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Motorola effectively bricked its entire line of WiFi routers without explanation
- criticalfault 4mo agothere is an explanation: Motorola is extremely bad at software. opinion based on their support system, correspondence and android updates,
- Reason077 4mo agoThese WiFi products and the associated app aren’t actually from Motorola. As mentioned in the article, they are products of Premier LogiTech, LLC, who have licensed the Motorola brand name.
- sidewndr46 4mo agoFunctionally, what does it matter? Motorola allowed them to put their name on it.
- ssl-3 4mo agoThere is no singular Motorola. The company has been spinning off different parts of itself for quite a long time. In 2011/2012, it was divided into different parts. The biggest were Motorola Solutions (mostly focused 2-way radios and related communications infrastructure; stuff commonly used by public safety entities) and Motorola Mobility (mostly cell phones and related stuff). Google bought Motorola Mobility. It has been said that this was because Google wanted their patent portfolio. In 2014, Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo: The same Lenovo that makes ThinkPads is also who makes Motorola phones today. Somewhere along the line, their name also got licensed out for home networking bits. That appears to be the products that the Mashable article writes about. This history is murkier, but it appears that some combination of Premier LogiTech and Boundless Devices (whoever tf these companies are) is responsible for making the Motorola-branded routers in question. --- tl;dr, the Motorola that makes the radios that cops carry on their hip, the Motorola that makes Android phones that consumers carry in their pocket, and the Motorola that makes home routers are not the same company. Like -- at all. Conflating them is easy because it is, frankly, a confusing mess. But still: The shitty software on a Motorola phone is not cut from the same cloth as the shitty software on a Motorola router. They're products of very different companies that share nothing but a common trademark.
- kotaKat 4mo agoAh yes, just like that time Kodak licensed their name out to make checks... air purifiers? (Bonus points: their brand licensee on most of that crap is now out of business.) https://www.kodak.com/en/consumer/page/support/ https://www.kodak.com/en/consumer/page/support/ (Or Memorex electric scooters. That's also an 'okay then...' license...)
- ssl-3 4mo agoSorta. It's both different and harder to track than that. Kodak is in bad shape. They were exquisitely focused on cradle-to-grave film products: Ideally, a person used Kodak cameras that were loaded with Kodak film that was processed with Kodak chemicals on Kodak machines before being printed on Kodak paper using more Kodak machines and chemicals, and all of this but the picture-taking happened within Kodak facilities. They had their finger on this market for a very long time. But ship that once delivered their bread and butter has sank, and nobody is going to build a new one (not for Kodak, nor for anyone else -- some folks still shoot on film and will continue to do so for as long as it is possible, but it's never "coming back"). Meanwhile, Motorola Solutions (stock ticker MSI) is alive and well. They're still based in Illinois, and they're still doing good work in the 2-way radio space and -- most importantly -- selling radios and back-end gear. They're not in the consumer products game anymore, but it's perfectly OK to make money selling expensive stuff to businesses and governments. (That's a pretty common position; it just happens to be one that isn't particularly visible.) The situation with Motorola-branded routers is closer to that of General Electric, I suppose: GE licensed/sold their consumer-goods division a long time ago; the GE-branded products on the shelf at the store are, at present, products of Haier. But portions of the old GE still produce things like jet engines and power-generation turbines -- big, expensive stuff for solving big, expensive problems.
- Gualdrapo 4mo agoI don't know, my first "smart" phone was a Motorola Atrix 4G. You know, that one with (one of) the first fingerprint scanner and that thingy that allowed you to dock it to something like a laptop and thus you'd have a working laptop thingy. Its wifi/bt card broke exactly one year after I bought it. It worked exactly for 365 days. That was 100% hardware failure and planned obsolescence. Needless to say never bought not even looked at anything Motorola ever since.
- xhkkffbf 4mo agoI don't know what happened here, but if someone told me that a manager fired all of the dev team and replaced them with cheaper overseas replacements, I wouldn't be surprised.
- obscurette 4mo agoYears ago a small telco I worked for bought an equipment from rather reputable manufacturer at some point. A year or so later we discovered a grave bug in the software. There was a month or so silence from manufacturer and they just bought all equipment back. We found out later that entire team working on this equipment was fired during restructuring by accident (!) and there wasn't any knowledge about this equipment left in the company.
- HotGarbage 4mo agoAI replacements
- cr125rider 4mo agoThe original AI anyway
- userbinator 4mo agoIt would've been even cheaper if they didn't need a dedicated app at all.
- zootboy 4mo agoAnd this is why "mandatory app to configure" is an instant dealbreaker for me for any piece of hardware. Don't buy crap like this. Force companies to be better.
- ValentineC 4mo agoI fear that this will eventually happen to all Amazon Eero products, which has partnerships with telcos in my country for "free" routers.
- binaryturtle 4mo agoIf it's a "router" and you can't install a OpenWRT on it, then it's an absolute no-brainer to not to buy it.
- jasonjayr 4mo agoI got a new lease on life for a bunch of old/slow MyBook WD Live NAS devices -- OpenWRT installs onto these PowerPC devices, rather easily.
- rycomb 4mo agoI'd suggest buying the OpenWRT One. I've bought a bunch, and I think it's terrific.
- picofarad 4mo agoI think the cost is good too? Decent amount of ports, kinda like a boxless mikrotik. I've considered it, if I can get fiber here I will definitely get one for my segment, and maybe my resell segment too.
- binaryturtle 4mo agoI'm waiting for the second version (supposedly has a better number of RJ45; that's where the "One" was a bit limited and an extra switch would have been required in the setup)
- Innittech 4mo ago[dead]
- Reason077 4mo ago> “It suddenly stopped working, and no one knows why.” Based on the screenshots I’m going to hazard a guess that it’s because someone forgot to update, or just stopped paying for, the server license.
- bombcar 4mo agoIf these apps were entirely local nobody'd care. The insistence they go through a server is why they suck
- saratogacx 4mo agoSo many things rely on date bound certificates now that local doesn't assure continued operation, see the recent Mac Office 2019 stories. I feel like there are so many of these ticking time bombs that expired cert based software failures are going to become a much more common issue.
- JackGreyhat 4mo agoValid concern, yet a potentially solved problem. For code signing at least. Chexk out Time Stamping. More info: https://sslinsights.com/code-signing-time-stamping/ https://sslinsights.com/code-signing-time-stamping/
- GolfPopper 4mo agoOr a key employee who was handling that died, quit, or was fired.
- megous 4mo agoRidiculous to have no way to configure a router via some normal method, like local web UI or serial/ssh console, or whatnot. Even more ridiculous this app does not satisfy itself with a local wifi/bt link to the router, and needs some "server" with "expiring license" whatever that is. Triple ridiculous this costs more than $50.
- userbinator 4mo agoI haven't been in the market for a WiFi router for a long time so I thought all the consumer stuff still used a web server for config. Enterprise stuff is either the same or has a serial port. In any case, it doesn't make sense to require a separate app that they also have to spend resources maintaining when their users will already have a browser they can use, so I suspect the only reason is the app collects usage information that they can sell... On the bright side, maybe someone can get Claude or some other LLM to figure out how to crack it; and perhaps even vibe-code an alternative app.
- ssl-3 4mo agoRegular consumers increasingly use apps to do stuff instead of web browsers. They seem to prefer it this way. And at least for connected devices at home, a dedicated app can have lower friction for initial setup for the "I'm not a computer person" crowd than other alternatives do. (I know, I know. It's terrible. It even feels something like betrayal sometimes. But that's how it be, anyway -- and you and I are powerless to do anything about it.)
- userbinator 4mo agoThey seem to prefer it this way. Strong doubt. What's lower friction, "visit this address in your browser and login to start configuring" vs. "go download this app, open it, possibly log in and register an account, add 'your' device, and only then start to configure it"? Let's also not forget the possible chicken-and-egg situation of needing the Internet to download an app to setup your new router to access the Internet...
- ssl-3 4mo agoYou're obviously one of those computer people.
- zmgsabst 4mo agoNo — regular people use QR codes all the time. Point your phone at the QR sticker on the router, click open, boom you’re on the config page! That’s a faster experience, doesn’t require any searching, doesn’t require wondering if you downloaded the right app, doesn’t require you sign up, etc. Your claim people prefer apps to QR codes is highly doubtful.
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo agothe Motorola MotoSync+ app is required to set up all new compatible WiFi routers released by Motorola AFAIK, more Motorola routers are installed by cable ISPs than anywhere else. Many or most have WiFi. I can't imagine cable installers are futzing with a phone app.
- yonatan8070 4mo agoYou'd be surprised, at work we recently had a contractor install a new office network (growing startup upgrading from the home grade units we had before), they recommended HP Aruba Instant On, and the guy did all the setup on his phone with their app. Now that it's my network to manage, I have to say that while it's a huge upgrade from the TP-Link Deco units we had before, the cloud management just makes it worse. The web UI is slow, probably because every click requires a round trip from my laptop, to a datacenter somewhere, to the router/switch/AP 5m away from me, back to the datacenter, and back to my laptop.
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo agoYou may be more right (and me more wrong) than you know. Another comment said their parent's ISP-provided router requires a phone to config. ref:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425611#48432024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425611#48432024
- yonatan8070 4mo agoThis is also the case for the TP-Link Decos we were using, you can only configure and manage them from the app, no local web UI in sight* And it's not like a mobile app unlocked some new features that couldn't be implemented in a browser. The app is slow, sluggish, and basic things like adding a DHCP reservation took multiple tries to succeed, each taking an agonizingly long time of watching a spinner. If you contrast this with my home MikroTik, the UI is less "your grandma could configure it" simple, but it's fast, available over local web, SSH, desktop app, mobile app, and I think also an API, and has every feature I can think of from basic bridging to complex routing and firewalling. * there was a very basic web UI that I recall had like 1 or 2 settings, don't remember which exactly.
- jeffbee 4mo agoWithout minimizing the impact, we should not blow it out of proportion, either. It sounds like every existing installed device continues to work. "Bricked" is used too expansively here.
- swiftcoder 4mo agoIf you walk into a BestBuy and purchase a new one today, it arrives pre-bricked. That seems to meet the definition just fine
- jeffbee 4mo agoThat's not what bricked means. Bricked is a one-way trip to permanent non-function. For example, overwriting the firmware with firmware that can't boot and also can't update again. The events in the article are a simple, transient backend malfunction.
- swiftcoder 4mo ago“Bricked” is always a matter of perspective. Sure, the manufacturer can almost always unbrick a device, but the end user here cannot, because the manufacturer is not supplying the requisite tools
- Marsymars 4mo agoIt doesn’t seem like anyone knows whether or not it is, in fact, transient.
- _HMCB_ 4mo agoProbably AI.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoIs there really no jurisdiction in which this is illegal?
- hulitu 4mo agoI wish people would read EULAs and TOS's.
- kstrauser 4mo agoA EULA or TOS doesn’t give them permission to break the law.
- JellyBeanThief 4mo agoRelevant Discworld: The imp gave a nervous cough. “Good for you!” it said. “You have wisely purchased the Dis-organizer Mk II, the latest in biothaumaturgic design, with a host of useful features and no resemblance whatsoever to the Mk I, which you may have inadvertently destroyed by stamping on it heavily!” it said, adding, “This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect of any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may be substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.” The imp took a deep breath. “May I introduce to you the rest of my wide range of interesting and amusing sounds, Insert Name Here?”
- somat 4mo agoGive it a try, take Motorola to small claims court. don't be greedy but see if you can get them to spend a couple thousand in lawyer expenses for a couple hundred of claim.
- b212 4mo agoMotorola was my last Android phone. Once they pushed an update that took 99% of my phones memory and I couldn’t install even a single app - I moved to iPhone and never looked back. Over 10 years and counting. I still can’t believe they literally bricked my phone back then. So far Apple “just works”. Is it perfect? No. But I can’t imagine fuckup of this magnitude from them.
- kakacik 4mo agoMany things in Android sphere 'just work', we have open standards and market forces to thank for that. apple airpods pro 2nd gen 'just don't work' with say samsung phones (s24 in our case) - constant disconnections, pairing fails maybe 50% of the time. Come with apple phone to very same plugs, and they 'just work'. Over effin' bluetooth that chinese plugs for 10 bucks have figured out better. Wake me up when I can go on filesystem and copy to my computer any damn file I want from the device running unix kernel that I supposedly own, like photos and videos I took, over open standard usb.
- realusername 4mo agoTo each their own, I moved back to Android from iOS because it "just works", having to factory reset my device to install apps again after an iOS update was the last straw.
- effnorwood 4mo agoexplanation - they made wifi routers?
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo agoSure. Many ISP-provided, Motorola routers have integrated wifi. Here's a few. ARRIS SURFboard SBG6580 MG7700, MG7550-30, MG7315, ML240 (cellular)
- WarOnPrivacy 4mo agoAccording to Google Play reviews for the MotoSync+ app, this issue is due to server license expiring, after the host ended operations and has been in play since at least May 12 A June 4th review says this: The latest issue is "Server Licence Expired". I have been unable to manage devices for months. So..I reset my router. I no longer have a mesh network. I have only the single point router and still unable to manage devices. The licence verification issue continues. I found out this is because a 3rd party managed the Server and folded. 3 weeks of almost daily Chat promises to connect to a specialist which never materializes. I left some chats open for hours. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motosyncplus.mobile&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motosyncpl...
- zamalek 4mo ago> and no one knows why. I think we can make an educated guess as to why. Maybe we could get Claude to reverse engineer it to clean up its own mess.
- spl757 4mo agoThis is extremely disappointing corporate behavior coming from Motorola. I've had better luck with $350 unlocked Moto something I can use anywhere and comes with no bloatware. I like that part, do more of that.