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I think hardware vendors have been allowed way too much freedom in trying to turn hardware into a subscription. The yearly release of new phone models isn’t hel

• winwang 2y ago
  What if we turned hardware support into a subscription (kind of like JetBrains model I think?) and stopped yearly releases in favor of more interesting releases? I wonder how many resources are used just to make the next iteration a bit shinier to catch the consumer's eye.
  • SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
    I'm reading this as "Samsung charges a $10 monthly subscription fee to keep your phone up to date" and I already know how that would turn out.
    • winwang 2y ago
      I was thinking more like "Samsung charges $50/year after the typical 3-4 years of updates they normally give."
  • qwertycrackers 2y ago
    I think what is this ignoring is that "security updates" are generally corrections to defects in the original product. In principle, a complete product would ship with no defects. You could run it for 1000 years unpatched and it would be no less secure than the day it shipped. Manufacturers ship security updates because the original product was defective. So it makes sense that they remain on the hook for security updates -- we paid them full price up front.
    • Wowfunhappy 2y ago
      I am extremely sympathetic to this view--but is it practical? Like, should Apple be forced to continue releasing security fixes for the original iPhone?
      • diggum 2y ago
        A relatively small ongoing investment in a phone with which they earned billions of dollars in profit. Doesn't necessarily require new feature updates, but security updates should be available for a far more significant length of time than the single-digit years the have self-regulated themselves. As an alternative, perhaps these companies should be held responsible for the e-waste of their prematurely expired hardware...
        • Wowfunhappy 2y ago
          > A relatively small ongoing investment in a phone with which they earned billions of dollars in profit. That's fair. But what about a product which doesn't turn a profit? The iPhone could have been a total flop, no one knew in advance! I worry that if releasing a hardware product carried an unlimited support burden, companies would release far fewer products. Less risk taking would lead to less innovation, and so on. I think I would be more on board with a rule like "once you stop releasing security updates, you must share hardware documentation and unlock the bootloader", so consumers can install their own (presumably patched) operating systems. But this wouldn't actually affect most of society, because 90% of consumers (I'm being generous) are never going to install Linux on their phones.
          • Qwertious 2y ago
            Expecting consumers to DIY install Linux is unrealistic but also irrelevant - that's what commercial refurbushers are for.
            • graemep 2y ago
              They could also sell their devices to those users who will install their own OS, or volunteers could help them do it, or simple device specific plug and play installers could be developed.
      • sitkack 2y ago
        Yes they should, they should also be forced to unlocked the bootloaders and release specs to the hardware so that 3rd part OSes can target the devices. Hardware recycling is a joke. I have first gen ipad that would make a great photoframe, video play and ebook reader but instead it is a fully functional paper weight.
    • Joeri 2y ago
      As a web developer I really want all devices to have evergreen browsers, and that in turn implies on-going feature updates at the OS level to support those evergreen browsers. It also doesn’t really matter whether updates are fixes or features. Somebody has to do the work, and they have to get paid, and only so many years of that work can be baked into the original purchase price, before buyers go to a competitor who offers less support. You paid full price for X years of support, but what happens after that?
    • latexr 2y ago
      > In principle, a complete product would ship with no defects. You could run it for 1000 years unpatched and it would be no less secure than the day it shipped. Not necessarily. Something could be perfectly secure today and for the next 100 years but be trivial to crack in 1000 years because the landscape changed so much. Something that is inconceivable to crack by brute force now won’t be as compute power keeps rising. It’s impossible to cover every base from the start and forever. Who would’ve thought that soundproof glass could be beat with a camera filming an object? https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25999-caught-on-tape-cameras-turn-video-into-sound/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25999-caught-on-tape-... > We were able to recover intelligible speech from maybe 15 feet away, from a bag of chips behind soundproof glass
  • drtgh 2y ago
    That would only feed their current programmed obsolescence strategy. If they stop supporting the device, they should release the drivers for the hardware.
• kypro 2y ago
  People don't have to buy this stuff you know... In a free market vendors should have the freedom to create bad subscription services and consumers should be free to buy other hardware if they don't like it... I buy a $100 phone like once every 3 years... No one is forcing me to buy a premium Apple phone every year. Doing so is purely a consumer choice. Perhaps a stupid one, but one consumers should have imo. Just because you and I don't like it surely doesn't mean it should be regulated.
  • isodev 2y ago
    The problem is, it's not a free market. We as consumers are literally stuck between gatekeepers. Regulation is not only recommended, it's desperately needed (or alternative way to force corps out of dark patterns).