Technology

I personally think it's perfectly reasonable for a company to eventually start charging for a service they provide that costs them money to provide. They might bakenin some number of years into the product price, but they can't keep providing the service for free forever.

It seems like something that should be expected if we do want certain services to be provided and maintained. Heck, I also think that offering a subscription is better than the usual alternative, which is that the company just shuts the service down.

However, the way this is done is almost always slimy and shitty and likely is only going to get solved by regulation.

• It's incredibly rare that IOT devices NEED cloud integration. Most of the time it really SHOULD just be local-only, or have a local option.
• If they are going to start charging for something to continue to work, unless there was already an explicit agreement that - and when - this would happen, they need to provide an alternative.
  • Either documentation or open software for how an alternate cloud - including local - could be used instead.
• That info really should be mandatory to be made available beforehand in case the company shuts down.
• The subscription fee needs to be reasonable.
  • Personally, I think $24/year is still far too much, but it's still WAY more reasonable than some I've seen.

Should be a no-brainer.

I wish people would stop threatening companies switching to subscription that they'll lose business. The c-suite know they'll lose much of the current customer base. They're banking on the data telling them that the market acceptance of their product is gaining traction with new customers.

That will float them until they tell grandfathered users to go screw themselves and will face all sorts of new charges to use their app as previously established.

This is what happens when you have companies run by MBAs and lawyers. They respond to the data, and as long as the data says any negative responses can be overcome in some other way, they'll do it. They don't care about their clientele (or their employees for that matter). They care about the extra millions of dollars they were promised for the degrees they paid for.

Start finding alternate solutions to any product that connects to the internet. Then they can't spy on you or handcuff a sub fee to their product.

someone can just make a cracked version people can sideload

Oh ffs.. This is the one I have..

And, you know what? The firmware sucks.

You can't even connect to wifi if you have two AP's with the same name (which is literally everyone).

I haven't even installed the app in ages because it's a PITA and has never worked 100%.

But, they can guarantee my next one won't be an anova again. There are much cheaper alternatives now

Wait

"Our community has literally cooked 100s of millions of times with our app. Unfortunately, each connected cook costs us money."

The cooker, It's FUCKING Bluetooth. It doesn't need to call home, it can't call home. The App, It has a list of 35 different sous vide recipes that could live on the app. The app has no business calling home, they don't need a server.

Enshittification strikes again. 🤬

I passed on a lot of the fancier apartment buildings for requiring an app and a cell phone to gain access to your own home. I shouldn't have to agree to an arbitration/class action waiver to use my own front door, I don't feel comfortable with management getting a notification on their phone every time I come or go, I don't like the fact that 20+ listed partner companies have access to sensitive personal data, and I shouldn't have to wait for maintenance to show up in the middle of the night because I couldn't make it back home before my personal tracking device died on me.

The sad thing is that most of these locking units cost these apartments hundreds of dollars each on top of a monthly subscription.

Sounds like it's time for an open sauce alternative.