> Well, this is where the industry is going. The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it, and have to keep your subscription going so the seller don't remotely brick your device.

This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.

It's also the direction Microsoft has been slowly moving Windows. You think it'd be bad if your router stopped working when you stopped paying, imagine the same scenario for your operating system.

MS is very aggressive with this in their Windows 10 development VM images you can download. Theyre free, but they only last 3 months. There doesnt appear to be anyway to activate - even if you have a legit license key through my.visualstudio.com.

The VM prebuilt with VStudio, Visual Studio Code, WSL w/ Ubuntu and other goodies in a prebuilt image is attractive and a time saver. But, it's immediately on a kill switch timer of about 3 months, if you download while new. Current image expires in Feb 2020.

I was using this to connect to work in a VPN in an effort to keep work and personal separate, but I'll have to burn a Win10 license key from my subscription for a new VM.

Caveat: the expiration doesnt render the image entirely worthless, but it will only stay up for around 90 mins before shutting down without warning.

I just take a snapshot then revert after 90 days. Seems to work. I vaguely remember MS docs suggesting this.

You can also refresh them with a powershell command a limited number of times IIRC.

I think it was in the instructions for using the Internet Explorer/Edge VMs (see page 3): https://az792536.vo.msecnd.net/vms/release_notes_license_ter...

There is ways of keeping it up. The one I can explain here, is to do a snapshot as soon as you have your apps setup, then just roll back at the end. There is "other" ways that I can't explain here.

I'm not sure what you mean. Windows 10 is far less aggressive about activation than previous versions. It puts a little disapproving watermark on the desktop and nothing else.

It's certainly unappealing to me as an individual, but I am sure plenty of businesses wouldn't even blink at paying an ongoing charge like that (as long as the router in question was getting timely patches etc.)

Unfortunately, as of 6 years ago, no one else had a competing product that saved me as much time as Meraki did. It was well worth the extra thousands.

Thing is, the price isn't crazy low compared to competitors. It's for people who are confused and don't have the technical knowledge to do something like install the unifi controller software on a debian server. If you're scared of command lines, meraki is the product for you.

6 years ago, Meraki access points were a few hundred each, and security appliances were a couple thousand, plus a hundred to a thousand per year in subscription fees. But I paid to, because ever since we did, we didn’t have to touch it, and install was a breeze. Well worth the time savings.

The traditional rental model — you borrow a physical device (a VHS recorder, say) and have to give it back if you stop paying — was, I think, one that was environmentally friendly, because the vendors make the most profit if the devices last a long time and never need replacing.

Unfortunately, you can also make a profit by following the environmentally destructive route of making the user buy themselves a brand new device and bricking it when they don't keep paying the separate subscription.

:(

> You buy a product, but still don't own it, and have to keep your subscription going so the seller don't remotely brick your device.

That’s absolutely not what’s happening here. I paid £169 for my Play:1 five years ago, and it’s still working as well as the day I bought it. I haven’t paid them a penny since.

This eco trade in may be a bit sketchy but absolutely no one’s device is being bricked without their consent.

Sure, today. But what happens when Sonos decides they "don't want to support your Play:1"? Maybe because it's a "security issue" and they place your Play:1 in "recycle" mode for you and give you so many months to replace it? Think about this from a longer term point of view - this is just an A/B test by Sonos. They can brick your device from remote, so there's no guarantee that at some point they won't.

yah, i had to stop updating the sonos app on my phone so i wouldn't be forced to create a sonos account to use my play:1. i mistakenly updated the app on my ipad, so my ipad can no longer control the play:1.

i won't ever buy another sonos device (even the ikea speakers, which i like otherwise) because of that.

Sonos has never EOL'ed or feature handicapped a speaker yet. It doesn't seem like something they're keen to do.

While your argument may be technically true with regard to speakers Sonos has EoL'd product [0]. It's only a matter of time. The problem with SaaS reliant hardware is very few vendors make the effort to support products long term (>7 years).

[0] https://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-finally-kills-off-cr100...

I wholy agree that it is a concern, especially from smaller/unprofitable companies/google (sonos thankfully is none of those). Just look at the Revolv hub and it's nest aquisition.

Based on the language used online from sonos, this whole recycle mode seems to be to pay users to give up old hardware so they can EOL'd it without leaving users with useless hardware.

If a company wants to EOL hardware, paying users to give it up seems to be an ethical way to do it (from a consumer perspective, if not a environmental one)

Worse. If Sonos can do it, eventually so can a hacker. Nothing is unhackable. Sooner or later a consumer(s) or Sonos will be taken hostage.

Did you read the twitter thread? Recycle mode bricks the device without communicating clearly to customer it's a kill switch for perfectly functioning hardware.

> First gen Ipods were a prime example

Eh what?

On early Ipods music was effectively "glued" to the individual player with a primitive DRM/scambling system.

So, you were dead in the water without Itunes that kept the fairplay key for that particular player

Yeah so you could lose music, but you could just restore the iPod and put new music on it. It didn't become a brick at any point unless it literally broke.

Only for music downloaded from the iTunes Store. Even then, the restrictions were functionally identical to what was applied to desktop computers.

FairPlay was never applied to MP3 (or, later, AAC) files you loaded onto the device yourself -- you could pull them back off the device with little difficulty.

When my friends and I first got ipods, we figured you'd be able to just plug into peoples laptops and copy songs like a thumb drive. Boy did we learn that day.

I had (still have in a drawer) a 1st gen ipod, but used some gnu audio software (I forget what) to encode (encrypt?) and transfer music I had ripped from CD's I own. I never used itunes.

I think it wasn't until later generations they made this more difficult.

because they were tied to itunes?

Maybe how they used FireWire when it was on its way out?

Yes. It is painful to realize that Apple has turned into that. My reference example is a Mac Mini and MacBook Pro which I bought around 2012. Both still work, and are upgraded with dual SSD and 16GB RAM. It is, however, not possible to upgrade or even reinstall the OS. Linux is now the only option, which without they would be useless.

With my latest MacBook Pro, I already know that there are no upgrades, the keyboard is almost broken, and that its lifetime is determined through policy. Question is; will it be the hardware or software which determines end of life?

What do you mean not possible to reinstall the OS?

They don't make it easy, but you can download older OSX images from apple's servers (Sierra, Yosemite, etc..) and install them with some effort.

Not impossible.

> It is, however, not possible to upgrade or even reinstall the OS.

I don’t feel it’s fair to expect a vendor to actively develop major feature upgrades for a seven-year-old computer.

What keeps you from downloading and installing macOS High Sierra or Mojave on your 2012 hardware? Both versions still receive security updates, don’t they?

Why not? I can install latest windows 10 or ubuntu on my laptop from 2005.

Not according to my experience. Regardless, it is a matter of philosophy behind the product. And it is now quite different from before. I will probably find a balanced combination of Apple products and open hardware + software that fits my needs.

The 2012 can even install catalina.

> The latest buzzword we hear in the industry is called "product as a service" — you buy a product, but still don't own it.

That's so 2019 :-P

Today it's "consumer as a product" -- you buy a product, they own YOU.

This is where the investor backed audio companies are going. There will always be independent companies that don't have huge financial pressures that will be willing to sell complete devices at a one time fee