October 23, 2024 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item When Companies Fail
October 23, 2024 at 7:00 am
This is the basic concept of being tethered to the Internet and I pay attention to it for all Internet-related things that I am interested in.
I have old Macs, ranging from 1985 to 2009 and the games that I play on them stop around then, because, at that point, they all either require registration online or to be connected to their server while the game is active. Their servers don't exist anymore and so the games, to all intents & purposes, don't either.
Likewise with Adobe's Creative Suite 3, it can't be re-installed any more because the activation servers have been deactivated. Adobe, instead, wants to paid them monthly for a subscription to CC even though CS3 is still good for a lot of tasks.
What you mentioned, Steve, about the Chinese car company does not surprise me. Your Tesla may still be a fully functioning car in 10 years' time until Mr. Musk decides to use the Apple playbook and tell you that your car is no longer supported. At what point does your iPhone 1o become an iPhone 3: working, but unable to receive any love from the parent company?
October 23, 2024 at 8:42 am
When I buy a product I expect it to last for as long as I look after it and as long as wear and tear allows. I think that we've gone a bit too far with what in vehicle electronics. A mechanic friend wanted to replace a window switch on a truck. When he picked up the part from the dealer he was asked if they wanted him to fit it for him and got a knowing smirk when he said "I'm a mechanic". When he replaced the part the truck refused to start. He lost most of a day trying to diagnose why, it was only when another mechanic friend suggested putting the original switch back in that he realised that any part added to the truck requires the dealer to register that part with the trucks "brain". That turns a maintenance job from an "any competent mechanic" job to an expensive main dealer network job.
I suspect many of us have been bitten by printer's artificial obsolescence.
With regard to aging software, I believe the Microfocus business model found a way to maintain end-of-life software for profit.
If an physical appliance needs to authenticate against a server then perhaps a termination of business should include a final software patch to disable the need for the appliance to use the internet. No further patches or licence checks, the internal software remains working as it was as of the last update.
October 23, 2024 at 9:08 am
This is the basic premise of the short story "Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow. Although written to be an analogy for Printer cartridges, it stands up well as an example for other devices that insist that you only use the "Manufacturer Recommended Spares".
October 23, 2024 at 1:07 pm
We’re going through this exact scenario with our EV stations we installed at our moor just two years ago. The Enel company that supports the Juicebox software is shutting down, (you can read about it here on the Tesla forums: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/juicebox-enel-x-way-north-america-is-shutting-down-oct-11-2024.334733/ )
We had invested in chargers at our parking spots with the rest of our moor after a ton of research and are now facing how to manage EV usage and charging going forward. There was little warning and there’s another, much larger moorsge facing the same problem.
I’ve been researching alternatives to manually photographing use on the console to track usage. I can’t imagine this as a working solution for many, yet that was what was proposed.
Kellyn
October 23, 2024 at 1:18 pm
As part of this response, I happened across this grassroots rescue of Juicebox: https://juice-rescue.org/
Consumers may win this yet…:)
October 23, 2024 at 1:26 pm
This cures me of my long-standing whinge that we still don't have flying cars.
October 23, 2024 at 3:13 pm
Honestly the whole "everything has an APP" is one of the (many) reasons I'm not looking to get an EV, much less many of the newer cars. After all, a couple years back BMW was called out for making heated seats(!!) a subscription service in certain models. The hardware for the heating was already there, but you had to pay BMW monthly to activate it(!)
It's all too easy for a manufacturer to decide "we're not supporting your device with our software anymore and it's going to not work / only have minimal functions" or the manufacturer to fold and you end up in the same boat.
It's one thing if it's a relatively inexpensive, easy to replace (or live with minimal functionality) like a thermostat, it's another thing if your car perhaps can no longer be charged, or features you paid thousands for suddenly no longer work.
October 23, 2024 at 3:33 pm
Interesting article, Steve. I hadn't thought of these issues until I read what you wrote. The idea of companies open sourcing their software, especially if it becomes obsolete, is novel to me. In principle I agree with you. But, I wonder how that can be achieved. What I mean is I'm extending that idea to agencies other than companies. I work in state government. And I happen to be one of the DevOps engineers here. I know, from experience, that we have several obsolete applications. However, the idea of open sourcing those applications would probably result in someone saying, "Over my dead body". And in defense of my employer, I seriously doubt that we're the only one. I'm sure that there are lots of agencies out there, who would never allow their obsolete software to be open sourced.
The only way I can see this happening is if some regulation is put in place requiring obsolete software to be open sourced, with serious consequences for not complying with it. Does anyone know if that is true, anywhere?
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
October 23, 2024 at 6:00 pm
This is the basic concept of being tethered to the Internet and I pay attention to it for all Internet-related things that I am interested in.
I have old Macs ...
What you mentioned, Steve, about the Chinese car company does not surprise me. Your Tesla may still be a fully functioning car in 10 years' time until Mr. Musk decides to use the Apple playbook and tell you that your car is no longer supported. At what point does your iPhone 1o become an iPhone 3: working, but unable to receive any love from the parent company?
I hate required to the Internet for things. I get activation/checks/etc. I don't mind my spotify requiring a live connection every 30 days, but not every time. And please fail gracefully, don't sit there and spin a wheel with poor connections.
The car is fully supported without Internet. Nothing is required for the car to work. However, the app uses the Internet for some things, though not for a key. I also think at some scale, the car isn't going to be abandoned any more than any other car. My 2012 used to have remote lock/unlock/etc. from the Internet and that's gone. It's partially a vendor thing, partially a cell network thing as the car uses 3G.
I'm way more worried about losing 4G connections than the vendor stopping something, but both are risks. In many ways.
It's one reason I didn't buy a Tesla prior to 2020, as I wasn't sold on the company surviving. I think it's great the people buy Rivians, Fiskers, WM Motors, etc., but I want either some escrow of support or code so that third parties can step in.
October 23, 2024 at 6:03 pm
When I buy a product I expect it to last for as long as I look after it and as long as wear and tear allows. I think that we've gone a bit too far with what in vehicle electronics. A mechanic friend wanted to replace a window switch on a truck. When he picked up the part from the dealer he was asked if they wanted him to fit it for him and got a knowing smirk when he said "I'm a mechanic". When he replaced the part the truck refused to start. He lost most of a day trying to diagnose why, it was only when another mechanic friend suggested putting the original switch back in that he realised that any part added to the truck requires the dealer to register that part with the trucks "brain". That turns a maintenance job from an "any competent mechanic" job to an expensive main dealer network job.
I suspect many of us have been bitten by printer's artificial obsolescence.
With regard to aging software, I believe the Microfocus business model found a way to maintain end-of-life software for profit.
If an physical appliance needs to authenticate against a server then perhaps a termination of business should include a final software patch to disable the need for the appliance to use the internet. No further patches or licence checks, the internal software remains working as it was as of the last update.
More than a few companies have registered parts to the item (like my GE fridge with filters) and I think this is pure evil. I am not buying another GE appliance for this reason as the company running the brand is evil from the consumer perspective. John Deere was doing this, as were others.
I hope more stringent right-to-repair laws come into place, as well as right-to-replace, allowing third parties to license and build replacement parts that either meet the register requirement or ensure they work without registering.
October 23, 2024 at 6:31 pm
This is the basic premise of the short story "Unauthorized Bread" by Cory Doctorow. Although written to be an analogy for Printer cartridges, it stands up well as an example for other devices that insist that you only use the "Manufacturer Recommended Spares".
Printer companies were the original evil here. Only slightly ahead of mobile phone companies that used their own charging cord style/spec.
October 23, 2024 at 6:33 pm
We’re going through this exact scenario with our EV stations we installed at our moor just two years ago. The Enel company that supports the Juicebox software is shutting down, (you can read about it here on the Tesla forums: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/juicebox-enel-x-way-north-america-is-shutting-down-oct-11-2024.334733/ )
We had invested in chargers at our parking spots with the rest of our moor after a ton of research and are now facing how to manage EV usage and charging going forward. There was little warning and there’s another, much larger moorsge facing the same problem.
I’ve been researching alternatives to manually photographing use on the console to track usage. I can’t imagine this as a working solution for many, yet that was what was proposed.
Kellyn
I'm very disappointed in this. They ought to OSS the code, or license it for any third party to provide services, or even individuals to run the monitoring/scheduling/etc.
This is one place I'd support a class action to require them to OSS this stuff.
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