A very good piece, and I broadly agree. But I'd just a couple of thoughts:
1. "This means it will be easier to build a business around cheaper devices that are replaced and upgraded frequently." - Precisely. This is already a huge problem, and I fear it'll keep getting worse for at least a few years. "Oh I'll just throw it away and buy a replacement".... and meanwhile global temperatures and piles of waste keep growing.
2. You state that the cloud+subscription model is a bandaid - and for many cases you're certainly correct. But there's also the cases where it's a business choice to enable the vendor to keep milking the customer. Is there any technical reason why e.g. a smart lightbulb stops functioning without cloud connection, especially bearing in mind that approximately 100% (my guestimate) of the people who buy them most definitely have a desktop or laptop, wifi router, AND smartphone? No. But if you make the smart device require a cloud connection, you can force customers to pay a subscription and/or make them throw away the device and buy a new one (which is effectively the same, just hidden). In German we have a saying, "Was lange hält bringt kein Geld", rough translation "What remains usable for a long time doesn't turn a profit". The economics term for this is "planned obsolescence".
I think those two issues will be, or to be precise 'continue to be', a big conflict area between customers and vendors. Let's hope regulators manage to find a balance that leads to positive results - not choking off innovation, but also not leaving customers at the mercy of rent-seeking by a tiny number of companies, in more than a few cases duopolies (e.g. desktop/laptop CPUs+GPUs) or even near-monopolies (e.g. desktop/laptop OSs and smartphone CPU design [though not the actual chips]).
But to finish up, I'm glad you pointed out open source and its cousin open hardware, which could conceivably limit (though not by themselves resolve) these issues.
Hi Steffen—thank you for your thoughtful reply, and apologies for my long delay in responding!
You make some great points. I agree that it's not good for devices to be "disposable". I wonder if breaking the need for a subscription model could help balance the negative impact, since devices are less likely to become "bricked", and more likely to be repairable, if they are completely standalone. Additionally, without subscriptions there will be no way for vendors to prevent a healthy secondary market for used devices. Potentially, lower income people might have better access to technology if inexpensive used devices are available without ongoing subscription costs.
I wonder if we’ll be able to choose disconnected devices in the near future. What if you want to opt out, for a dumb toaster or a dumb blender.
I got an air fryer that has an app and Bluetooth. It is nice to look up recipes. And it could be nice to get notifications that your food is done. But I am in a small apartment. I am not more than 15 feet away at any point. I can hear it.
I feel like the era of "everything has a companion app" is also a horrible compromise: they don't want to (or can't) make the hardware easy to use, so they shove a bunch of functions on super buggy app instead. I am always sad when I have to install an app to use my new gadget.
I feel like music hardware leads the way with some of this human-computer interaction stuff, and we're definitely entering an era of standalone-by-design music equipment—which is a promising sign!
I can’t wait for that. I have Sonos speakers, but weirdly features get hidden. They used to have native playlists. But no longer. I can listen to the ones I have made, but I can’t edit them. Mine are different generations and have different feature sets. I want smart enough speakers to play music from anywhere. But not so smart they are listening devices for the algorithms.
I do some music production and there's been a BIG trend towards devices that work without being connected to a computer. It's really awesome since you can make music without feeling like you're doing office work. Hopefully that trend comes for consumer audio too—everyone still loves vinyl because it's so simple and tactile, none of the frustration of trying to get your app and speaker to pair 😅
A very good piece, and I broadly agree. But I'd just a couple of thoughts:
1. "This means it will be easier to build a business around cheaper devices that are replaced and upgraded frequently." - Precisely. This is already a huge problem, and I fear it'll keep getting worse for at least a few years. "Oh I'll just throw it away and buy a replacement".... and meanwhile global temperatures and piles of waste keep growing.
2. You state that the cloud+subscription model is a bandaid - and for many cases you're certainly correct. But there's also the cases where it's a business choice to enable the vendor to keep milking the customer. Is there any technical reason why e.g. a smart lightbulb stops functioning without cloud connection, especially bearing in mind that approximately 100% (my guestimate) of the people who buy them most definitely have a desktop or laptop, wifi router, AND smartphone? No. But if you make the smart device require a cloud connection, you can force customers to pay a subscription and/or make them throw away the device and buy a new one (which is effectively the same, just hidden). In German we have a saying, "Was lange hält bringt kein Geld", rough translation "What remains usable for a long time doesn't turn a profit". The economics term for this is "planned obsolescence".
I think those two issues will be, or to be precise 'continue to be', a big conflict area between customers and vendors. Let's hope regulators manage to find a balance that leads to positive results - not choking off innovation, but also not leaving customers at the mercy of rent-seeking by a tiny number of companies, in more than a few cases duopolies (e.g. desktop/laptop CPUs+GPUs) or even near-monopolies (e.g. desktop/laptop OSs and smartphone CPU design [though not the actual chips]).
But to finish up, I'm glad you pointed out open source and its cousin open hardware, which could conceivably limit (though not by themselves resolve) these issues.
Hi Steffen—thank you for your thoughtful reply, and apologies for my long delay in responding!
You make some great points. I agree that it's not good for devices to be "disposable". I wonder if breaking the need for a subscription model could help balance the negative impact, since devices are less likely to become "bricked", and more likely to be repairable, if they are completely standalone. Additionally, without subscriptions there will be no way for vendors to prevent a healthy secondary market for used devices. Potentially, lower income people might have better access to technology if inexpensive used devices are available without ongoing subscription costs.
I suppose we will see!
Warmly,
Dan
I wonder if we’ll be able to choose disconnected devices in the near future. What if you want to opt out, for a dumb toaster or a dumb blender.
I got an air fryer that has an app and Bluetooth. It is nice to look up recipes. And it could be nice to get notifications that your food is done. But I am in a small apartment. I am not more than 15 feet away at any point. I can hear it.
I feel like the era of "everything has a companion app" is also a horrible compromise: they don't want to (or can't) make the hardware easy to use, so they shove a bunch of functions on super buggy app instead. I am always sad when I have to install an app to use my new gadget.
I feel like music hardware leads the way with some of this human-computer interaction stuff, and we're definitely entering an era of standalone-by-design music equipment—which is a promising sign!
I can’t wait for that. I have Sonos speakers, but weirdly features get hidden. They used to have native playlists. But no longer. I can listen to the ones I have made, but I can’t edit them. Mine are different generations and have different feature sets. I want smart enough speakers to play music from anywhere. But not so smart they are listening devices for the algorithms.
I do some music production and there's been a BIG trend towards devices that work without being connected to a computer. It's really awesome since you can make music without feeling like you're doing office work. Hopefully that trend comes for consumer audio too—everyone still loves vinyl because it's so simple and tactile, none of the frustration of trying to get your app and speaker to pair 😅