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
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Purchasers of the Philips Hue "smart" ambient lighting system are finding out that the new firmware pushed out by the manufacturer has cut off access to previously-supported lightbulbs.
Philips uses ZigBee, which should mean any bulbs compatible with this standard will work with its Hue products. Not anymore. The firmware update removes this support, limiting this "open, global" standard to Philips' own bulbs and those it has designated as "Friends of Hue."
When owners complained that they had been given the old bait-and-switch on products they already paid for, Philips issued this statement:
While the Philips Hue system is based on open technologies we are not able to ensure all products from other brands are tested and fully interoperable with all of our software updates. For guaranteed compatibility you need to use Philips Hue or certified Friends of Hue products.
The Philips Hue is a premium-priced LED lighting system, but the rapid pace of LED efficiency gains has started to leave them behind. Cheaper competitors have started to significantly undercut Hue's pricing. Maybe this lockout is more about pricing protection than it is about quality protection
Bruce Schneier writes in The Atlantic:
In theory, the Internet of Things—the connected network of tiny computers inside home appliances, household objects, even clothing—promises to make your life easier and your work more efficient. These computers will communicate with each other and the Internet in homes and public spaces, collecting data about their environment and making changes based on the information they receive. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy.
Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer's best interests...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:16PM
I don't see why this is ungracious. They aren't compelled to make sure their new code releases are backwards-compatible with non-Philips bulbs. It would be a dick move to purposefully break backwards-compatibility a la Microsoft Office products, but it is only for PR reasons to go out of their way to ensure they don't break backwards-compatibility with non-Philips (or even with their own bulbs, for that matter).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:26PM
They aren't compelled to make sure their new code releases are backwards-compatible with non-Philips bulbs.
do not confuse the issue. it's not a compatibility issue, it's Philips purposefully locking out bulbs that Philips/Apple didn't make. no changes were going to be made to the protocol, so Philips bulbs would still work with other lighting systems, just not the other way around.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:48PM
What the hell does Apple have to do with this? They do not make any lightbulbs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:10PM
sounds like you need to read up on the story. [hackaday.com]
The short version is that, ZigBee standards be damned, your future non-Philips lights won’t be allowed to associate with the Philips bridge. Your GE and Osram bulbs aren’t Friends of Hue. DIY RGB strips in your lighting mix? Not Friends of Hue. In fact, you won’t be surprised to know who the “Friends of Hue” are: other Philips products, and Apple. That’s it. If you were used to running a mixed lighting system, those days are over. If you’re not on the friends list, you are an Enemy of Hue.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday December 18 2015, @12:10AM
Apple is on there because Hue works with Apple's Homekit. They don't own Phillips, and Apple certainly does not make lightbulbs for it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:39PM
"It would be a dick move to purposefully break backwards-compatibility"
Drop the "backwards-" from that statement, and that is precisely what they did. They intentionally broke compatibility with anyone and everyone who hadn't paid the extortion fee to become a "freind of Philip".
At least that's how I read it. There was no "backward-compatibility" issue - the hardware basically all does the same. Some of the hardware is more compatible than other hardware, but all of it responds to "light up" commands. Pretty colors may or may not display as Philips intended, but the lights light up. That should be where Philip's concern begins and ends.
It's alright to tout their own hardware as more compatible, and/or more capable It's equally alright to announce that "freinds of Philip" is equally compatible, and equally capable. But, refusing to communicate with other brands of hardware is unethical. It's the very same thing that Microsoft did when they coded Windows 3.1 to check for MSDOS, then refuse to load if other DOS systems were found. Again, in that case, there was no compatibility issue - Windows simply refused to load on top of any DOS system that wasn't Microsoft.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:05PM
I agree, but a compromise would be Philip's setting a default checkbox to enforce "compatibility mode only", or friends-of-Hue-mode. When unchecking it, Philip's should provide warnings, links, and proof that "substandard" products lead towards inferior experiences.
If they gave actual examples online of the issues faced with the inferior hardware, that could go a long way to convincing power users not to use anything substandard. Their R&D department, at a minimum, should have internal documents supporting the need for a firmware change. I say this because my first thought was if Philips was right about the problems, and, well... there is an awful lot of cheaply made shit out there.
In my mind the real issue was that Philips was treating their customers as if they were idiots, when it should have been informational in nature only with a choice still provided to "break your own equipment if you really feel like it".
Since I'm not a millionaire, I obviously don't have any of the fancy ass lighting systems to know if Philips was just making all of the problems up. I still use the same bulbs my grandfather did :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by BrockDockdale on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:51PM
Yeah to me this "ungracious explanation" sounds pretty level-headed and certainly way less hysterical than this summary and all the petty outrage. Doesn't seem all that "embarrassing" or like "backing down" from anything either. There's enough real drama in the world without making it where it doesn't exist.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:56PM
Technically it meets the definition of ungracious, because it was unwelcome and unacceptable as a statement. That being said though, it's probably only because they refused to acknowledge their previous actions were bad. IMO, that was the ungracious part.
"The change was made in good faith". I'm guessing nobody believes that.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:52PM
I think their device was advertised to be standard compliant. For it not to be complaint with the standards as advertising is false advertising. For them to claim that it's compliant with the standards and then to make them no longer compatible after people purchased it is not acceptable. Had they advertised that it's only guaranteed to work with certain devices before the initial release (before anyone already bought it) then that's OK. Otherwise it's fraud, something any just government should not tolerate (though I'm sure it's something many of the shills around here don't think is that big a deal).
Then again given our broken government it seems like fraud is perfectly acceptable. Look at what happened with Sony and how they advertised Linux to work with the Playstation and later decided to remove that feature. No no no no, consumer backlash is what's needed to keep corporations in line these days (which should be a last resort. First resort should be the company's own moral conscience. Second resort should be the legal system. Last resort should be public/consumer backlash). We can no longer depend on the courts or the government, it's too expensive a process and there is no way to guarantee that consumers will win against big corporations even in cases of clear fraud so often times it's not even worth the hassle. It's sad that it has come to this ...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:22PM
If it's going in my house, and going to connect to any local out public network, I demand access to everything. Yes, this dreamscape limits my options and/or results in custom created solutions with Arduino/Raspberry Pi.
Long term, though, I have support and confidence these will never stop working. Support is not a problem. They will never have NSA mandated backdoors to create a foothold in my private LAN.
Stop buying this shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gnuman on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:45PM
They will never have NSA mandated backdoors to create a foothold in my private LAN.
And how do you know that your Arduino / Rasberry Pi doesn't have a backdoor? Broadcom is suddenly a great, anti-establishment company?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:48PM
And how do you know that your Arduino / Rasberry Pi doesn't have a backdoor? Broadcom is suddenly a great, anti-establishment company?
- The Arduino is a glorified breakout board for a simple AVR chip. How were you planning to access that backdoor? There is simply no way.
- The Rasberry Pi is much more complex and the Broadcom chip could contain a backdoor on the silicon or the graphics driver. The silicon backdoor would only be accessible if you connected it to the net via ethernet but the graphics driver backdoor could try to phone home by any means that the Linux kernel can access. Unlikely but doable.
However, I do understand the need for paranoia, so building stuff with softcores (CPU implemented on FPGA) is really the only way to be sure your stuff isn't backdoored... for now.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday December 18 2015, @04:50PM
However, I do understand the need for paranoia, so building stuff with softcores (CPU implemented on FPGA) is really the only way to be sure your stuff isn't backdoored... for now.
How do you think that is? I fail to see why an FPGA could not be backdoored. There could always be a "hard" silicon wrapper in the FPGA that would respond the same way a backdoor in a traditional CPU would. Granted, it would be more difficult to intercept meaningful data, however, if softcores would be based on open source designs that very limitation would even not apply.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday December 18 2015, @05:07PM
I fail to see why an FPGA could not be backdoored. There could always be a "hard" silicon wrapper in the FPGA that would respond the same way a backdoor in a traditional CPU would.
a) it would interfere with the I/O timing.
b) how would you know what I/O was mapped to what?
c) how would you know which CPU architecture was being used?
d) you are dumb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @10:41PM
Last time I investigated, all of the software for "compiling" FPGAs was proprietary. Back-doors can be explained aways as sub-optimal routing.
OK, on a quick search, it looks like this is being scrubbed from the Internet: Reflections on Trusting Trust [cmu.edu]. An example of how copyright is censorship, I suppose.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday December 19 2015, @12:36AM
then check more often, dipshit. http://hackaday.com/2015/05/29/an-open-source-toolchain-for-ice40-fpgas/ [hackaday.com]
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:33PM
i think Philips may have inadvertently triggered the rise of an open source competitor. hackers don't like getting dicked over and their hardware isn't exactly complex.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:01PM
Your average consumer doesn't give a shit though, and throws money at the company with the most advertising. The average person seems to have a very limited ability to extrapolate what their behaviour will result in in the long term.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @12:18AM
Your average "hacker" doesn't give a shit either. It's easy to complain, but it takes effort to get off your ass and start a project. And if you do, you're basically on your own while the other 99% of the "hackers" are telling you your're a dick if you don't give them your code for free and fix their bugs.
You ought to know this more than most around here given the amount of time you put into this site. I have much admiration for the people who do put in the love and effort on the wonderful free code I use because most people like me who love and use free code are totally going to do something to contribute back, but we don't. I, at least, like to think that I have an honest opinion of myself and I don't bitch about free code if I'm frustrated by it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2015, @12:24AM
Finding in reporting bugs can have some benefit.
However, even that has constantly moving goal-posts:
When I am trying to get something to work, the last thing I want to do is file 20 different bug reports.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:41PM
I think this is a disadvantage with standards. Progress moves more slowly. It's easier for a company to add new features to something by itself but doing so may break certain standards causing certain devices to be incompatible with other devices. Trying to stay in line with a standard to keep your device compatible with others might mean you must remove certain features. Though you could often try to make it so that the device works as normal with other standard devices and has extra features with devices that can support those features but sometimes that may increase cost and other times it may not be that feasible depending on the design specs. The alternative is to either find another standard that supports the features you want or to try and push for a new standard or an upgrade to existing standards which may take a lot of time and effort if you're lucky to ever get it done.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:45PM
Version the standard, and make the standard backwards compatible where possible. The original lock-out was an Apple-esque dick-more on the part of Phillips.
Between Apple, Phillips, and Sony, some of these companies seem to think being a dick is a contest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:42PM
Damage control isn't going to work. From now on I won't be buying any of Philips products.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday December 17 2015, @07:51PM
I've got a switch on my wall. I flip it or slide it, I get light. Magic. I flip it back, my current drops to 0.
If I go to the other end of the world, I insert a timer on an LED bulb and drive off.
You have a zigbee-enabled light, tied into your home internet, you can turn it on from your phone, and choose the exact color you want, even if you're in Timbuktu.
To turn out their lights, people fish their phone out of their pocket, get past the lock screen, start an app, find the right bulb/area in their list, processors and protocols and stacks and queues all push data around, then -voila!- the lights turn on.
Or they by an expensive branded box which does the exact same thing.
How many decades of tech improvements does it take to turn on a lightbulb, without letting your 13-yr old neighbor hack into it?
More importantly: It's always ON. Every lightbulb in your house is sucking power, waiting to be told to actually provide light. Did anyone measure how much extra current you're drawing because you're not flipping a switch?
When I measured motion-sensor LED lights, they used 80% of the ON power when OFF. Zigbee is not motion-sensing, but I only have one sensor, when a typical house has 20 to 50 bulbs. Can anyone tell me how much extra gas will be pumped out of ground every year just so people can play with their lights from their phone?
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Hyperturtle on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:06PM
intra. home intranet, or just a home network. (these things are grating to my psyche, sort of like how its "Mordor" with a "d"...) internet is interconnecting networks that are combined somehow--via multiple routers not under your control, marketing hopes, dreams, promises of ponies, onhubs, personal information you didnt opt out of sharing, etc. A home intranet has none of those things, unless you use your ISP hardware exclusively, but even then you wouldn't get a pony.
If you have an internet in your home, I would like to visit to see it. And don't you dare tell me its a wireless internet!
next, I'll be an insensitive cloud for correcting the term!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:17PM
Shoot me for forgetting the 's... "your home's Internet [connection]", hence the Timbuktu line. "protocols and stacks and queues" could have been perceived as an indicator that I know what an internet thingy kinda is.
Sure you could keep your bulbs only on your intranet, but "they" tell you how great it is to control it truly remotely, a bit like you can unlock and start your car from Ouagadougou.
Anyway, your useless comment didn't answer my point about standby waste.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday December 18 2015, @12:34AM
modded to 1!
I guess I *was* an insensitive cloud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2015, @07:12PM
internet is interconnecting networks that are combined somehow
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:
internet
(Note: not capitalised) Any set of networks
interconnected with {routers}. The {Internet} is the biggest
example of an internet.
I'm not the GP, but given those definitions, I do have separate, connected networks in my house. In other words, I do have a home internet ( -obligatory: you insensitive clod- ;) )
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EvilSS on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:57PM
I have 5 lamps and 4 bulbs in a ceiling fan fixture in my master bedroom. So 5 switches, all over the room. OR I can pick up my phone, swipe down to get the gadgets, and click a scene button. Or just call out "Alexa, turn off the lights". In the winter the lights come up slowly in the morning As for vampire draw, the Hue bulbs use about 0.4 Watts when powered off.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by iWantToKeepAnon on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:56PM
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:00PM
The DRM was the nail in the coffin, but the real reason was the expiring patent allowing competition in the k-cup market. When any company can now produce coffee pods, undercut the Keurig price and probably taste the same or better... well, your business model just imploded.