The iPod Nano lasted 12 years. The Chromecast Audio lasted 3 and a bit.

iPod is a successful one. Chromecast audio is not. How long do you want to keep a not successful product around if you own the company?

My girlfriend poured so much love in her iPhone SE and it seems like... discontinued.

Judging by the comments here, if anyone uses a service they expect a company to provide support for it indefinitely. And apparently that also applies to hardware.

They're still supporting this device for now, so no complaints yet.

But when I buy a piece of hardware I absolutely expect it to work for at least ten years. When did that become unreasonable?

The base scenario is that it works standalone and it'll keep working for many years. If you choose to involve a server, then you have a responsibility to keep the server up for an extended period. If it's a legacy product then the number of users will continually drop and the cost to keep a couple servers up will be minuscule.

> But when I buy a piece of hardware I absolutely expect it to work for at least ten years.

Still rocking that iPhone 3G?

It probably became unreasonable to expect decade-long support on something that costs $15-$20.

I have literally hundreds of things that cost $15 to $20, and many of those are over ten years old and still work fine.

Obviously they have a lifespan and the quality of cheap products can be quite poor, so there are items that broke and got thrown away.

But there's nothing that stopped working because the manf told me I couldn't use it any more.

It's reasonable to expect it to function until normal wear-and-tear breaks it. After that, it's reasonable to expect it could be repaired at some cost.

However, it depends on a Google service — it won't work without a working Internet connection. This idea is fairly new for consumers.

Apple discontinues products and replaces them with something else. Google's more in the habit of announcing a new service, saying it's great and revolutionary, then dumping it a few years down the line with a brief notice beforehand.

The iPod line just ended up superseded by phones. Google Wave, Google Plus, Google Code, Inbox (this one I'd get alerts for after every Gmail login saying it's the next step for gmail and I should switch... it just never happened), Google Video, Google Reader, and more just vanished.

Dont forget the multiple google chat applications.

You could claim Video was superseded by YouTube

One relies on server support and multiple clients supporting it. The other does not.

I have an old iPod nano sitting in a box that still works as good as the day it was bought. It’s possible that a few years from now the Chromecast Audio will be nothing more than a paperweight, and it’s a bit light for that.

They're still supporting the Chromecast Audio though. They're just discontinuing an old hardware product, which really isn't out of the ordinary.

Heh. These are all paperweights. The nano was one when it was new. You needed itunes to use it. No way to transfer music to it (at least on linux at that time; maybe people hacked it later). I remember I won one in some contest, and was excited until I plugged it in. End of excitement.

Probably the difference between hardware and software. If apple canned airplay I'd be pretty pissed. They discontinued their routers but I still use their airport extreme to good effect.

> Probably the difference between hardware and software

Uh, but it's hardware in both cases; Chromecast Audio is a particular model of hardware Cast receiver.

> If apple canned airplay I'd be pretty pissed.

Yes, that would be like Google killing Google Cast. Which they are decidedly not doing.