Edit: Being forced to use an app is not new. If you visit your routers ip address you get a single page that links to the app for the app stores. Funny enough it still links to the Google Wifi app and not the Google Home app.
Aren't they reaching into Your device to remove functionality? Isn't this vandalism, and a crime?
I'm sure it's not criminal, given today's laws.
Think about that statement though. It absolutely should, morally, be criminal to take away something that was sold as functioning.
Imagine in the 80s that VCR manufacturers sent people to your home at night to open your VCR and cut some traces so it could play but no longer record. Would be an outrage. Also, fortunately, was in practice impossible.
Just because today devices are built to enable damaging functionality from afar doesn't means it is suddenly ok.
My car includes free service as a feature, that doesn't mean they can take off the wheels while I sleep and call it 'service'.
Similarly I don't think any reasonable person or judge will agree bricking a device is called 'update'.
I had a bunch of IoT lightbulbs intentionally bricked by the manufacturer. I can't remember the name of the company now. Something beginning with "F," and ending with "Electric," I think. This was back in the days before HomeKit, when IoT was even more Wild West than it is today.
I had about a dozen of the light bulbs around the house, all controlled by the company's hub, and an app on the phone. One day the company sent an e-mail stating that the system was no longer supported and would no longer function, and it also sent a forced software update to the hub, disabling everything.
I searched around the internet and found lots of people who were mad that the gear they paid for suddenly stopped functioning for no reason. Lots of speculation, but nobody ever seemed to nail down why.
'Just don't leave hone without a bulletproof vest'
There are no 'dumb' tvs left any more. Soon the same fate will befall all other devices.
If I did buy a "smart" thing, it would have to be rootable and hackable and OSS-friendly (e.g. I need to be able to control it if the company goes belly up) or I won't buy it.
Yup.
On a related note: I haven't been able to find a way to root it for OpenWRT. Does anyone know of any resource, other than the OpenWRT website, that could be helpful?
Wow, I'm not familiar if users are forced to use the Google Home app, but that seems a bit drastic to stop users from even changing the most basic settings?