zlacker

>>pictur+(OP)
I want to see meaningful pushback on this indefensible move of forcing customers to establish and maintain a relationship with the manufacturer in order to use the products they sell.

Other examples are: Wahoo, who locked the control of their products behind an account and login requirement for devices which had been working perfectly fine for years prior.

Roche, who killed their blood glucose app at the start of 2023 and forced all their users to move to a third party app, developed by one of their subsidiaries, which requires you to accept a data exfiltration clause, if they wish to continue the automagic on-device logging.

>>1ncorr+P4
I bought a Miku baby monitor because it had the features I wanted but didn’t require a subscription. It was pretty expensive ($399).

Then Miku sold to another company (they either filed or were planning on filing for bankruptcy), and the first thing the new company did was send a letter demanding $10 a month to keep using most of the monitor’s features.

>>sarche+9a
Without knowing the particulars, that's an interesting example. The fact that Miku was going bankrupt suggests that they did not have a viable/sustainable business, and perhaps they could have been profitable with a different (i.e. subscription fees) business model. In either case, new company seems like they do not much value existing Miku customers, as demanding more money for a product that was bought/paid seems pretty outrageous.

>>geph20+vb
They pushed out an over the air update the bricked nearly every device and had to swap them all out right before sending out a letter warning they were going to file.

The lesson that it drives home to me is that if a company can force updates to your device, it doesn’t matter what the terms of service are or how much you trust the company.

They can go bankrupt, sell off the assets, and some new vampire company can come along and remove your ability to use your product.