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As vendors may suddenly and abruptly stop the smart part of your product as we have seen with TVs, or completely remove all functionality. For no acceptable reason. As logitech is now doing with its Harmony Link remote control product(s) that are bricked by March 16. What does an HTTPS certificate cost...
Logitech made its money and now is unwilling to deliver the product. At the Connections Europe Conference in Amsterdam last week on all things smart and connected, the conclusion was that there remains little room for pure product sellers as there is no way to price multi-year service and support into the product, that's why all have to move to a subscription model. The speakers were refering to support windows of five to ten years. Asked if the mobile world showed that consumers were not or less concerned with extremely short and lacking support windows the panel thought consumers do not like it, but are upset by it. And that cheap competition, lacking lifetime was ruining it for serious, therefore more expensive, vendors,but confronted with the example of Samsungs limited support, and people re-buying, the response was move to Apple.
Whereas Parks associates, the event's organisers, research shows that over 90% are concerned about privacy and security, with the sharing millenials being the most concerned, the paradox explained as control over what is made public and shared with whom.
Ars Technica reports that Logitech is to shut down “service and support” for Harmony Link devices in 2018. According to the online tech publication customers received an e-mail explaining that Logitech will "discontinue service and support" for the Harmony Link as of March 16, 2018, adding that Harmony Link devices "will no longer function after this date".
In other word you pay good money for a remote control for your Home theater and a year and a day later you may be pacing around pushing buttons instead.
The support page that google puts on top of the page doesn't even mention the end is near: http://support.logitech.com/en_us/product/harmony-link.
I guess I am just to conservative a consumer, or is that tight, lol, for this new world. This makes me even more sceptical about manufacturer/vendor claims and promises. This time it is a 100 buck product, but we will start to see this on more costly items aswell, and from the High-end audio world we have seen plenty of examples of the more expensive vendor promising service and upgradability being unable to deliver,so price isn't everything.
Logitech made its money and now is unwilling to deliver the product. At the Connections Europe Conference in Amsterdam last week on all things smart and connected, the conclusion was that there remains little room for pure product sellers as there is no way to price multi-year service and support into the product, that's why all have to move to a subscription model. The speakers were refering to support windows of five to ten years. Asked if the mobile world showed that consumers were not or less concerned with extremely short and lacking support windows the panel thought consumers do not like it, but are upset by it. And that cheap competition, lacking lifetime was ruining it for serious, therefore more expensive, vendors,but confronted with the example of Samsungs limited support, and people re-buying, the response was move to Apple.
Whereas Parks associates, the event's organisers, research shows that over 90% are concerned about privacy and security, with the sharing millenials being the most concerned, the paradox explained as control over what is made public and shared with whom.
Ars Technica reports that Logitech is to shut down “service and support” for Harmony Link devices in 2018. According to the online tech publication customers received an e-mail explaining that Logitech will "discontinue service and support" for the Harmony Link as of March 16, 2018, adding that Harmony Link devices "will no longer function after this date".
In other word you pay good money for a remote control for your Home theater and a year and a day later you may be pacing around pushing buttons instead.
The support page that google puts on top of the page doesn't even mention the end is near: http://support.logitech.com/en_us/product/harmony-link.
I guess I am just to conservative a consumer, or is that tight, lol, for this new world. This makes me even more sceptical about manufacturer/vendor claims and promises. This time it is a 100 buck product, but we will start to see this on more costly items aswell, and from the High-end audio world we have seen plenty of examples of the more expensive vendor promising service and upgradability being unable to deliver,so price isn't everything.