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Logitech’s Subscription Mouse Idea Pulled Back After Backlash (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 76 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I hate AI being intrusive in everything, who needs a mouse button to open the AI prompt!

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  • [–] 63 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    But also, if you want that, loads of mice have a bunch of buttons you can assign to pretty much anything you want.

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And none of them require a damned subscription.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't imagine someone will actually pay monthly for a mouse

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    You underestimate people.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago*

    Who the f. has time to manage all these bills, apps, accounts... What's next, 2FA to sit around for an app to update, so you can sit through a "what's new" tutorial to unlock a pen just so you can write something down, all for the "convenience" of not having to run out of ink?

    You know what people with money and no time do? They buy 20 dumb pens and then just toss one in the trash when it runs out.

    The intersection between people who have money to burn and patience to deal with tech bullshit is extremely small.

    The parodies write themselves now.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Or a keyboard shortcut.

    My keyboard cost £10 with a mouse. The keyboard has 104 keys and I would expect it to last at least 5 years. That's £0.02 per key per year. To be competitive, a subscription model for an AI button needs to be less than £0.00333 per month.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    The most annoying thing was them adding that bullshit to my current mouse’s software without warning.

    Logi AI prompt crap I don’t need or want, that I can’t disable, keeps starting up if I kill the process, eating 5-10% of my CPU cycles.

    Thankfully there was enough backlash to knock that on the head and they now let you disable it but they seriously got caught up with their own hype there.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    I have a regular old non-AI Logitech mouse and keyboard, and I'm already enjoying the benefits of Logitech AI:

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    • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    HAY GUYS LOOK AT HOW CUSTOMERS LOVE HP AFTER THEIR SWITCH TO SUBSCRIPTION PRINTERS. WE SHOULD DO THAT TOO!

    --Overheard from the Logitech C-Suite, probably

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It’s just unoriginal thinking. What does every business want? Lots of cash that comes in automatically on a known schedule. How can we do that? Have our customers subscribe. What will they subscribe for? Hmm lifetime speakers? Lifetime cable replacement?

    Side note business idea: subscription usb power bricks. We send you a variety of cables that work for everything. If one breaks we send you another. $30/yr

    Never worry about broken cables again!

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    See the problem here is the price. At $30/yr that's worth considering. The problem is they'd charge $30/mth.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You start at $30 which is plenty for the product. Hell the single yearly supply shouldn’t cost that much. Then overtime you slowly increase and changed rates for new subscribers.

    Eventually you’ll have to implement location locks - can’t ship cables to more than one addresss. Plus you really don’t want people sharing or giving out cables to friends - so maybe the cables need to be smart and somehow phone home?

    That would be nice cause then we could capture some user data and maybe target some advertising

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    But wait, most people are going to plug these bricks into their phones or tablets, yeah? Those have data connections we could surely piggy back off so rather than a one time or irregular phone home we could have real time data on where the cables are and how they're being used. And we can release an app they run on their device to capture that information that shows a nice pretty dashboard of when they charge their devices, how much power they use, etc.

    We then use that as the justification to move the entire product range to a monthly subscription instead of a yearly one. We can even remove the sharing restrictions to begin with, and then add them back later with a family tier, and eventually prevent cables from being away from the registered home base for a predetermined length of time.

    We could then add an upgrade tier for those that do need to use their cables in other locations.

    ...Is this the kind of logic that goes through their heads?

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    • [–] 38 points 2 years ago

    The term this story should have introduced everyone to is: "Trial balloon"

    Logitech were just floating a trial balloon, that is all.

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    [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    Well, this is basically all companies. The management are so disconnected from reality.

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    [–] 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Was just a dopey idea in the first place. Nobody replaces a mouse because it's lacking software features, they replace a mouse when the switches wear out.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Which is planned obsolescence anyways.

    It's not a dopey idea, it's an enshitification one, and one we will see again because there are no consequences.

    Logitech will have subscription hardware, guaranteed. They'll just go back to the drawing board on how to market anti-consumer practices better.

    And similarly are antitrust regulations have done nothing to prevent companies like Logitech from just acquiring all of their competitors and then doing this anyways once there is no more competition. And even using potential competitors into bankruptcy before they can actually compete.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    It's always the same thing.

    Corpo push dog-shit idea and receives backlash.

    Pull back for a moment, and goes a little bit softer than the last and see if it sticks.If it sticks, it becomes the new standard for every similar corpo.

    Rinse and repeat.

    Just look at when Bethesda tried to sell a horse armor for Skyrim. Now it's the norm.

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    • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The first attempt of many, the tech industry will normalise a subscription model alongside the hardware they just need to find the right justification that doesn't have universal push back. It worked for games, the trojan horse used was (often token) multiplayer addition and it will work in hardware too once they find the right combination.

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    • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    For now.

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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why pay for something you won't be using all the time? Why not just pay for it only when you're using it? Oh--well yeah, you'll have to buy it first--but then you'll only have to pay to use it when you want to use it, and only when you want to use it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    What a fucking breakthrough

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Ohhh, you get to pay based on the meters of mouse movement you do. Usage based billing, perfect.

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    • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    at this rate, in 20 years some asshole capitalist will figure out how to monetize air as a subscription service and we'll all be living in a true dystopia

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    [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Pulled back for now, to be retweaked and pushed at a later time

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    [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    A feel a little bad for the Logitech CEO here. It was basically a softball question, do you ever think you'll have software subscriptions, which is a common thing, and he answered "Yeah, that's possible."

    Obviously for a mouse it doesn't really make sense, but paid software updates are common in the industry so who knows.

    Obviously it's stupid, but it's funny to see it play out.

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    • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    "Forever Pay For Your Mouse"

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago*

    We already do, with intentionally fast breaking switches. They get away with charging $100 for a mouse, and ensuring a $0.30 part will break long before the devices useful lifetime. Generating mountains of ewaste.

    Why can't they get away with the next step, which is charging a subscription fee to use their mice as well?

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