Peloton Outage Prevents Customers From Using $2,500 Exercise Bikes:
Peloton hasn't been having a great run lately. While business boomed during the pandemic, things have taken a sour turn of late on a bizarre host of fronts.
[...] adding insult to injury, connectivity issues this week prevented Peloton bike and treadmill owners from being able to use their $2000-$5000 luxury exercise equipment for several hours Tuesday morning. The official Peloton Twitter account tried to downplay the scope of the issues:
We are currently investigating an issue with Peloton services. This may impact your ability to take classes or access pages on the web.
We apologize for any impact this may have on your workout and appreciate your patience. Please check https://t.co/Dxcht2tQB0 for updates.
— Peloton (@onepeloton) February 22, 2022
[...] For much of Tuesday morning the pricey equipment simply wouldn't work. While the company's app still worked (For some people), Bike, Bike+, and Peloton Tread owners not only couldn't ride in live classes, they couldn't participate in recorded classes because there's no way to download a class to local storage (despite the devices being glorified Android tablets). The outage (which occurred at the same time as a major Slack outage) was ultimately resolved after several hours, but not before owners got another notable reminder that dumb tech can often be the smarter option.
Perhaps one day in the future, scientists will invent a way to make exercise machines that do not require internet access. Such a fantastic invention would be locked up behind patents.
See also:
Peloton Admits It's in Hot Water With DOJ, DHS, and SEC Over Its Treadmill Mess
Peloton treadmill owners will be able to run again without a subscription
Peloton disabled a free running feature on its treadmills, forcing owners to pay up
Peloton disabled a free feature on its $4,000 Tread+, forcing owners to pay a $39 monthly fee to use the machine
Peloton faces backlash after disabling free running feature on its $4,000 treadmills
Music Publishers Say Peloton Stole Even More Music, Ask for $300 Million
Peloton's Countersuit Against Music Publishers Over Song Copyrights Just Got Thrown Out
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25 2022, @09:30AM (5 children)
The degenerative case of capitalism is feudalism, and we have arrived at that spot. This is just another data point in evidence thereof.
Bow to your feudal lords, so that you may be able to use your trinkets, lest they take them away from you... be they peloton bikes, phones, cars, tractors, seeds, or really anything else.
Really, these rent-seeking fuckers and their mentality needs to be stopped.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday February 25 2022, @12:57PM
Their product was obvious trash. They are doing a fine service, parting stupid people from their money. No one forced you to buy their trash. Honestly, your screed read like something found on an mental hospital's wall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 25 2022, @04:01PM
The degenerative case of every socioeconomic system is feudalism, and the mechanism is always the same: corruption in the halls of power. Product tying like this and in the printer thread is already illegal, but the courts won't enforce the law.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday February 26 2022, @12:01PM (1 child)
How can the courts stop this?
The problem is US!
We buy the crap! We agree to their terms.
Not enough of us have been had yet, and are still quite naive and gullible to those pulling fast ones on us.
Eventually, we wise up and refuse to pull grandpa's finger anymore.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday February 26 2022, @02:46PM
The problem with that is as time goes on, products that are NOT like this disappear. It starts when other brands flip the evil bit without notice.
Consider the Toyota keyfob. They even set it up with a few years for free so nobody would notice until they had already sold a metric assload of cars.
It's hard to buy an inkjet style printer that doesn't have obnoxious DRM on the ink cart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @02:41PM
Some people are born as natural slaves. To them Life is the mere act of breathing and digestion. Others are not born as slaves and Life is meaningless if it is not rich, expressive, and growing. You can blame the feudal lord's, but they are simply exploiting the 'great mass' as they always have. Failure to acknowledge this segment of humanity, this 'great mass', leaves you doomed to not rise above them.