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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. Ecobe

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.

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.