This is so absurd. The only updates peripherals need are firmware bug fixes. And it’s a standard that these updates are free. Having subscriptions for hardware is kinda dystopic tbh
From the podcast:
Some only have a mouse or only a keyboard, but many of them have both. But the thing that shocked me was that the average spend on that globally is $26, which is really so low. This is stuff you use every day, that sits on your desk every day, that you look at every day. That’s like the price of four coffees at Starbucks or less than a Nike running shirt. There is so much room to create more value in that space as we make people more productive — to extend human potential.
You know why on average people spend so little? Because a mouse is just a mouse. It doesn’t need to do anything besides controlling the cursor. It doesn’t need a “dedicated AI button that launches Logi AI Prompt Builder” (which is just a ChatGPT wrapper btw)
I don’t want to be that one person that just complains about capitalism under every post, but things like this make it hard. We have already perfected the design of a mouse. But every year publicly traded companies need to make more money than in the previous year, so let’s add subscriptions to everything. And also AI, because investors love it
Having subscriptions for hardware
actually how i understand that model, the subscription would not be for the “hardware” (which you would still have to ‘buy’ and pay for all of its repairs by yourself) but only for the software which would actually block you from using your own hardware if you stop paying the then-later-by-them-to-be-definded-price for the ‘licence’ to use that software, rendering the hardware a useless piece of junkscrap whenever and as long as they whish or their cloud runs on MShitsoft or is maybe ClownStricken, MacAfff’ed, CEO’ed, CTO’ed, Shareholder’ed or such).
That f*up-idea is afaik explicitly NOT a renting model for hardware where they’ld had to make sure that it actually works before you have to pay the rent, but only a licensing software for that only software that is vendor-locked-in on that vendor-poisoned hardware.
As i know myself, i guess i’ll discontinue to buy or suggest any of their stuff for a few decades from now, for that “idea” only.
Have a nice® day without logitech!
What can I say? I see “Capitalism bad” and I upvote.
Yeah, apparently the subscription for the mouse would be on top of the upfront cost. I’m honestly baffled that Logitech’s CEO thinks anyone would buy it, this feels like an april fools joke
Wait so the subscription literally doesn’t cover anything it’s just the money I pay to Logitech for no reason?
i believe such happens only bcs society lets people into such positions without checking them to be fit in any way for anything except them having a bank account for receiving millions and a lawyer to check contracts and tell them what they should not say in public and receive parts of these millions in return for changing their customers “pampers”.
or maybe that brainfart was just part of a trip on randomly mind altering illegal substances? or maybe a brain tumor? or maybe a brain parasite? or maybe a parasite brain? or maybe just normal capitalism? or maybe a tumor that grows in society?
i guess we will never know for sure.
I agree. We collectively overconsume, where are the manufacturers with pride in building quality devices that just work?
I’m a hardware engineer, I’d be embarrassed to release some of the shit I’ve seen onto the market for public consumption.
The rules are simple: solid state where you can, robust enclosures that can withstand common cleaners & IV exposure, geometry that makes it difficult for those cleaning fluids to get into the electronics. That’s it, you’ve got most people covered with a reliable device to interact with daily. Pinch pennies on the RGB LEDs, not the housing!
But the thing that shocked me was that the average spend on that globally is $26, which is really so low.
Yeah because it’s a mouse. What extra features is it going to have if I paid $100.
A comment on the article: “I will go back to a command line before I pay a fucking subscription for a mouse.”
A mouse is not a complex device. African countries can produce computer mice. I mean, using USB requires paying for the license and circuitry for the USB controller, which is why I hate USB for simple periphery, older interfaces solve the problem better. Anyways, they can produce USB mice too. They can even easier produce PS/2 mice.
Damn, that’s pretty racist. You know I come from an “African country” that produces Mercedes right, or like, did the first heart transplant.
Im not sure what you’re trying to infer by what you’re saying, like we’re all some backwards ass fuckwits with 0 ability to do anything? Fuck, we used to produce our own RAM at a stage. Nuclear bombs even.
South Africa excluded as a former colonial state.
Im not sure what you’re trying to infer by what you’re saying, like we’re all some backwards ass fuckwits with 0 ability to do anything? Fuck, we used to produce our own RAM at a stage. Nuclear bombs even.
I live in Russia, I could have written “ex-USSR and African countries” so that you’d not feel offended. Would have the same meaning.
Point being having actual electronics production and not assembly.
The irony of somebody from Russia calling anywhere else a shithole is just profound. Don’t you guys have to pour water in your toilets to flush them? The rest of the world has indoor plumbing mate, even Africa.
Anyway everyone knows that China produces all of the cheap crap anyway, so why wouldn’t you go at them?
Don’t you guys have to pour water in your toilets to flush them?
Are you high or something? Why would we?
The rest of the world has indoor plumbing mate, even Africa.
I would expect an entire continent to have some variability.
Anyway everyone knows that China produces all of the cheap crap anyway, so why wouldn’t you go at them?
China produces all of the crap. Without the “cheap” constraint.
Russia is a shithole
Not in every dimension, but in that of producing computer mice yes it is. Which is all that is relevant to this conversation.
By the way, I know that sub-Saharan Africa in general is becoming better very fast, and that Sahel has record population growth, and that Africa as a continent has bright future.
While Russia may hope for that only after a fucking revolution.
These are just irrelevant.
USB is better for modern computing since it doesnt operate on an interrupt basis, like PS2, that’s the problem with PS2, USB is polling based, so it always calls, which also means it’s a lot more versatile and flexible, because you can just call and receive whatever the fuck you want from it.
If you were to use PS2 today, you would likely see a significant performance impact.
Apparently nobody understood in which context this was said.
I meant a Star Wars Expanded Universe-like or solarpunk-like or some other imagined future (but with that element of utopia) world where computers are produced as widely as screwdrivers, are more modular and interoperable and competencies are also more widespread, and where computing is radically simpler due to these two requirements. Because you can’t have TSMC fabs everywhere.
USB is by far too complex a protocol for this when you don’t necessarily need it.
Also many motherboards still have PS/2 , no significant performance impacts, you might have mixed something up. Anyway, from a computer mouse you don’t need much.
Also many motherboards still have PS/2
it’s mostly a legacy thing, either industry boards which are used with windows 95, or boards that just include PS2 because, features™
no significant performance impacts
well, part of the problem is that in order to handle mouse inputs, the PS2 calls an interrupt which stops the entire cpu and forces it to focus on the user input, until it kills it likely over a cycle count metric, and then returns back to what it was doing, though perhaps this was back in the day when interrupts were more common, i wouldn’t be surprised if modern PS2 is just conversion into USB lmao.
you can argue that USB is complex, and it’s not all that complex, it’s just serialized data transmission, the benefit of it’s “complexity” being the massively increased transmission bandwidth compared to something like serial, which is like 32kb/s historically.
Yes, I know. I should clarify that all this was in the context of some imagined future sustainable computing with decentralized production and a bit of luddism.
As in “how would we live in spacefaring future if the PCs we could have were all comparable to Amiga 500”.
Isn’t USB like…a mandatory standard now on all devices?
It’s complex enough if you are making some hobbyist device.
I’m imagining some world with production of anything related to personal computers being as decentralized as that of hand screwdrivers.
In that context USB is complex.
I have an idea for Logitech: Go fuck yourselves
corporate brain rot
Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse”
Great, my money is good to go. I’ll pay big for something that’s easy to keep clean and doesn’t have that horrible sticky rubber after a few years.
that requires a subscription
I’m out.
This was my reaction too when I read the title, complete with curiosity about what they mean with “forever”.
Forever: until we decide that we no longer want to maintain the product, rendering it useless and forcing you to by whatever we replace it with
In other words: They want me to never buy a Logitech product ever again. Fuck you greedy corporate shitpiles!
I’ve already got a “forever mouse”.
I plug it in, it needs no updates because it’s a fucking mouse.
Hilarious. Logitech’s software has always been an afterthought and now they want me to pay for it? Goooo fuck yourselves. I had to sell a perfectly good keyboard and mouse because their stupid g-hub is harder to navigate than a g-spot.
It kept doing updates and every time it did, it would clobber all my macros and bindings and basically factory reset. I had a txt document on my desktop with all my configs so I could set them back up whenever it decided the configuration gods required a sacrifice.
…I feel sorry for your girlfriend/wife.
Go on, tell us how you work the spot, G Man.
You basically have to go behind the clitoris and stimulate it from the back while working it from the front with your tongue.
Damn you got a lucky mouse
Almost spat out my food, thanks
🤷♂️ My girl just lays on top of me and rides up and down along me, and that seems to do the trick. Not every time, mind you. But that’s the position that does it, if it happens.
Which is freaking great for me because I love that position. 🤤 Lots of skin on skin.
For hours.
G-hub also doesn’t work on Linux, which is actually a massive advantage. I use Solaar with a couple of shell scripts and it’s amazing. (edit) Actually it’s a Python app, so it might even work on Windows.
I’ve also had to blacklist the HID++ kernel module because high-res scrolling on a loose, mushy ratcheting wheel is awful.
I started boycotting them when they started forcing a program to be downloaded, installed and run automatically on any pc running Windows 10 just by plugging a Logitech mouse/keyboard in to the USB port.
It installes through Windows Update, and is called Logitech Download Helper.
I am fine with Windows Update supplying and installing drivers, but using it to deploy program is scummy…
So now, I am on Xtrfy mice and Ducky keyboards.
G Hub doesn’t work with my old trusty G11 keyboard either. Since it’s both required for Logitech’s newer peripherals and also requires uninstalling the old Logitech Gaming Software which would reduce the functionality of my keyboard, it effectively banishes any future consideration for Logitech’s peripherals.
It’s basically moot since I run Linux now, but I don’t fancy the quality of Logitech’s products either these days. It’s a shame since their stuff used to be really solid. My X540 speakers are as old as my keyboard (16 years) and also refuse to die.
No thank you, and get fucked.
Luckily I can buy a perfectly decent mouse that lasts forever for £5
As long as it’s not that god awful ThinkPad mouse that every corporation seems to give people.
I don’t know how they think I could afford subscriptions for every object in my life. There’s no way
You have several ‘backup’ organs, just saying.
Well… they don’t think about you at all except for wanting to squeeze money out of you. If that takes literally squeezing you in a hydraulic press they’d do it as long as the penalty was financial (not jail time for the CEO) but also that the penalty cost was less than the profit they got from murdering you.
This is how every company is now, every billionaire. It sounds like an extreme thought, yes, but … the absolute ultimate greed is also extreme 🤷♂️
To be fair… I read the whole interview a few days ago, she was kind of pushed into this statement. The idea from the CEO was presented as a high-end luxury mouse that you’d treat like a fancy watch you could just repair and never need to replace. The closest we got to Logitech saying this was the interviewer asking if they could ever see a subscription being attached to the mouse and the CEO saying ‘possibly’ and then implying that it could be something like a maintenance/repair contract so that you would never have to worry about your mouse.
This whole ordeal was mostly just poor form in interviewing where the interviewer pushed the interviewee into a statement that they knew would be good clickbait.
Unless it were like $0.20 a month which is equivalent to buying a $25 every ten years, there’s no point.
But they will probably try and charge something stupid like $5 a month or $10 a month for their supreme collectors edition package.
And even then, I’d rather not have to keep paying for a subscription that could stop and brick my mouse at any time when they decide to “consolidate their product offerings” like Spotify did with the Car Thing. (plus, card fees would mean they’d actually be losing $0.05-$0.10 or more off the purchase price every time your card gets charged, at that price point)
Make it repairable if you want it to last forever.
I think cleanable is more important.
I had a Razer Diamondback for like 20 years, and let me tell you, the insides of that were not a pretty sight when I took it apart to work out why the mouse wheel was glitchy. Two decades of crumbs and pubes and assorted hand gunk.
Plus the rubber tends to get a bit tacky after a while, and I’m not sure of a good way to clean that.
I think ten years is a decent lifespan for something I use all the time like that. More is a bonus, but I’m happy to replace after that time.
Mice seem to be a stagnant tech, not sure I need another one for the rest of my life… if I could fix middle wheel click and replace parts like the rubber side that has worn away.
Cleaning is maintenance, a part of repair in my eyes 😊
It’s like TEL9 (a piece of technology that is so perfected, that at this point there’s no further improvements that can be made to it, see the paper clip, TEL10 is literally obsolete technology like the bow and arrow). The weird thing is there are companies out there that still seem to think that they can make money off of TEL9 tech.
No one thinks they can make big bucks off of paper clips, but CEO’s brains turn to mush as soon as it’s got a circuit board.
That was specifically one of the goals talked about in the actual interview and the CEO spent a lot more time on that than the topic in the headline.
2 years from now: “Why are Logitech sales down?”
Fucking MBAs
Oh man I was hoping this would be a sub for alternatives to subscriptions, rather than just pointing out that everything is going to a subscription model.
It’s not against the rules of that community to post alternatives. I suspect the community members would love that.
Alternative to subscription based mouse…any other fucking mouse. Hell, I’d rather use that piece of crap they sell at walgreens for $15.99. It looks like crap, has only 2 buttons, is wired, but it doesn’t have a damn subscription.
are mice not supposed to have only 2 buttons??? (excluding scroll wheel)
Mine has left click, right click, scroll wheel, back, forward, and a programable button which I use to switch windows.
My Halo account name is fuckmandatorysignins@personalDomain.com
Fuck you Microsoft, fuck you Logitech, if the Internet goes down, I’m fucked…
I always give “companyname@personaldomain.com”
That way datasets are harder to correlate and I know who leaked 😝
That’s what I’ve been doing since 2002. If I get spam, I set up a forward to their customer service.
Lol! I need to start doing something like this when one of those email addresses eventually ends up in a breach. :D
Be wary though, it might get your domain blacklisted for spam. I’ve been lucky so far.
Good to know! Thanks for the warning. c: My default course of action will likely be just disabling the old alias and making a new one.
Really, I’m not against this model if it were simply a low monthly fee to rent hardware and have it perpetually fixed and maintained. For a mouse I couldn’t imagine more than $1-2. I would feel good paying that knowing that the mouse wouldn’t go onto the trash heap when it stopped working well.
But of course that’s not what they are thinking. They are thinking you still pay an exorbitant up front cost, plus you pay an exorbitant subscription on top of that.
plus if it ever breaks they’re 100% just swapping a new one in and deleting the old one, it’s not cost effective to repair a fucking mouse lmao.
Yes the idea of fixing is less compelling for a mouse than other technologies. But I would still feel better if I knew they did fix just the part that was broken rather than chucking the whole thing out.
it would need to be a damn low monthly fee, I paid like 20$ for my razer deathaddr on sale(I know not Logitech), and it’s going on year 7 or 8 with daily use no issues, I expect I’ll have to replace it soon but, in my eyes even 1-2$ monthly is too expensive for a mouse and only would really be good if you tend to go through a mouse a year. but any of the more expensive mice will outlast what you’re paying on a sub
ofc that’s assuming it’s not like you stated in your last line
Yeah, even my $50-$60 logitechs will probably last me at least 5-10 years so even $1 would be steep but would be nice for example just to get a new case as the rubbery stuff starts wearing off which is something I’d probably just put up with otherwise.
