3y ago
  Samsung did something similar with their phones' built I'm heart rate and oxygen sensor, and health related metrics from the accelerometer My Samsung Galaxy S8+ had those sensors and I used them often for many years. The results were interesting and useful, and graphed with history in the Samsung app which shipped on the device. Then one day they changed the terms so you had to create and sign into a Samsung account, and upload your health data, to continue using the sensors. I didn't accept those terms so I wasn't able to use those health monitoring functions on my expensive device any more. Interestingly, most articles I saw about the change portrayed it as a good thing, that you could now have consistent healrh sensor records across your devices and other good cloud features, even portraying it as an oddity that Samsung Health didn't require Samsung cloud integration all along and that they had finally caught up to the times. But it already had those features before the change! The only visible change was to to remove the choice to opt out of uploading your personal data.
  • m463 3y ago
    samsung takes horrible liberties with all their products, not only phones but things like televisions and even refrigerators.
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