Technology

premium mouse that receives constant updates

Come on. How many firmware updates can we really expect for a mouse?

I've had an m570 for about 10 years. Every time it broke, I fixed it. Why do we need a subscription?

Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

Bull-fucking-shit. That's just not how any of this works.

There are plenty of companies that make appliances that last a long fucking time, and don't have to rely on fucking DLC micro transaction AI bullshit. The reason Instant Pot went bankrupt is the same reason a ton of popular companies have recently had issues: They got bought by private equity (who also owned Pyrex and fucked them over), saddled with a shitton of bad debt, squeezed of every bit of brand value they had, and then left to fall apart as the PE firm made off with millions.

The fact that the writer correlated "quality, durable good" with "unsuccessful business and bankruptcy" is absolutely one of the worst takes, and really shows just how pervasive this disgusting idea of "must be disposable to be profitable" really is.

Businesses could save a lot of money by just firing their CEOs

And now I no longer wish to buy Logitech products...

Logitech's desire to put AI in my IO devices is exactly why I am moving to a different manufacturer. I want solid hardware, not hardware as a service. HP also is trying this with printers and it's total bullshit.

If I am paying a monthly fee, I'd better not also have to buy garbage hardware. That better be provided for free and replaced when it inevitably fails.

I hate this approach to business.

Coupling subscriptions with forced obscolecence is a nightmare. If HP made the best printer money could buy, using it with a subscription model would be a hard sell. But they make shit printers that die at the drop of a hat, so coupling them with a subscription is asinine.

Logitech makes a decent mouse, passable webcams, and shit keyboards.

Just in case anyone from Logitech ever reads this, I own 2 MX Verticals, an MX Ergo, and an MX Master 2S. I love them all, but I'd rather use an OEM bog standard Dell mouse than pay for a subscription.

I've already got a Forever Mouse though... I'm using a $25 Logitech M705 I bought 10 years ago, before they cheaped out and replaced the metal scrollwheel with a plastic one. Works great. I have to replace the battery once every two years or so. I've got an 11-year-old Logitech mouse at work too.

The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

Man, we had to replace the fuse on ours four times before we gave up on it; I don't think 'product longevity' was a major factor in the brand's downfall. It also did a shit job of cooking rice.

I also highly doubt Logitech's ability to make a "forever" mouse with how many I've had to RMA due to faulty left click switches. Get your product design, supply chain, and QA in order before you start trying to tie people down with wholly unnecessary and unwanted subscriptions. Shitty ent seeking MBA vampires fucking everything up for everyone.

Another proof ceo's that most of those cunts in charge either got there by winning the birth lottery or bullshitted their way up and are complete clueless idiots. Any sane person with an idea of what they are doing knows its all bullshit.

Oh wow I never wanted to stop buying Logitech before. I guess there's a first time for everything. Fuck this noise.

The answer to this is simple. Go private. Get a buyout and delist so you aren’t literally required to permanently and constantly grow your company bigger and sell more than you did last year for the rest of eternity in the name of the almighty shareholders.

Sell great hardware to people who need it, develop a loyal fan base, and treat them right, forever. I guarantee that the rate of valid, reasonable purchases of high-quality, durable new mice and keyboards is more than enough to sustain a very healthy company full of very talented employees forever, as long as they aren’t required to always make more money than ever before.

Welp, looks like I just bought my last Logitech mouse. I've sworn by them for over 20 years.

Nope, fuck you Logitech.

Weird, because I'm pretty sure all other mice can be used forever, as long as they don't break.

Trying to make a flagship product and keep it pumped up through subscription sounds a lot like live service games.

And those all fucking suck.

Fuck that, no thanks! How about you build repairable mice that can last forever instead?

Meh, I'm going to hold out for a subscription-based AI-enabled mousepad.

Another piece of the Forever Mouse puzzle is the software. Logitech uses its Options Plus software which essentially walks people through making prompts to interact with AI. But Faber says this is just the start:

This is intended to appeal to investors instead of customers.

Oh I have a Forever Mouse. Bought a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical in 2001 or so. Still works. Use it with my Raspberry Pi sometimes. Also bought another Microsoft wireless laptop mouse like a decade ago. Still works just fine.

...The Logitech mouse that I bought against my better judgement in 2020 is starting to show signs of fatigue.

Also how the everliving hell do you add AI to input devices? Are they just going to guess what I'm pointing at?

Bite my shiny metal PS/2 adapter

Hard pass.

I don't see the point of this. Why would a mouse need constant software updates? I could plug in a 20 year old mouse and it would work just fine on my PC, no updates needed.

"This is a premium feature. To unlock the right-click menu, just enjoy this 30 second ad, or click to add to your monthly subscription."

And I don’t want to buy it. Not everything needs to be a subscription.

This reminds me: I got a Logitech mouse as a gift a while back, and to get it functioning I needed to install a settings app for it for some reason. Today, I find in my Task Manager that they somehow installed an AI assistant platform thing using that settings app. I'm currently in the market for a new mouse lol.

Since we’re pretty much all in agreement that Logitech has enshittified with the Great Ones like Ubisoft, Hewlett Packard, and more, let’s talk about our last great products they made that we will no longer recommend! 😃

These are all my products that I love, and have been extremely high quality. All of them work just fine to this day!

• Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum mice (I own two, bought in 2018 I believe and still using)
• Logitech C920 1080p 30 FPS webcam
• Logitech G613 Lightspeed Wireless keyboard (great keyboard I use for work, hate that the keys are painted and will eventually wear away)
• Logitech G603 Wireless Mouse (for work, works fantastic!)
• Logitech Litra Beam LED lights (I own two)

Oh Logitech. Why can’t you just make products we can own instead of following the greedy “As a Service”? Ah well! Bound to happen one day (Steam, please please don’t ever become public).

Reminder that getting a subscription service means moving away from something you buy occasionally to something you pay forever

So many CEOs these days have their heads completely up their own ass when it comes to the concept of "buy it for life".

You know, a subscription-based, AI-enhanced mouse is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm so pumped! And for only $200 upfront plus a monthly subscription? Sign me up!

I hope they'll also make it easy for me to top up my monthly mouse-click credit through an app that just needs to know my precise location and my contacts and be allowed to display itself over other apps for accessibility reasons. Hopefully I can even check my mouse's status remotely through the app too, and adjust the colour of its LEDs to reflect my unique personality.

And maybe they'll even be able to personalize my mousing experience so my mouse can serve me better, by anonymously tracking what I hover over and click on. That'd be fantastic. And if the AI could also use this information to notify me about relevant deals and offers from their trusted partners, that would be the cherry on top.

This is going to be great! Thanks Logitech - I love it!

Weird, I've had my mouse practically forever and it works just fine. I guess I better throw it in the trash so I can jump on this subscription based opportunity.

looks down at right hand resting on a Logitech M570 I've made several repairs on

I can see their strategy. Keep using microswitches rated for 1,200 clicks and you might need a subscription to these things if you don't know your way around a soldering iron.

I'm curious what monumentally terrible ideas they have for adding machine learning or LLM features to HIDs.

I'll go out of my way to avoid ever owning any of them, but I'm curious.