Comment on You’ve just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription | Once upon a time there was a company called Miku who wasn’t making quite enough money...

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jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

How does that pan out when the company discontinues that product model or product line?

A family member got a fancy device with zero buttons on it, and an app that basically provides ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons that has to go through that companies cloud service. When their internet went down, they had to unplug it because it was set wrong and without internet, it couldn’t be set.

This wasn’t some advanced capability. It didn’t require massive data or computational power. It literally could have been handled with a 7-segment LCD panel and three buttons (+/-/Power). If you buy that device now, they require you pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of being able to do that (under the excuse that they use ‘AI’ to know the right values without being told, but conveniently even the ‘+/-’ functionality is now locked to the subscription plan.

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