It's modern capitalism.

Making 10 million a month for 10 years isn't as good as going from 1 million a month up to 10 over five years.

The important part isn't the total profit, it's the increase in stock price.

This leads to a churn of companies as they're pushed past the breaking point because by then investors have sold and moved on to the next.

The only companies that survive are huge corporations that buy up smaller ones to do the same process.

A lot of people don't understand that GPS requires no cell service to function, so it's no surprise that many accept that they have to pay monthly for a "service* that has no ongoing support costs to the seller.

Aprs already exists and is optimal for hikers. A relatively lightweight base station at good height can get you hundreds of miles pretty reliably or tens of thousands of miles if you really really try and get lucky.

And even when you do make such a product, there's overwhelming marketing spend against you to make sure no one knows about your product.

It's massively frustrating to just want to make good products but knowing that the wider business context demands that you get recurring revenue or otherwise it is imperative that you fail. Your success would fundamentally undermine rent seeking, and that's a bigger existential threat than any other mere competitor.

Or when a product requires an app to function instead of just putting some buttons on the thing. The apps also tend to want access to everything too. 🙄🤦‍♂️

There are. We only use a local analog camera/monitor for our youngest one now, fuck the internet-enabled ones.

For our first baby, we had an Owlet setup originally because of the smart sock for newborns (the sock monitors the baby's heart rate/oxygen levels and alerts you if it drops below a certain bpm/%) and it came with a camera as well. While it was nice to be able to remote view the camera from anywhere whenever family members were babysitting for us, it was so damn glitchy and unreliable (the camera, at least the sock never gave us issues). I can't tell you how many god damn times that shitty camera would simply just die and you'd have to sneak into the nursery to manually reset the camera like a ninja in order not to wake the baby you just spent an hour trying to get down only to get back to your room and realize the fucking monitor isn't working... Fuck Owlet.

Oddly, there was no monthly subscription, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's changed now.

I don't really feel baby monitors are really even needed unless you have a large house . With my son I used an old phone as one when I would go across the hall to my neighbors apartment for a couple of minutes. If I actually bought one it would of been a big waste of money. I used to work for a company that did warranties for toys r us and alot of people would speed hundreds on special chairs it a machine that mixes and heats up formula . I used a little chair I got for free and a bottle warmer that was like $15 .

Our camera was a wireless IP cam that connected to the LAN but not the greater internet.

If you used a credit card you should contest the charge on your card and throw the thing out.

You can get an old version of the software without the features blocked.

I got rid of Reddit!

The baby monitor passed down through our family was said to have been excavated from Pompeii and has cost us $0 dollars over several generations, not counting electricity cost of charging eneloops and Ikea ladda batteries.

I have a baby monitor, and considered using an IP camera before buying it. The reason I like mine is because I've got a separate little handheld monitor on RF instead of wifi. There's a handful of situations where it's fine in very handy. Our nanny could use it without us having to set her up with any tech. Works while traveling without having to deal with hotel Wi-Fi or hot spots. Works outside much further than my wifi reaches. I like the RF.

Because there's massive marketing spend to make everyone feel like subscription services are the only option. Because all the investment in development is only in efforts with rent seeking subscription crap.

We could have easy plug and play local interaction or for remote operation, a self hosting platform. Instead you generally have to carefully research until you find some brand that is amenable, maybe flash over their firmware with a custom image, and put the pieces together yourself in something like homeassisstant. There's nothing preventing companies from making local management as easy as cloud management except the rent seeking.

We did the exact same thing. The night vision worked well and it gave me peace of mind every night and every morning.

They've also not been fine.

SUID Death rate for infants has decreased even since 1990. Baby monitor likely had a role in that.

FYI not supporting subscription for features a device has in hardware, just saying I'd rather have a monitor that never went off than no monitor and a dead child. There are plenty of alternative devices without subs that cost a lot less to begin with.

I used a wireless webcam to monitor my baby and, honestly, I was so paranoid that I don't regret it. Seeing her breathe or move before I went to bed and when I woke up was a comfort and relief.

And only a few children were kidnapped by the Fae.

What about the ones that were left in the cold for being sickly?

I can just hear some people going, "WHAT? Are you crazy?". I was a little tike in the early 60s and the only monitor my mom had was me screaming or the "THUNK" of me falling and hitting the floor.

This really irks me. Paid, and then they make the app shitter and put basic functions behind the paywall.

I would gladly pay for a new and improved version of the app (likely every now and again I admit).

I will never pay for a PDF editor on a subscription basis.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

video

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.