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Your comment is so utterly preposterous I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not. It reads like the complaint box of a volunteer open source developer w

Your comment is so utterly preposterous I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not. It reads like the complaint box of a volunteer open source developer who isn't providing you free bug fixes and features fast enough. They provided a free service for 16 years and I'm sure it was in the ToS that they are under no obligation to do so. And for people wondering why we need ToS and license agreements for free stuff and lawyers to write them, this is why. This is why we can't have nice things.

Larrikin 2y ago
It's not a free service they ran out of the goodness of their heart. It's a service the consumer paid for when they bought the thermostat.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  If they priced the thermostat at $10,000 each with guaranteed long term support, you would have a case. A $150 device doesn't pay hosting in perpetuity. Ecobee is a great company that made a better mousetrap with a free app when competitors were still charging monthly fees. Did everyone here throw a shitfit when 2G cellular was retired? The original iPhone is a doorstop. Should the mobile phone companies be forced to still support your Motorola DynaTac from 1987?
  - latentcall 2y ago
    How much can hosting for this model realistically cost? Ecobee can afford to support it they just don’t want to. I’ll commend them for supporting it for 16 years however.
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    These companies marketed to a public not yet experienced with cloud-dependent services and the inevitably finite lifetime they carry, and frankly (I can say from experience) many of the product designers and engineers weren't really thinking ahead about that stuff either. Lots of stuff is engineered as if it will be usable indefinitely (or until it physically wears out), even though it has technical dependencies or financial costs that make that infeasible, and almost almost all that stuff is sold to the public under the pretense that it's just a better version of the same old thing. Very few products, especially among consumer good, openly communicate a window of support or availability and many don't even predict a specific one internally. You're probably right that there'd probably no teeth to a suit, but that's more because the practice of denying that cloud-backed products are ephemeral is just that pervasive. It's an effective excuse, but also a crappy one.
    - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
      It's important to note that these devices are not self-destructing nor are they cloud-dependent and will still perform their primary function as a locally controlled touchscreen thermostat. It is the remote control via app features that are being disabled. It is similar to how the original iPhone and iPad are basically unusable with no connectivity in today's world (think: these legacy thermostats may not support modern security protocols due to lack of power to perform the cryptographic functions, or software support in the > 16 year old microcontroller. Let's assume hardware was designed with chips in production a few years before the release so we're talking 2005-era hardware. This is pre-iPhone, George Bush was still president and you had a flip phone in your pocket. Should they never upgrade their backend security so they can support these things in perpetuity?) Sadly, I suspect if this was an Apple(r)(tm) Thermostat the HN crowd would be banding together in their defense.
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        > It is similar to how the original iPhone and iPad are basically unusable with no connectivity in today's world This should be unacceptable as well.
ryandrake 2y ago
A device manufacturer should not be able to simply decide to remove functionality from a device I bought and paid for. Would you accept it if your stove’s manufacturer decided to “cease support” and removed a few heating elements from the stove? Would you accept it if your car’s manufacturer decided to “cease support” for sedans and removed the back seats from your car? Consumers would not roll over and accept this behavior, and I’d hope in those cases the manufacturers would be liable for something. Somehow, for connected devices we excuse this same thing “because internet”. I’m hoping this is just a case of the law moving slowly and not catching up.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  Your examples are irrelevant because they did not remove any functionality from the device which you paid for. The functionality is being removed from the app, which you never paid for. The device will continue functioning as a local thermostat for many years.
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    I am just waiting untill do the same to you, like remove ‘unlock your car’ function from the app. And when you complain that your £50,000 vehicle became useless, they will tell you ‘we removed it from the app, and you never paid for it’
jsifiejqkdjc 2y ago
or perhaps it’s because engineers can’t design offline-first systems, and the politicians don’t understand that it’s possible and therefore can become part of consumer regulations, creating the market for devices that would be beneficial for all consumers
- ravenstine 2y ago
  Are you suggesting that Ecobee devices don't work offline? I've never connected mine to the internet and it's worked swimmingly for the last 6 years.
ravenstine 2y ago
It's an entitled attitude, and even if those with said attitude had a valid point, it wouldn't be a particularly realistic or mature one. Any time you rely on a third party for anything, you are risking them no longer providing a service for you. In the case of a free service, you get exactly what you pay for. By the current standard, 16 years and a discount is pretty good for something that was a free offering.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  You're making the same mistake as others in this thread by artificially separating the "smart" service from the product. When customers buy a physical product, they're buying the whole package, and they are making the reasonable assumption that it will continue to work as-is as long as they own it. When you buy a smart thinggy attached to the Internet, the manufacturer is not graciously providing a separate free service, outside of the "real" product. It's selling the smartness as part of the whole product. They shouldn't get to later say, "Ha ha only kidding, we're now cutting features A, B, and C out of your product because we imagine them as a separate 'service'." That's bullshit.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    You keep trying to redefine reality to align with your vision of perpetual free support for your $150 piece of plastic. You paid for the hardware, which still functions as a thermostat. You never paid for the app, which was free. I suggest reading through the EULA next time you click through because it very likely says they are under no obligation to provide support forever and can discontinue it at any time, and if you don't like it you can take it back to the store. <AGREE> Apple rendered my AppleTV gen 1 completely useless without warning when they decided to end support for it after much less than 16 years (in typical Apple fashion, with no announcement or plan, it just stopped working one day). No coupon, no apology, just a "fuck you, buy a new one" and I paid a heck of a lot more than $150 at the time. They've even done worse: removing music from the iTunes Store THAT I PAID FOR such that it isn't available from iCloud for download anymore, despite the whole point of iCloud being that your stuff is there forever.
acdha 2y ago
> It reads like the complaint box of a volunteer open source developer who isn't providing you free bug fixes and features fast enough. The key difference here is that it’s not a volunteer but a large company which sold a product in a category where service lifetimes are measured in decades - tons of people have thermostats which are pushing half a century old and nobody finds that unusual. I think that changes the expectation in a way which really should require full disclosure up front: service lifetimes and the impact of support ending should be on the front of the box, disclosed before money changes hands.

Larrikin 2y ago

It's not a free service they ran out of the goodness of their heart. It's a service the consumer paid for when they bought the thermostat.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago
If they priced the thermostat at $10,000 each with guaranteed long term support, you would have a case. A $150 device doesn't pay hosting in perpetuity. Ecobee is a great company that made a better mousetrap with a free app when competitors were still charging monthly fees. Did everyone here throw a shitfit when 2G cellular was retired? The original iPhone is a doorstop. Should the mobile phone companies be forced to still support your Motorola DynaTac from 1987?
- latentcall 2y ago
  How much can hosting for this model realistically cost? Ecobee can afford to support it they just don’t want to. I’ll commend them for supporting it for 16 years however.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  These companies marketed to a public not yet experienced with cloud-dependent services and the inevitably finite lifetime they carry, and frankly (I can say from experience) many of the product designers and engineers weren't really thinking ahead about that stuff either. Lots of stuff is engineered as if it will be usable indefinitely (or until it physically wears out), even though it has technical dependencies or financial costs that make that infeasible, and almost almost all that stuff is sold to the public under the pretense that it's just a better version of the same old thing. Very few products, especially among consumer good, openly communicate a window of support or availability and many don't even predict a specific one internally. You're probably right that there'd probably no teeth to a suit, but that's more because the practice of denying that cloud-backed products are ephemeral is just that pervasive. It's an effective excuse, but also a crappy one.
  - wannacboatmovie 2y ago
    It's important to note that these devices are not self-destructing nor are they cloud-dependent and will still perform their primary function as a locally controlled touchscreen thermostat. It is the remote control via app features that are being disabled. It is similar to how the original iPhone and iPad are basically unusable with no connectivity in today's world (think: these legacy thermostats may not support modern security protocols due to lack of power to perform the cryptographic functions, or software support in the > 16 year old microcontroller. Let's assume hardware was designed with chips in production a few years before the release so we're talking 2005-era hardware. This is pre-iPhone, George Bush was still president and you had a flip phone in your pocket. Should they never upgrade their backend security so they can support these things in perpetuity?) Sadly, I suspect if this was an Apple(r)(tm) Thermostat the HN crowd would be banding together in their defense.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      > It is similar to how the original iPhone and iPad are basically unusable with no connectivity in today's world This should be unacceptable as well.

ryandrake 2y ago

A device manufacturer should not be able to simply decide to remove functionality from a device I bought and paid for. Would you accept it if your stove’s manufacturer decided to “cease support” and removed a few heating elements from the stove? Would you accept it if your car’s manufacturer decided to “cease support” for sedans and removed the back seats from your car? Consumers would not roll over and accept this behavior, and I’d hope in those cases the manufacturers would be liable for something. Somehow, for connected devices we excuse this same thing “because internet”. I’m hoping this is just a case of the law moving slowly and not catching up.

wannacboatmovie 2y ago
Your examples are irrelevant because they did not remove any functionality from the device which you paid for. The functionality is being removed from the app, which you never paid for. The device will continue functioning as a local thermostat for many years.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  I am just waiting untill do the same to you, like remove ‘unlock your car’ function from the app. And when you complain that your £50,000 vehicle became useless, they will tell you ‘we removed it from the app, and you never paid for it’

jsifiejqkdjc 2y ago

or perhaps it’s because engineers can’t design offline-first systems, and the politicians don’t understand that it’s possible and therefore can become part of consumer regulations, creating the market for devices that would be beneficial for all consumers

ravenstine 2y ago
Are you suggesting that Ecobee devices don't work offline? I've never connected mine to the internet and it's worked swimmingly for the last 6 years.

ravenstine 2y ago

It's an entitled attitude, and even if those with said attitude had a valid point, it wouldn't be a particularly realistic or mature one. Any time you rely on a third party for anything, you are risking them no longer providing a service for you. In the case of a free service, you get exactly what you pay for. By the current standard, 16 years and a discount is pretty good for something that was a free offering.

ryandrake 2y ago
You're making the same mistake as others in this thread by artificially separating the "smart" service from the product. When customers buy a physical product, they're buying the whole package, and they are making the reasonable assumption that it will continue to work as-is as long as they own it. When you buy a smart thinggy attached to the Internet, the manufacturer is not graciously providing a separate free service, outside of the "real" product. It's selling the smartness as part of the whole product. They shouldn't get to later say, "Ha ha only kidding, we're now cutting features A, B, and C out of your product because we imagine them as a separate 'service'." That's bullshit.
- wannacboatmovie 2y ago
  You keep trying to redefine reality to align with your vision of perpetual free support for your $150 piece of plastic. You paid for the hardware, which still functions as a thermostat. You never paid for the app, which was free. I suggest reading through the EULA next time you click through because it very likely says they are under no obligation to provide support forever and can discontinue it at any time, and if you don't like it you can take it back to the store. <AGREE> Apple rendered my AppleTV gen 1 completely useless without warning when they decided to end support for it after much less than 16 years (in typical Apple fashion, with no announcement or plan, it just stopped working one day). No coupon, no apology, just a "fuck you, buy a new one" and I paid a heck of a lot more than $150 at the time. They've even done worse: removing music from the iTunes Store THAT I PAID FOR such that it isn't available from iCloud for download anymore, despite the whole point of iCloud being that your stuff is there forever.

acdha 2y ago

> It reads like the complaint box of a volunteer open source developer who isn't providing you free bug fixes and features fast enough. The key difference here is that it’s not a volunteer but a large company which sold a product in a category where service lifetimes are measured in decades - tons of people have thermostats which are pushing half a century old and nobody finds that unusual. I think that changes the expectation in a way which really should require full disclosure up front: service lifetimes and the impact of support ending should be on the front of the box, disclosed before money changes hands.