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After Outrage, Logitech Gives Free Upgrade To Owners of Soon To Be Obsolete Device (gizmodo.com)
It looks like Logitech didn't anticipate the barrage of criticism it received after announcing this week that it would be intentionally bricking its Harmony Link hub next March. The company is now reversing course. Its Harmony Link will still die next summer, but if you own one, the company is happy to give you a free upgrade to the more recent Harmony Hub model. From a report: Originally, Logitech planned to only offer Harmony Link owners with active warranties free upgrades to its new Harmony Hub devices. But for people out of warranty -- possibly the majority of Harmony Link users, as the devices were last sold in 2015 -- they would just get a one-time, 35 percent discount on a new $100 Harmony Hub. However, after customer outrage, Logitech revised it plans and announced that the company will give every Harmony Link owner a new Hub for free. Additionally, users who had already used the coupon to purchase a new Hub will also be able to contact Logitech in order to obtain a refund for the difference in price. However, Logitech is still not planning to extend support for the Harmony Link. The company says, "We made the business decision to end the support and services of the Harmony Link when the encryption certificate expires in the spring of 2018 -- we would be acting irresponsibly by continuing the service knowing its potential/future vulnerability."
With all the drama that's happening with it, I find it funny that Logitech called the product "Harmony".
#DeleteFacebook
Their security claim is bullshit, you can't tell me they shipped a device without a way to upgrade firmware.
Here's a coupon to buy the new model.
Sure hope we don't brick the new one too.
Why are they building a non-renewable expiration date into a hardware product? And perhaps more importantly, what is the expiration date of the new hardware product? Do they even tell the users what that expiration date is when they purchase it?
It's not so unbelievable that it's a firmware update problem. It could be that the changes they must make can't be fit into the space available on the device.
The point of this discussion, though, is that they intended to brick their own devices without fair compensation.
Kriston
Logitech has been the King of Mediocre for years. Average products that, with a bit of effort, could be quality work. For example, wrist pads instead of some products that don't force the wrist to bend back. They destroyed the Squeezebox system by Slim Devices. (When they bought the company, I knew the days it would work were numbered.)
The only reason to buy from them is not doing enough research to find who has a better product that's not necessarily as visible in the marketplace. I won't touch their products anymore.
Yeah, keep writing those great headlines. A two year old TV remote is not an "obsolete device."
And this is why I don't trust companies with "smart" things. If it's going to be smart, it had better connect to my smarts, not some remote server. Amazon and Google have "smart" speakers that can't even find DLNA audio on your home network. How smart is that?
All they apparently need to do is replace a security certificate.
that is Are Money, or Harm On You?
idontgetit.
OurMoney?
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
The dangerous thing here is that this company didn't say - it is bad to intentionally brick the fully functional (non-subscription) product after the warranty expired - they fully maintain their current position. They just shut up critics by sending them a new product (that they will brick soon anyway). After few "responsible" shut downs it will become a norm.
Are you looking forward to your car being bricked because some company just made "the business decision" [sic] that you need to buy another one?
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Because God does not shut them off for His own convenience (yet).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
We made the business decision to end the support and services of the Harmony Link when the encryption certificate expires in the spring of 2018
So they want us to think this "Business decision" was basically a cost saving exercise?
Let's think for a moment, what saves a company more money ? Is it A: Renewing an encryption certificate or B: Not renewing it, and then giving away your new product for free to existing customers.
Or is it C: Intentionally brick your 2 year old product in a half-arsed effort to force customers to your new product. Even with a 35% discount they'll still be making a profit on them.
For some reason Logitech thought their customers would roll over and take it, and seem very suprised by the backlash.
Ho hum, another company to add to my shitlist.
"OK, we can't support this thing forever, here's all the source code and protocol manuals so you can set up your own servers to make it do whatever you want"
The reason there's so much outrage over a glorified TV remote control system is the principle of the whole thing. It reminds people that no matter how much you spend on an electronic gadget, if it relies on a "cloud based" back-end in some manner, you don't *really* own or control it. You just paid to use the thing for as long as the manufacturer deems it worthy of continuing to allow it to operate for you.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this today is the Tesla Motors electric car? You can spend 6 figures on the performance version of a Model S and yet it's still subject to firmware updates Tesla pushes out to it. Not only can they cap and uncap your driving range at will, but they routinely make use of a feature that locks you out of all remote control to your vehicle (commonly done when a Tesla service place has the car overnight for maintenance). The reasoning is sound enough; they don't want you trying to manipulate things like the power windows or horn or lights while it's being worked on. But it still proves they have the "master switch" to turn your ability on and off to communicate with your vehicle that you paid for.
And here's an example of them turning off the "emergency braking" feature on the Model 3's for owners:
https://jalopnik.com/tesla-tem...
I've been saying for years that companies are being "penny wise, pound foolish" trying so hard to "cloudify" their operations. There are things that lend themselves well to being cloud-hosted, like email. (Whether you run your own mail server or not, you're still pushing and pulling everybody's content over the Internet, through other email servers that you don't control at all. And typically, the amount of time your in house I.T. staff will have to spend to address Exchange server related issues doesn't make good economic sense vs. outsourcing all of those issues up to the chain and paying for the mail hosting.) But typically, you're giving too much control and trusting too much security to 3rd. parties. Where I work, we have a DropBox business subscription. Great product and solves a lot of issues for us, but they just did a price increase that will cost us thousands more per year. It was already a pretty hefty expense that keeps going up as the company adds contractors or freelancers who need to share team folders with our employees. Before long, it'll reach a point where it's financially more sensible to host the content ourselves with a "private cloud". Except now, it's a MASSIVE hassle to retrain everyone on a new product and migrate all the data to a different platform. Could have all been avoided if we just tried to do this ourselves from the start, rather than being tempted by the instant gratification of DropBox.
Actual ROM is very rare and OTP (one time programmable) tends to be very small and for specialized functions.
Flash is cheap and stable enough that it tends to be used even if there is no plan to re-write it ever.
However, in such a case the firmware may have no functions to erase and re-write (including being laid out in such a way that it always has at least a stub that can complete an interrupted update rather than bricking).
The parties I go to usually don't feature people smugly telling people to look something up when they don't know what they're talking about.
Actual ROM is very rare and OTP (one time programmable) tends to be very small and for specialized functions.
Or they've used the a chip where the programmer burns out a diode in the microcontroller, rendering it read-only.
However, in such a case the firmware may have no functions to erase and re-write (including being laid out in such a way that it always has at least a stub that can complete an interrupted update rather than bricking).
My bet is it can only be programmed by cracking it open, and hooking up a manufacturer-proprietary programmer (it might be standard JTAG, though). Either way, it's not something consumers can do.
I'm sure there was a conversation along the lines of:
Engineer: "We'll have to spend an extra $0.20 per unit if we want firmware upgrades"
Manager: "That's too expensive, Engineer. Just do your job properly for a change."
VP: "Manager, your leadership saved the company $100k. Have a $50 gift card!"
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Alas, the switch on SD cards is just advisory. It's up to the driver to detect the switch position and honor it. No matter what position the switch is in, if the driver issues a write command, the write will happen.
Other flash chips have an actual write signal. If that is physically disconnected (by a jumper for example), a write actually can't happen. Agreed, motherboards should have the write line jumpered.
Actual ROM is very rare and OTP (one time programmable) tends to be very small and for specialized functions.
Flash is cheap and stable enough that it tends to be used even if there is no plan to re-write it ever.
However, in such a case the firmware may have no functions to erase and re-write (including being laid out in such a way that it always has at least a stub that can complete an interrupted update rather than bricking).
OTP is not all that rare. And on extremely high-volume products, ROM is still a "Thing".
BTW, just because a microcontroller is Flash-based; doesn't mean the device itself has the ability to (re)program it. They can't assume that everyone has a JTAG programmer at their disposal, and even if the device itself can (re)program its own Flash, there has to be code to support the flashing, and SPACE to store a downloaded "Update" while the device continues to function and (re)program.
Considering the longstanding bugs in my Harmony Remote, I would say that self-programming was not a design consideration.
I never said OTP was rare, just that it tends to be small. I also already pointed out that self re-flashing might not have been designed for, including lacking the code.
The nice thing about NOR flash is that the chips are hardware self-sufficient. No need for special voltages, control circuitry, or external drivers. Flashing is accomplished through the correct sequence of memory accesses.
It does at least help with user error as long as it's understood that the protection is limited.