During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shed some possible insight into the company’s view on one of its most important products. Saying that “the mouse built this house,” Faber shares the planning behind a Forever Mouse, a premium product that the company hopes will be the last you ever have to buy. There’s also a discussion about a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.
For now, details on a Forever Mouse are thin, but you better believe there will be a catch. The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.
There’s one way subscription-based hardware might be a good idea: it would motivate the companies to focus on quality and repairability, because they would be the ones who have to deal with that stuff. Unless of course if the EULA of such hardware is complete shit. Which of course it will be.
It will be much cheaper for the company to replace rather than repair, then they don’t have to pay technicians
it would motivate the companies to focus on quality and repairability
CEO : No, not that kind of forever
I think it’s time to stop with subscription bullshit.
I understand that they prefer that, but it quickly becomes the only purpose fulfilled by these devices which is not fulfilled by more normal ones, while the main purposes suffer, looking closer to an excuse.
Also the argument of businesses going bankrupt when something is done too well - that’s by design. Progress works via removing bottlenecks one after another. Businesses which were located at those bottlenecks die. It’s fine, the society doesn’t need them anymore. Management and employees have mostly transferable skills and experience. If they earn less, then maybe their work is worth less, since the business failed. Investors lose money, and that’s fine, it’s the purpose of investment - judge wisely and win, judge poorly and lose.
It still irritates me how sometimes socialist-minded people say that it’s bad that in capitalism businesses (and whole industries) fail, and this should be fixed, but then blame capitalism for the results of preventing businesses (or whole industries) from failing.
I have internalized all the leftist arguments heard here, some are fundamentally and practically very true, but sometimes fixing the thing you have would yield results just as good or better as looking for that better thing you don’t know where.
OK, I’ve diverted from the point.
Somehow businesses making nails and screwdrivers don’t complain about making too good a screwdriver. Because, well, the good screwdriver still dies after sometime, and the amount of people who need tools grows, yadda-yadda.
This should work the same way in computing, but hype-scamming customers is such a norm there, that doing business the normal way seems the way to bankruptcy to them. They should all fail. We are doing - for the real-life useful output, not for FLOPS and IOPS, - just a bit more than in 90s, but for orders of magnitude bigger cost.
socialist-minded people say that it’s bad
No they don’t, assuming your talking about democratic socialists not old eastern bloc socialism.
given how much is going on in the diy / open source keyboard community, I’m sure there’s going to be some options
100%.
Even today, you can buy a component kit and 3D print your own custom shell for a DIY mouse. (the hardware quality is alright)
I can only imagine what the OSS community will do once companies like Logitech try rolling this crap out on a larger scale. It’s like the outrage against all things wrong with printers, except so much lower tech that almost anyone could build their own.
Meh, I’m going to hold out for a subscription-based AI-enabled mousepad.
With OneDrive …
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.
Oh see I didn’t interpret the forever mouse as a single product, more likely they’d like to use even cheaper switches and components and make RMA/replacement normal under the subscription. New mouse every year for just $14.99/month - what a deal! Right, guys? Guys?
The Instant Pot is actually great at cooking rice using the pot-in-pot method: put a plain metal bowl with your rice and water (usually 1:1 ratio) in the Instant Pot on a wire rack and add about 1 1/2 cups of water to the Instant Pot. Steam for 10 minutes for white rice. Perfect every time.
We just got a rice cooker instead
Instant Pot didn’t simply go bankrupt. It was busted out by private equity.
Oh God if they put AI in the MX Master Mice then I’m boned.
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?
This from a company would refused to update their drivers for a USB speaker system for 7, even though it was still actively being sold at store.
I had bought it a few months earlier at a Fry’s on sale. I think the sku was just about 2 years old, just expiring on their support policy, as a new OS dropped.
Their customer support told to me kick sand.
Fuck Logitech. Their Mice are the only thing I’ve continued to use because they are actually reliable. But now they’re trying to enshitify that behind a subscription, so that’s it.
How many firmware updates can we really expect for a mouse?
Almost none, why the hell would a mouse ever need firmware updates except to fix fuckups? It has one job, translate clicks and movements into signals for the computer.
So Logitech can bill every one of its customers every month.
No sale. It’s ridiculous.
No sale.
Joke’s on you; they’re into that shit. Their techno-feudalist wet dream is to force you into rentals for everything.
This is not about you, but about them. It’s not that you need a subscription. It’s that they need you to have a subscription.
But they need to convince me that the subscription is worthwhile!
Not if they and their competitors remove all the other options.
Nah. There will always be companies just selling a mouse.
You wouldn’t print a mouse.
But they need to convince me that the subscription is worthwhile!
They’ll remove any mice from the market that doesn’t have a subscription model and others will follow suit.
Future mouse DLC: “Special promotion! $5 discount on unlocking right mouse button!”
They’ll remove any mice from the market that doesn’t have a subscription model and others will follow suit.
Good luck with removing aliexpress mice from the market
Damn, I never thought to look there! Thanks!
I doubt the open source options will be adopting this strategy either.
I have a ploopy trackball and love it.
If they only had a thumb trackball…
Like this?
How does it compare to the m570?
I use a left handed one, so I can’t really comment on most ergonomic computer accessories.
If you are going to ask questions maybe you are not the target demographic.
Damned straight! I’ll stick with my boring old non-ai grandpa mouse.
Back in my day the mice had a tail, no scroll wheel, and only 2 buttons!
Back in my day, mice had balls.
We used trackballs and loved them. We greased the mechanism with our forehead sweat as was the fashion at the time.
When I were a lad, we used vi.
I used an HP dead stock “this ships with every computer we sell” optical mouse for twenty years before it broke.
All my mice are similar ages, even my Logitech wireless.
I did just have a 15 year old one die, but it got used about 8 hours a day all that time.
This is how you lose your fanbase. I’ll never ever pay for something like this.
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.
But like. AI. Ya know? Predictive mouse algorithm to make you clicky more gooder
There is no point… This corporate parasites justifying their new scam.
Fuck that, no thanks! How about you build repairable mice that can last forever instead?
With open source firmware. Preferably QMK + VIA.
User-serviceable switches would be so nice…
Welp, looks like I just bought my last Logitech mouse. I’ve sworn by them for over 20 years.
Nope, fuck you Logitech.
same. every logitech peripheral i’ve ever had was great, and the one time an old mouse i’d been using for 2 years broke, i emailed them about it and they sent me a MX master 2S, which was several tiers above the one i had, for free.
oh well. time to find a new mouse brand
Their flight sim stuff is absolute fucking garbage
I use a computer a lot, and I have an expensive keyboard and mouse. I’m the target market in a sense; if there was a compelling enough upgrade to either, I’d probably buy it.
I can’t imagine what software features they could possibly offer that would qualify, doubly so as a subscription. I picked my mouse because it has lots of buttons, a responsive sensor, low-latency wireless, and it runs on a standardized replaceable battery. It would be hard to improve any of that with software.
And I want whoever came up with this idea to spontaneously combust, but neither of us is going to get what we want.
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.
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.
Logitech pissed me off years ago when they didn’t honour a warranty because I bought a flawed product before they extended the warranty on them.
I have not even been tempted by their products because there are so many other peripheral manufacturers out there that put out great products.
