Open any consumer electronics catalog from around the 1980s to the early 2000s and you are overwhelmed by a smörgåsbord of devices, covering any audio-visual and similar entertainment and hobby needs one might have. Depending on the era you can find the camcorders, point-and-shoot film and digital cameras right next to portable music players, cellphones, HiFi sets and tower components, televisions and devices like DVD players and VCRs, all of them in a dizzying amount of brands, shapes and colors that are sure to fit anyone’s needs, desires and budget.
When by the late 2000s cellphones began to absorb more and more of the features of these devices alongside much improved cellular Internet access, these newly minted ‘smartphones’ were hailed as a technological revolution that combined so many consumer electronics into a single device. Unlike the relatively niche feature phones, smartphones absolutely took off.
Fast-forward more than a decade and the same catalogs now feature black rectangles identified respectively as smart phones, smart TVs and tablets, alongside evenly colored geometric shapes that identify as smart speakers and other devices. While previously the onus for this change was laid by this author primarily on the death of industrial design, the elephant in the room would seem to be that consumer electronics are suffering from a terminal disease: subscription services.
Ownership And Timeshare
In the burgeoning consumer electronics world of the 1950s, everyone was into streaming audio-visual content. This being the once popular phenomena that historians refer to as ‘radio’ and ‘television’, involving the purchase of a compatible device to receive said content on, which was being broadcast via the airwaves. Naturally, this was before the era of on-demand streaming, so you also had to subscribe to a service that would provide you with the time tables for when said content would be streamed.
Although you could buy vinyl records back then, these were relatively expensive even if you already had a record player. Fortunately, by the 1960s affordable cassette tapes for purchase of prerecorded content – as well as home recording – began to appear with Philips’ compact cassette as clear frontrunner.
By the 1970s home video recorders became affordable and surged in popularity by the 1980s and 1990s, with JVC’s VHS format enabling a massive market of both prerecorded content and of blank tapes to record any content from television broadcasts on for later perusal. At this point linear television and radio broadcasts had been largely superseded by people building up their personal audio-visual libraries in addition to borrowing tapes and later DVDs from video rental stores and public libraries.
Until the 1970s digital computers were primarily a government and university thing, with businesses anxiously trying to get into the game as well to ease everything from payroll processing to inventory management and engineering. Due to the high cost – and large size – of digital computers at the time, it was more economical to use time-sharing. This changed over time from batch processing in the form of university students lugging stacks of punch cards around, to them setting themselves down in front of a terminal like the DEC VT100.
Although these computer terminals looked like computers to the lay person, they are little more than a screen and keyboard tied into I/O buffers that communicate with a remote central computer. With these terminals students could all log into their own student account on the university’s mainframe and thus stop pestering the sysadmins with their stacks of punch cards for an overdue assignment.
For government purposes the same terminal-based approach offered a good balance, while for businesses the target mainframe over at the time-sharing business was more easily accessed by something like dial-up due to the distances involved, with the mainframe’s owner charging for the used resources. This spread the expenses of owning and maintaining these early computers over as many users as possible while keeping costs low for businesses making use of these time-share services.
This lasted until the era of mass-produced home computers arrived by the late 1970s with microcomputers such as the Commodore PET, before culminating with the 1981 release of IBM’s 5150 Personal Computer (PC), which was decidedly the point when time-sharing of mainframes and the use of terminals had begun to rapidly fade. Within years every student, corporate worker and government employee could economically be given access to a fully capable computer system, whether in the form of a PC, Macintosh, MSX or something else, along with dedicated server systems tucked away in the business’ server room or under a desk somewhere.
Even children could now be given dedicated computers to play video games on, which would have seemed a frivolous waste of computing resources in the 1960s to anyone except university students.
Thus, as the 1980s rolled over into the 1990s it seemed like the future of technology had truly arrived, with every home potentially a true Mecca of computing power and audio-visual entertainment.
Terminal Decline
After most of the world celebrated the arrival of the new millennium in 2000, followed by the arrival of the 3rd millennium a year later, the remaining euphoria of having made it to the future would quickly run into the quicksand pit of reality. After having had a quarter of the 21st century to sober up, it seems like this is the time to take a look back and question how in blazes’ name we got where we are today.
Over the past years, the living room has metamorphized from something that looks lived in, into the modern-day living room that can alternatively be described as ‘clean’ or ‘sterile’. The theme here is ‘surfaces’, which preferentially are white, black, grey or some other inoffensive color.
As you enter such a living room to be audio-visually entertained, you will pick up the smart remote that turns on the smart TV. Except the TV is always on, as it is smart and probably is always listening and running firmware updates in the background anyway. Ignoring that, your choices of entertainment are:
- A game console that is logged into your Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft account with likely paid-for digital games and services
- A video streaming service or two, or four, the overwhelming majority of which are subscription-only and/or force you to watch ads like in the good ol’ days of cable TV. Only the ads are much, much worse
- Content streamed off your local NAS, if you’re a total nerd
- A Blu-ray or DVD player if you’re old-fashioned and refuse to join the Digital-Only Content Age
For the overwhelming majority of smart TV users, they are a recurring revenue source for streaming services, with the TV being the device purchased by the viewer in order to access said services. Much the same is true with modern game consoles, where you effectively must be logged into your online account to do much of anything with the console and an increasing amount of games, if only to obtain the latest updates to fix bugs. This triply so if you are one of those people who are into cloud gaming.
As you ignore that your smart TV is basically a cross between a very advanced VT100 terminal and a Telescreen, you glance at the glass-and-plastic slab in your hand as one of your friends just messaged you on a messaging app – which annoyingly again advertises a premium subscription account – about this rad new music album on this one streaming audio service. Fortunately you are already a member, so you add the album for later listening.
That your smart TV, game console, and smart phone are all just terminals for some remote server begins to sink in once your internet access has been cut off. You cannot stream any audio-visual content, and many of your video games outright refuse to run because of a lack of internet connectivity. Ditto for your smart speakers, which have begun to stubbornly ignore your calls for attention.
When you sigh and flip open your laptop to maybe do some work, you find that your software products refuse to even launch, as they absolutely needed to refresh their license key verification this instant. Feeling mildly upset by their accusations of you having pirated their over-priced software after forking over so much cash each month, you slam the laptop shut again. This is when you realize that your project files are stored safely on the now unreachable cloud storage account anyway.
Ultimately you find yourself just staring at the black rectangles and inoffensive geometric shapes that once entertained you or made you more productive, but which now have left you terrifyingly alone with your own thoughts. Maybe you will have to do something drastic soon, like try reading a book, drag out that old CD player, play chess against yourself, or do some sketching on paper. With a real pencil.
Shareholder Value
The move from a boxed copy of stand-alone software and physical products to something with a recurring monthly or annual cost has been a gradual one. Much of it can already be traced back to the overly optimistic days leading up to the dot-com bubble, when the internet was going to make everyone rich and the selling of online goods the new normal.
Although the resulting fallout from this bubble popping was rather extensive, it left the investors who escaped the catastrophe wiser and still positively slavering at the thought of using the Internet for unimaginable levels of that sweetest reward of all: recurring revenue, with people giving you their money every month just to keep what they mistakenly thought that they had purchased.
The challenge is of course that people in general like to own things, and are rather hesitant to buy into anything that makes them have fewer things. How do you make people voluntarily buy into owning less and less, with what they do own having fewer features? The answer would seem to lie in blinding them with shiny new features, while insisting that they really don’t need the features that you are about to remove or nerf.
For example, initially people loved the idea of a smartphone because it meant that they could carry around in their pocket a cellphone, a camcorder, photo camera, portable internet-capable computer, an FM radio, a music player and more, all in a single device. Unfortunately all of these functions have been nerfed in some way or form.
FM Radio
Although regular analog radio on the FM and AM bands has lost a lot of importance these days, having FM radio available can be incredibly useful. Consider being out somewhere with poor cell coverage, not wanting to use up your data allowance for the month, or when everything has gone sideways in the form of a hurricane and the local grid, internet and cell network have collapsed. Especially in the latter case it would be convenient if you could just open the FM radio app on your smartphone to tune into emergency broadcasts.
Unfortunately this feature has been purposefully disabled or left out by device manufacturers, with Apple having opted to not even add an FM radio to its custom SoCs. A quick look at a couple of major smartphone manufacturers over at GSM Arena for smartphones released in 2024 or 2025 featuring an FM radio only shows two, both budget Samsung models.
Typically only budget-level smartphones have an FM radio feature enabled, as one aspect of the FM radio feature is that it requires its own antenna, which generally is a set of headphones plugged into the 3.5 mm audio jack. This logically means that the survival chances of budget smartphone buyers is significantly higher during a natural disaster than for people buying iPhones or higher-end Samsung and Xiaomi phones.
Audio Jack
The analog audio from a 3.5 mm audio jack is a low-latency, high-fidelity way to experience audio, only limited by the used audio DAC and the headphones or in-ears plugged into the jack. This makes it rather baffling that it’s also among the most vilified features. The reason here isn’t that it compromises waterproofing, or impedes thinness or adds cost, but rather it gets dropped on higher-end smartphones because Apple dropped it to promote their Bluetooth headphones and others followed.
Unfortunately, Bluetooth audio is neither low-latency nor high-fidelity, with newer codecs like LDAC, AptX, and AAC slightly improving the audio quality over the default SBC codec, but keeping all the other compromises. Meanwhile a fraction of the USB-C connectors on phones support the alternative analog audio mode, returning an audio jack to the device with a dongle, yet not re-enabling the use of headphones as an FM antenna and also making it impossible to use the USB-C port for any data transfers, while making the entire setup significantly more clunky, just to get a previously eliminated port back on the device instead of just putting it on there in the first place.
SD Cards
An important feature of a digital camera and camcorder is being able to quickly get the data off it and onto a computer for processing and viewing. Unfortunately in so far as smartphones supported SD card expansion, this at the very least required taking off the plastic back to swap cards. These days the SD card either shares space with the SIM card(s), or is eliminated altogether.
The idea here is of course to increase recurring revenue: the easiest way to get data onto a smartphone or off it is via the device manufacturer’s cloud storage solutions, with a minor fee to bump it up to a usable amount of storage. You’re also not supposed to load your own audio files onto the internal storage either, but use the paid-or-ad-supported streaming solution. Why would you want to be un-cool and not listen to losslessly streamed audio files mangled by some Bluetooth codec through the second pair of wireless in-ears of this month as the previous ones fell out somewhere?
Fortunately, the marketing is very convincing, as you can now listen to or watch anything that you want – as long as it’s available on the streaming service – and you can even use your voice to tell any of your smart devices to play a song or open a movie, because this is what the future looks like. Never mind that you do not technically own much any more, but at least you are happy.
Terminal Life
Probably the biggest question here is whether or not this terminalification is harmful. Sure, this change has meant that industrial design got effectively shivved in the proverbial dark alley – since the user interface of devices now lives on the device manufacturer’s servers – but you now have all these cool features. Things like a smart home full of Internet of Things devices, each of which are first and foremost terminals for the manufacturer’s services, with local control an afterthought, if a thought at all.
Even governments and businesses haven’t managed to escape these changes with their own vortex back to the 1960s. Rather than using a dial-up modem to connect to a time-share mainframe, they now use a broadband Internet connection to connect to a time-share mainframe, except we now call it a ‘cloud’.
It’s often been said that the centralization and decentralization of computer technology in particular is cyclical, with the 1980s and 1990s forming the pinnacle of decentralization. If we are currently in a trough of terminal terminalification, then logically decentralization and determinalification should follow next. One could make the point here that the Right to Repair movement is part of this change, as it wrests control away from manufacturers.
Even so, we still have a long way to go if this is the next stop, with our current physical media revival kerfuffle being just one of the many things that we have to come to terms with. Between the glossy marketing and the often conflicting desires and needs of the average consumer, it’s probably anyone’s guess what the second quarter of the 21st century will look like for consumer electronics and beyond.
Ma’am, This Is A Wendy’s.
You say that, but a computer voice took my order at Taco Bell the other day.
The Carls Jr one is getting better. It was a rough launch that had comical results at first.
Dead meme
It’s an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
Any time they like but they can never leave?
Those terminals, some of them could be really quite powerful and a good few contain as much if not more processing power than some of the contemporary major name home computers, I certainly had Space Invaders running on a Wyse 50 as ‘diagnostics’ back when I repaired them for a living.
FGS, 7:16 is me, UK CJay
The DEC VT180 was a CP/M-80 computer.
https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/DEC_VT180
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtxWKrTdZc0
People gotta vote with their wallet, I feel for those of us with hacker mindset, avoiding all this lockin bullshit is a given. Inflation’s going through the roof, and we are all bleeding money through subscriptions to shit we don’t need in one form or another. I reluctantly chose motorola android phones because they still had headphone jack and the least amount of pre-installed crapware. i avoid as much of this app lockin and subscription stuff as i can, return products that try to sneak it in on the sly. it’s not always convenient (or realistic), but we all gotta push against this shit, Louis Rossman does lots to make these issues relatable to people, and it’s an idea that is slowly sinking into non techie peoples minds, especially the tractor DRM example. if farmers can’t do shit because of a software lockout there’s not much hope for the rest of us.
The boat on this was missed 15 years ago. Apple showed it worked, Google saw and followed, now Windows works off the same model.
No way we are getting the industry to do a u-turn now that 2 generations think this is just how tech works.
Not with that attitude
problem is for every person who knows they are being screwed, there are another 100 going “shut up and take my money”.
Nah, not 100 fools, but enough fools to get Subscription Services thrive.
Not only people think this is how it works. They will support corporations and their businesses. They can go on war against other corporation (like iphone vs android) but will never defend their own rights or money. I remember here on HaD a commenter explaining that it was good that smartphones have short battery life. Not to mention the fact that famous FM option on smartphones was removed by software on many phones – all hardware was there. And people still defended that move because they personally don’t use FM. Anyone remebers whaen we were fighting for open document standard? Even then people didn’t want it.
Similarly, I was talking with somebody trying to defend Google removing XLST rendering support from Blink because, “Web Devs hat XML.” Like, sure, they do, but that’s not a good reason to break backwards compatibility? You don’t have to use XML if you don’t want to, it’s just an option, but it should be supported at least as a backwards compatibility layer. Just because you don’t like/use something completely optional and avoidable, doesn’t mean we should get rid of something for everyone when the cost is basically zero.
I have no subscription services, nor personal accounts with two of the major internet account providers. I purchase hardware that I more or less have control over, but understand the need for some level of monitoring through the network.
People will continue to buy into a consumer model. But for the rest of us, let’s continue doing what we can to help ourselves and others.
It is easy for those ships to sink once a robust and competitive alternative comes along.
Can’t vote with our wallets. No big corporation is going to change their path, because this one is the “best” for them by far.
The big companies that aren’t doing gross things yet aren’t differentiating themselves, they’re “behind”.
Someone was saying, “Hyundai was one of the better automakers regarding subscriptions, but they’re talking about pursuing them now. Why don’t they advertise the ownership and lack of subscription as a positive instead?”
Because, to them, that’s very niche, there’s nobody else competing for people who value those things, and it severely limits their pursuit of industry/investor-ideals like recurring income, self-driving, connected services, and AI.
Our options are open source, independent small businesses, and making things ourselves. There are no “elections”, there are no different “candidates”. The option is fleeing to more democratic “nations”.
@spacedog
Serious question now. I am about to change phone now. Please suggest me something. I need fairly good camera, fairly good specs (I don’t play games but in 5 years apps will be written to consume more resources), banking apps (so genuine android), real security updates for 5 years (no need for OS upgrade – just security apps) and long battery life. Would welcome audio jack, sd card support, fm radio. No AI would be bless.
At this moment I am heading for Google pixel 9a or some Samsung only because I see no other option.
I also use Motorola phones. The moto g power and moto g stylus are very reasonable phones with decent cameras and great battery life. They both have physical sim and SD card support. The 3.5mm jacks also support FM radio. Thankfully they also have USB C for charging. For a few hundred dollars as direct from manufacturer unlocked phones, I haven’t found anything more reasonable.
Unfortunately, the security update cycles are more ambiguous and almost certainly far less than the 5 years you mention.
Google Pixel with GrapheneOS is my go-to now after this experiment (shameless plug). There’s no audio jack or SD card slot or radio, but at least with Graphene there’s no spyware (i.e. no Google services) or AI on it.
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/02/pining-for-a-de-googled-smartphone/
Go with the Moto G Power 2025. It’s fast, fantastic and a great price. Will do exactly what you want.
Thanks guys!
Do they have sd card slots? Man i miss the days when android phones tried to offer features over iphone. Sometimes i think the best “vote with your wallet” approach is to just buy an iphone untill android mfrs decide they need to differentiate their products from their main compeditor.
I always find it to be such a joke how cheap memory is these days yet a phone with more than 128 gb is eternnaly “premium” so you have to use the cloud.
Buy a camera, and go to the bank when you have business with them. Life is much better without a cellphone.
I’m with you. I purchased a moto G Power 2025 as an e-reader because I like the phone form factor to read on. I only use it on wifi, no SIM. This phone has a higher IPX rating than my galaxy S25 Ultra, I have 40GB of 320K mp3 files (from a much larger ripped CD collection) on a SD card in the phone. Tons of Ebooks and Kindle books also on the card.
(Download Kindle books work off-line BTW.)
I purchased an FM antenna for the headphone jack and can listen to radio via Bluetooth earbuds.
If I’m in a power outage I have no fear of being bored or out of touch as this phone is an off-line champ!
It will be my backup phone if my Samsung ever breaks and I might not go back to Samsung if moto keeps up the good work and Samsung keeps pulling features.
I had a car serviced and therefore was put on the Corporate mailing list by that dealer. And then I was spammed by that manufacturer with a subject I’d not normally click on ; basically How Much Interest is there in Subscription features in a new car.
I actually bothered to click through the web form and do the survey. They didn’t really want any personal details and I figured it was a way to give them a piece of my mind. Zeros across the board and No interest whatsoever. I’m not looking to remote start a car or control a garage door through a subscription service.
-But you know it is coming. They put in the elements for a heat seat for instance but you can’t control it unless you pay. Tesla does this don’t they?
I hope the Slate pickup makes it. I can buy a touchscreen android head unit for $30-50, and put it on a power switch to kill it if necessary (besides never letting it have data).
Not just Tesla. My 2016 GM requires subscription and smartphone ap for pretty much every feature except AM/FM radio, plugging in to the sound system with 3mm TRS plug, and operation of the power windows while driving. Remote lock/unlock? yup. Remote start? yup. heated seats? yup. Alarm? yup. And so on. I don’t even know what other options there are besides the only one that really makes sense as a subscription, the onboard wifi, which I have no need for.
I don’t use the dealer. They have mandatory opt-in for contact and marketing for any service or part purchase (I don’t know if it is manufacturer wide, or only dealer groups, but no) Junk mail. Phone calls. emails (email address was required when I purchased to get a discount related to my job). Took me two years and going to the state consumer protection and attorney general to stop it. Went in last year for a new washer nozzle, with part number in hand, and the demand for the VIN and signature to buy a non-returnaable part made me go to an online source.
VW introduces monthly subscription to increase car power:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62weyp4qqgo
Weasel words of justification too:
German car making giant Volkswagen (VW) has introduced a subscription for UK customers wanting to increase the power of some of its electric cars.
Those who buy an eligible car in its ID.3 range can choose to pay extra if they want to unlock the full power of the engine inside the vehicle.
VW says the “optional power upgrade” will cost £16.50 per month or £165 annually – or people can choose to pay £649 for a lifetime subscription.
The firm said it was “offering customers choice” with the feature.
This might have been news 15 years ago, now it’s just history.
The vast majority of people did not do a cost/benefit analysis properly. They did not want to spend /money/ on their apps. I did not want to waste my time and sanity letting pure drivel of ads, pop-ups and data scraping. So here we are, every app can steal your contacts and read your text messages with no permissions required, and I am unable to deny them.
I guess I need a burner phone or a sandbox for apps. I use a website whenever possible. To pay for parking, to order food, eBay, Facebook etc etc, none of them get an app on my device.
I was trained early though, even Win95 had useless bloatware when PackardBell or Compaq was shipping it.
To counter point the article, Bluetooth does not need to be low latency, it buffers.
Nobody is stopping you from loading media, it’s more the operating system obfuscating file management. And I kind of get it, I am on a 7.6″ phone with a 500-600 DPI and the apps are written to work on a $13 burner phone.
Perhaps the biggest slap in the face is the phone supports a desktop Linux experience natively, but only on an external screen. 🤦🏼♂️. Stupidity knows no bounds.
latency is acceptable for music but it’s frustrating on calls. BT latency stacks with call audio latency.
Don’t act like it wasn’t going to happen no matter what, as if some magical scenario where people acted rational and conscientious anonymously at-scale (expecting that to ever occur is TRULY stupid) would have prevented all this. No. Even if that did happen, developers would have still run into a need to grow at any cost and implemented all the skullduggery eventually.
It was never going to happen I agree. But theoretically yes if nobody had used the apps there would have been no money and people wouldn’t have gone to an ad-supported model.
I suppose this began when TV came out Ad-Supported, and we fought back by taping our shows and fast forwarding, then by using a Tivo/DVR. I personally would mute, get up and make popcorn. Or channel surf another show during commercials. After OTA became a thing I would record the MPEG2 transport stream off antenna and cut the commercials by keyframe, no re-encode necessary.
I use Netguard (from github, not Google Play Store so you get adblocking inbuilt) to block all apps I don’t want talking to the internet.
Then I also use ADBShell with universal-android-debloater-next-generation to rip out Android bloatware and spyware without needing root access.
Same here, on an Android One phone.
Used ADBShell to remove Youtube and a few other apps.
Couldn’t find how to use a host file with Netguard though.
I agree with your rant 1000%.
Note how we’re all justifying this banditry using investment-speak? Even the sports commentators nowadays talk all day about financial parameters – the players’ price on the market, earnings, how much money a club invested in their team. I guess that’s because most of the market is run now by investment people for whom art, fair competition, the Hippocratic oath and such are just selling propositions. Nowadays even the weapons industry’s primary goal isn’t killing people but revenue.
But there is a way out, even if it’s a long way, and thank you Hackaday for talking openly about where we are and where we should be.
Enjoy https://appzwang.de/ or https://appdwang.nl
Now for something more actionable, maybe give your kids a second-hand Thinkpad and tell them to install Linux instead of giving them an iPad. Tell them to “just pirate it or ask your friends at school to share their credentials or watch it with you” instead of purchasing another streaming service subscription. When you recommend a movie or a show to your friends or family, just give them an account on your Jellyfin.
I tried to use Jellyfin, but the client is not available for my Roku because I’m ‘not in a supported country’.
The Jellyfin forums were of no help. So much for open source…
Hard delete, I’ll go back to Plex that ‘just works’…
Well my inlaws have a dumb Android smart TV and it just worked. As it did on my sister’s plain Android phone. You could have just told them “so connect a laptop and run it from browser”.
imo the article is overblown. yeah there’s plenty of subscription garbage but i’ve found it easy to opt out. like, people usually have to go out of their way to get the IoT version of a product that breaks when the manufacturer goes under a year later. when i switched from forced air to hydronic heat, my mercury switch thermostat no longer sufficed (too much hysteresis, faulty / ineffective ‘anticipator’), and i went to the hardware store and got some digital lcd honeywell unit for about $25. sure, i could have spent a lot more money and gotten something that would have been nothing but trouble…but i just didn’t do that thing. i’m not mad about the guys who chose differently than i did.
one thing that surprises me, though, is how awful streaming tv is. one of the reasons i like my own collection of media is that i can control the player so thoroughly…if it’s glitchy, i can fix it. i’ve got it just how i want it. i assumed i was just being inflexible, that actually the typical consumer experience is pretty friendly if you don’t mind paying for it. but actually, even for regular usage, these streaming apps all suck! and they all do it (though in different ways), so i think regular consumers just compare them to eachother rather than to a properly-working media player.
for the life of me, i do not understand how so many software engineers wind up letting the UI thread go unresponsive when the playback thread is blocked by buffering. i understand i won’t get to watch the next frame of tv show, but being unable to use any of the controls is a staggering failure. and yet, i know android forces them to use a separate ui thread, so why isn’t that thread responsive? nevermind all of the kinds of crashes and desyncs and stuff that i’ve seen.
but if i didn’t want streaming tv, i just wouldn’t use it. we’re far from being forced into anything awful, imo.
I can’t just buy Photoshop or Autodesk for work. That is officially impossible. And don’t say I can use some open-source version of it instead, I can’t do that while remaining flexible and competitive. I run the open-source stuff as well, but sometimes (all the time) you need to interface with clients who are using proprietary.
but you want photoshop. you want to work with your customers. you want that stuff, and so you have to play their game. if you’re going to keep working with your customers, who are always updating their side of things, you will need to update your side as well. so you want updates. subscription is a fine pricing model for software that needs frequent updates. requirement to be online is probably non-negotiable with your customers already. i bet they love not corresponding with you via snail mail floppy disks.
in my mind, that’s no different from being forced to use win95 for work back in the day. the subscription model is a totally immaterial change, because the commercial shops were all buying updates anyways.
Autodesk is fine. It is cheaper that some of the alternatives, and chance are if you are paying a licence, then you are generating revenue, all thanks to that software.
Some companies also offer use of the software not for commercial use, which is also great.
No, it’s not “easy to opt out”. The devices that I purchased under the (apparently incorrect assumption that they were under my control), were absolutely no longer under my control.
I bought a Kardia Mobile EKG for $100 in 2019, it worked great. After an update in 2021, it required a login with the company to use the device I had purchased 18 months before. No login, no internet connection, no EKG.
I bought a WiFi enabled outlet controller in 2018, it worked great. After an update in 2021, it required a login with the company to use the device I had purchased years before. No login, no internet connection, no control.
These devices became subject to being remotely disabled long after I purchased them with the intent to use them as I see fit, to be converted into a pathway for someone to require my attention and/or my money to use my equipment.
I would recharacterize your issues with the developers of streaming services and equipment are directly related to the same basic problem: Executives deciding that their stock value next quarter has priority over all other aspects of the business. Once a device is purchased, the executives get nothing for its continued use, so there is no such thing as customer service. In the case of streaming, the executives prioritize their relationships with the near-monopolistic content owners to allow them to continue service, and again the end customer has no vote other than to stop watching media (not easy in family situations, etc.).
The laws on theft need updating to cover this behaviour. Think of it like this:
You buy a TV, I break in and take it:- Theft
You buy a TV, I break in and take part from it:- Theft
You buy a TV, I break in and take part from it and replace it with something less capable:- Theft
You buy a TV, I replace a part of it with something less capable via software, is it still Theft?
but that $100 EKG device is not displacing an existing open or consumer-friendly EKG device. it’s a novel product. the vendor’s obnoxious business model is essential to them making the bottom line work out to sell such a device.
and why are you updating your switched outlet? i don’t see anything remotely difficult about opting out of IoT electrical switches. shrug
Fortunately I can still buy a nice phone with microSD support. Curiously, from a company that doesn’t offer a backup service. 2TB micro SDs are available now, maxing out the SDXC spec, it’s nuts.
Unfortunately the phone will still stop receiving updates eventually and then become incompatible with online applications. We could use more “unlock after service life ends” laws instead of “brick after service life ends” EULAs. Then we could keep it alive and even get app2sd features back.
Those 2 TB SDs are fakes produced by scammers in China and India. In reality it’s probably a 16 GB card with hacked firmware to report bogus capacity.
👍
A neighbor of mine bought a “2TB” SSD at Walmart-or-similar and was thrilled at his eye for a bargain. Only $30!
He was absolutely crestfallen when I pointed out, and demonstrated, that it was exactly what you describe – a fake, with malign firmware and an absolutely crippled data transfer rate (such that if you tried to fill it up as a test, you’d probably die of boredom long before hitting even its lower, wraparound capacity.)
you can actually buy genuine 2tb sd cards, with 4 and 8 on the horizon.
obviously if hou pay £11 it’s not going to be real, but £180 for one direct from the oem store will be genuine.
SanDisk on their official site is selling a 2TB microSD. 2TB are just released but they’re real. 1TBs are relatively easy to get. We’ve MAXED the SDXC size and SDUC is next. I have a TB of data in the size of my fingernail and it’s is a threat to online backup services.
Name that phone please if it at least have 5 year security updates.
Only frivolous ‘subscription’ here is the ‘internet’ connection to the house. Almost a necessity anymore. And of course the necessary utility bills we all pay until you die. My wife’s cell is a monthly charge to keep using (track phone). Stop at anytime. Only apps on phone are the ones that came with it…. After all it is for talking/texting/pictures. The Subaru people wanted us to get subscriptions for remote-start, music streaming, Starlink, and probably something else, but we opted out of all that. No, No, and NO. Pay enough just for the vehicle, let alone be nickel’ed and dime’ed to death while you drive the car… Sheesh… So far, all the PC hardware (motherboards/memory/SSDs/HDDs/etc.) is ‘mine’ once bought. Since I run Linux, no re-occurring costs software wise either as there is always something out there that is ‘good enough’ for home use .. No subscription there.
Big problems lie ahead for this system, a lot of people have yet to consider what happens when a cloud service or always on DRM system gets discontinued, you get lots of importent files stuck in a proprietry format and no software to access them. And whats to stop a provider that offers their service for $1 per year being bought out by a rival and then demanding $1000 per week to be able to continue accessing your own files!
Non-existent problem … here. All important files are stored locally. I ‘really really’ don’t understand why (in this day and age) storing locally )on-site/off-site isn’t the defacto standard for everyone. Seems like common sense. I saw the problem immediately when cloud servers were first introduced. Also phone picture/data storage (like icloud). Smells of vendor lock-in if used. As said above, companies come and go in time. No cloud data is safe … nor truly owned the users.
not truly owned ‘by’ the users…
Probably, a data miners paradise as well from the back in as well.
i remember in the 90s all the pc games (bought cash on the barrel, no account) had networking support and multiplayer built in. thing is nobody had their own lan back then, and most people only had one computer in the entire house. now a router is considered standard equipment, and all the games want you to play on their servers with astronaut ping. progress? i think not.
ive never found the need to store so much data the next years hard drive upgrade couldn’t store twice. now a nas is the cool gadget to have.
The only files I own in the cloud are my emails. My TV has never been connected to the internet and had all the AI turned off. My phone has hundreds of mp3 songs. I never install apps if there’s webpage access. TrackerControl enables app connection blocking. My only monthly subscriptions are to a few authors on Patreon and the EFF.
Y’know, my life isn’t difficult.
If some new series is getting fantastic reviews, I’ll look for a magnet link.
@ Maya Posch:
Your writing is reliably great, but this is a tour-de-force. Thank you for saying aloud what most of us think – and the giant, relentlessly exploitive corporations don’t want us to think about (i.e., the “look, something shiny!” effect). I don’t know if we can beat their methods without first beating figurative plowshares into possibly figurative swords, but open source helps (readers: contribute code, cash, comradery, and congrats!). And, hey, what revolution doesn’t eventually demand swords or their technological equivalent?
History makes clear that freedom from tyrannical exploitation is possible, if often briefly in the grand scheme, and the notional ruling class can be brought to heel…or guillotine.
I believe the exhortation was once “hack the planet”. Let’s revisit that.
A recurring theme in these subscription failures is the ability to remote control the device. Supporting remote control requires keeping an app and severs functioning. Doing that costs money. Many companies offered that online component for free and then learned it is a Ponzi scheme. Without a continuous flow of new sales there is no revenue to keep the online component afloat. The only fair way to do this is to divide the product into two pieces. One piece works standalone. What you buy is what you get and they should not update it to change that behavior. The second piece is an optional subscription. You just have to pay for that because it incurs ongoing costs so there has to be ongoing revenue.
“If we are currently in a trough of terminal terminalification, then logically decentralization and determinalification should follow next.”
Yes, it should. They’re calling it “edge computing” and claiming it’s a brand new concept. Not that they’ll let it too far out of their sight though.
Cure for the Subscription Service Plague? (in the context of BMW’s Heated Seats or VW’s Performance Mode) Make 3rd Party software tools legal. With the understanding that using such tools will void the manufacturers warranty, but make it legal for people to unlock the heated seats they’ve paid for, that BMW equipped the vehicle with. And make that a stipulation, that it can’t be under lease or loan.
Now… What to do about Chief Enshitification Officers (CEOs)… ie: That Logitech CEO trying to sell the idea of a ‘Subscription Mouse’.
The base products often work just fine without subscriptions. You get the behavior your paid for. You even get free updates and security fixes for some time. We used to have to pay for every OS and app upgrade. Now those are “free” for some number of years.
Subscriptions are a choice. The main choice right now is how you connect to and operate against the internet. Internet standards change. Programs are updated. You get to decide if you wish to keep up or not. I pay for icloud because I want to retain a decade of photos in my palm. I could back up to thumb drive or keep a snapshot on my NAS so I could only keep the latest and use the free icloud storage.
On the other hand… The demise of perpetual license apps and the movement to subscription apps is painful. There often aren’t many options.
” the easiest way to get data onto a smartphone or off it is via the device manufacturer’s cloud storage solutions”
This was happening with some flip phones back in the 2000s. What’s old is new again. I wonder if they will sell a stolen “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” meme graphic, like the first time around?
John Deere has been ripping farmers off by preventing them from fixing their own tractors. Unsurprisingly, there’s been a bit of backlash from said farmers. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/john-deere-faces-backlash-over-deeply-unpopular-practice-that-farmers-hate/ar-AA1xg3nj
The idea of companies, not just Deere, is that, because of embedded software, you don’t own your physical property the way you used to. Personally, I agree with Anonymus, above, that it’s theft.
Some folks say they’ll never buy John Deere equipment ever again. That’s fine but … “The agricultural giant, however, continues to outperform its competitors,” … https://investingsnacks.com/deere-shines-despite-ag-market-woes-de-stock/
I read articles like this and, once again, I am happy with the decisions I’ve mad over the years: no cellphones at all; no “smart” devices of any kind; no security system that I myself didn’t design, build and code; no home automation that I myself didn’t design, build and code; no “cloud” computing – be it software or data storage; no media that I do not own, either in physical media or digital files that reside on my own hardware; no vehicles newer than 1999; no IoT connected anything, other than desktop computers and laptop (which all run linux and open-source software; no hardware that requires “subscriptions” or even an internet connection to function… As a former electronics technician, I love tech – I am far from Amish – but I’m as close to it as one can get today. And I am so much happier for it.
Ah… FM. We can point to a 1995 law that allowed Clear Channel to grow from 5 radio stations (all in TX), to his monstrosity that literally killed radio star. They now own 1,200 radio stations just in the US market.
In my region, every rock and alternative station was taken over by CC, streamlined, and ended all their local music shows. If you want to be a rock star now, you have to negotiate with HQ. No more regional bands that go big.
The next phase was converting these rock stations over to country music, talk radio, and prayer and they’re all infused with a divisive spin. All are minimally staffed and the content comes from a satellite feed (from Texas).
People say radio is obsolete, but what I think they mean to say is it “sucks”. It’s what we call enshitification. That’s what you get when you pass anti-consumer laws and lift limits on market share.
Industries are increasingly vocal about obtaining more spectrum.. I would not be surprised if this plays out before the next major election (and benefit Clear Channel handsomely).
I really hope we see the pendulum swing the other way, and we limit ownership of markets to the numbers when radio was “great”.
I get great FM reception here from almost 100 miles away. But the best sounds on it are when vehicles drive by using overpowered unregulated phone transmitters.
“The next phase was converting these rock stations over to country music, talk radio, and prayer ”
All these years, and they are still going after rock music. “Rock ‘n roll leads to hell and the collapse of society, yada yada”
It almost scares me to think how many “Footloose” towns exist in Texas today; Footloose at it was at the start of the movie.
What about rap? At least rock bands like Nightwish or Within Temptation don’t write lyrics about k*lling cops or b*ating f*gs like DMX does…
Host your own server and you’ll never need any of their crap, leave the easy solutions for the simple people
“After most of the world celebrated the arrival of the new millennium in 2000, followed by the arrival of the 21st millennium a year later, ”
I think this was meant to read ” 21st century” rather than millennium. Took me a few re-reads to realize it wasn’t just my coffee wearing off causing the confusion for me.
I have no idea why it posted this comment as a reply to another comment rather than a top-level comment.
That “contemporary living room” is so sad! No carpet, no pictures on the walls. 😟
It’s so sterile, like being at the dentist. Minimalism, no individuality. I’d rather live in the mess of old times.
perhaps they could not afford the floor covering maintenance subscription?
i don’t see how you could possibly say there’s no individuality, when every tv reflects the highly-personal choice between apple and android
“After most of the world celebrated the arrival of the new millennium in 2000, followed by the arrival of the 21st millennium a year later, ”
I think this was meant to read ” 21st century” rather than millennium. Took me a few re-reads to realize it wasn’t just my coffee wearing off causing the confusion for me.
Choice is not dead.
If you don’t want a cold sterile and empty livingroom don’t have one. It’s in style.. so what? Stop trying to show off to all the other people following the current style. They don’t care and won’t be impressed anyway. Just do it your way.
“Ma’am, This Is A Wendy’s.”
Fantastic, underrated scifi film:
“Voice of World Control” | COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/t8nstlDrUrw
Since there is no thumbs up button, I just wanted to say, this was an interesting read, the fact is that the consumer is part of the problem, if we consume it, they will shovel it. I feel like I’m saving when I by a digital copy compared to a disk, but do I own it with out Internet?
it’s just a lack of imagination, education and corporate greed. Been this way since mill owners during the industrial revolution paid their employees in tokens that they could only “spend” in the mill owner’s own shop.
History is doomed to be repeated unless the lessons are learned… this is why the biggest, most powerful tool we have is education and why education is the biggest weapon used against us.
Very good article thank you Maya, I’m waiting a few weeks of comments to print the wole page for archival purpose.
Regarding the cyclical scheme from centralised to decentralized to centralized it’s the topic of “Kill it with Fire” (Nostarch Press) a must read for any computer nerd or system/software architect.
Regarding the fight against centralization, lookup “local-first mivement” and to a lesser extent the “Brutalist Programming Manifesto”.
In the meantime thanks everybody for your comments, keep’em coming
Except for my NPR/PBS contribution and my $30 internet connection, I’ve managed to go through life without ever paying for anything else besides electricity. Over my 76 years, I did have a few magazine subscriptions, and I had to pay for water and sewer until 35 years ago. Never paid for cable, a software license, or streaming service. Haven’t missed anything that matters.
sounds like you live out in the boonies, so you probably have a high priced subscription to car juice…just sayin :)