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Discontinuing the product is one thing, but intentionally bricking the existing ones (and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste
by lisper 2y ago
Discontinuing the product is one thing, but intentionally bricking the existing ones (and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste) seems uncalled for to me.
- gusmd 2y agoThey are taking the devices back for recycling.
- ars 2y ago> and leaving it up to the former owners to dispose of the resulting e-waste "Amazon's email to customers encourages owners to recycle Astro for Business through the Amazon Recycling Program, with Amazon covering associated costs."
- CydeWeys 2y agoThese devices are heavily dependent on software running on servers in Amazon's cloud. They're being bricked only because those servers are being turned off because continuing to maintain the server software would be expensive and not to Amazon's gain.
- wongarsu 2y agoMaintaining it wouldn't sell more of this specific product, but simply shutting it down damages their reputation far beyond those directly impacted.
- RoyalHenOil 2y agoIndeed. I recently inherited a bunch of Amazon stock, and I sold it a few days ago because I just don't have much confidence in the way Amazon operates. Decisions like these (releasing products that are not profitable, bricking products shortly after release, etc.) make me think that the company is being poorly managed.
- duxup 2y agoDoes it? Google shuts stuff down left and right and nobody seems to be leaving.
- bhaney 2y ago> and nobody seems to be leaving I don't think you're right about that
- duxup 2y agoI'd love to believe they were, but are they? I haven't seen anything to indicate that.
- Aeolun 2y agoThey just stopped buying more stuff from Google? All the products that people use are ones that have existed for years.
- chillfox 2y agoI did. I used to pay for their stuff, but I have moved to Seafile and Fastmail. Only google product I still use is YouTube, everything else has been replaced and I don't consider new Google products anymore.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2y agoGoogle constantly shutting things down is precisely why I stopped using Firebase. I can't trust them
- arp242 2y agoThey didn't "simply shut it off", they gave everyone a full refund + $300 voucher. And I guess they sold so few that this just made more sense to refund everyone than keeping maintaining the servers.
- zamadatix 2y agoAn invite only product with extremely meager sales realized to have been about as worthwhile as a brick being fully refunded with $300 extra plus cost of recycling covered may not be a hacker's utopia but seems like a pretty good option to me. Much better than imagining any of these businesses were going to hack the failed gear into something useful instead.
- massysett 2y agoSeems it requires cloud services, so once Amazon shuts these down it’s as good as bricked. Otherwise they have to run the cloud forever, or reprogram them not to need cloud. I had a cat feeder that required cloud, and when that company went out of business I had a brick and no refund. (Yeah I was crazy to buy the thing, but I had my reasons and knew the risks.) That’s the risk with these cloudy devices.
- wongarsu 2y agoIt's always sad when a small startup like Amazon doesn't have the resources to keep a couple servers running and updated. If only some company invented some kind of service to make that kind of thing easier.
- userbinator 2y agoBusiness opportunity to provide a service to reprogram them for non-cloud use.
- jerf 2y agoI wonder how much we're rushing to defend the three businesses that bought a total of 10 of them, most of them connected to Amazon anyhow, or some similar number. I have a hard time imagining Amazon is so much as shutting down 1000 devices here.