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from the beating-back-corporate-giants dept.
Philips has backed down over its plan to keep out third-party bulbs from its Hue smart lighting system:
Dutch electronics giant Philips has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn over its plans to lock out third-party suppliers of light bulbs for its Hue smart lighting system. [...] Philips' customers have staged a very noisy protest at the move and the firm has backed down. In a statement on the Hue Facebook page, Philips gave a somewhat ungracious explanation about why it had reversed its earlier decision.
"We recently upgraded the software for Philips Hue to ensure the best seamless connected lighting experience for our customers. This change was made in good faith," Philips said. "However, we under-estimated the impact this would have on a small number of customers who use lights from other brands which could not be controlled by the Philips Hue software. In view of the sentiment expressed by our customers, we have decided to reverse the software upgrade so that lights from other brands continue to work as they did before with the Philips Hue system."
Previously: Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out Of 3rd-Party Bulbs With Firmware Update
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:49PM
I think Phillips did the right thing.
They probably thought their stupid customers would make tech support calls, or get mad, if third party bulbs did not work like their special Phillips bulbs. In response, they decided to set the software to not work at all with third party bulbs. It turns out there are enough smart customers, whom know the third party bulbs won't work like the special Phillips bulbs, but want to use them anyways.
You can't make everyone happy.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:20PM
It isn't a smart vs. dumb thing, its a informed vs. uninformed thing. As for the walled garden approach, there really is no big problem to solve. If a customer uses unsupported products with your own you simply say "sorry we can't guarantee 3rd party products". This has been around for a long time.
I'm curious, which thing was the right thing? Reverting their changes, or trying to lock out 3rd party bulbs?
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:20PM
> You can't make everyone happy.
In a simple case like this you can. You put a checkbox in the GUI that says "enable unsupported bulbs" and you default it to off.
Philips gets a gateway that stops "stupid customers" from increasing the support load on philips and regular customers get the functionality they expect from a zigbee standards certified product.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:00PM
It is very simple to write other people's code. "Can't you just . . .?" Suppose their new code had a conditional to check for each of their own bulbs to handle them differently:
if {philips_type_1) then
do something
else if (philips_type_2) then
do something different
. . .
else if (philips_type_N) then
do something different
else
error
end if
Something as simple as that would have done the "lock out" that people are screaming about, and something like that would have been very easy to have done inadvertently.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:15PM
Pretty sure they would have stated whether this was the case. Also, bad coding practice to not have a general fallback.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:29PM
It is weird how the corporate apologists come out of the wood-work on stories like these.
I wonder how much overlap there is with other groups who side with power by pretending the powerful are victims.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:20PM
I noticed that phenomenon picking up several years ago on /., it's a shame that they have found SoylentNews. :-)
I figured that the Big Corp.'s PR Dept.'s had finally found a chink in the 'tech-savvy' crowd.(or they were hoping/trying to...YMMV)
*sigh* Oh well, it was nice while it lasted...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:47PM
I doubt it has anything to do with corporate PR soylent isn't big enough to warrant the effort.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday December 18 2015, @12:10AM
Yes it is, a large community of very tech oriented people. Plus it isn't exactly difficult to cross-post stuff, or to program some bots to spam for you.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @12:07AM
Yeah, well you obviously think WAY too much of yourself if you think you're that important.
What I think is it is pretty pathetic is how every fucking thing is some bullshit conspiracy or some other jackass idea around here. And if you don't agree with it, you are a shill of some sort. It couldn't be that the other party can just be an ignorant dipshit fantasizing himself to be living in a hero fantasy, can it? If you don't believe their yarn of a fucking organized conspiracy that involves thousands of civil servants spread over multiple agencies and spans multiple decades, all running like some fucking well-oiled machine, then you are a government shill. Or if you don't fall in with their David v. Goliath story about the big evil corporation, then you are a corporate shill. Maybe, just maybe, many around here ought to consider that they really aren't as clever as they tell everyone they are (and believe me, we are TIRED of it - especially over the holidays when we have to spend time with you at family gatherings), and admit that they don't know fuck-all about what spews out of their arrogant little mouths, this might be a little nicer place to be.
But this place is one of the loudest echo chambers you'll find around the net, so you know that ain't going to happen (too bad it isn't a tech site. Every fucking story is NSA-this and Snowden-that. Some tech stories would actually be a nice breath of air, but the few that do get posted overflow with comments: like I even saw one that had ten (but when you threw out the tired Slashdot-era jokes, it fell back to zero)). But yeah, I'm probably some "paid shill" since I'm the square peg here, and we can't have differing opinions. "This place is all about the comments", which is true, as long as they are the right comments (don't worry, you can return it to the "nice" place it was when you throw out that kid who keeps telling you the emperor isn't wearing any clothes).
Holy crap, don't you guys just beat all. Talk about your caricatures right out of Central Casting.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:28PM
I think even dumb customers will understand that not all LED bulbs do fancy colour changes,
Even if they do not understand that, there is at about a 50% chance that they will call the correct manufacturer to complain.
I suspect they wanted dumb customers to call the wrong manufacturer to complain about their new bulbs not working with the Hue Bridge. Existing third-party bulbs were grand-fathered in (until reset).
What would you think if you have several third-party bulbs working after the update, but a new identical one fails to connect next week? Unless you were aware of the white-list, you may perceive Philips bulbs to be more reliable (because they are on the (Friends of hue)-list).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:48PM
In what world do people have to call tech support TO PUT IN A LIGHT BULB? I can't stand all the "smart" features everywhere nowadays.
I mean in the past, you got in your car and drove away. Now, you get in your car, it won't start because the door is ajar, it won't start because the seat belt isn't fastened, it won't start because you put a box on the seat. The doors automatically lock you in. You can't turn off the lights even with the switch. The blinker turns off when it decides you've turned enough. I just want to reverse you into the garage, you CUNT.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:59PM
Quit your bitchin. You can still do whatever you want with a regular bulb.
But if you want a fancy remote controlled, color-changing, programmable bulb then it is like any other sophisticated piece of electronics.