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posted by martyb on Friday February 25 2022, @09:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the internet-of-things-that-shouldn't-need-internet dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @06:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26 2022, @06:26PM (#1225135)

    The problem with this sort of plan is it almost entirely depends on suitably motivated hobbyists.

    And there is probably approximately zero overlap between the sort of people who spend $2500 on an internet-connected exercise bike and the sort of people who would be interested in reverse engineering it.

    The reason is that it is probably cheaper, easier and much more rewarding to just pick up a cheap bike from a thrift store and modify it.