Keurig is that you?
Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
91–100 of 303 posts
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#92I was literally about to make a purchase but now I'll be considering other options. Good timing on your part hue. Do these idiot companies not learn anything from backlashes against Keurig and others?
Didn't Keurig just get valued at $shitton BN? If anything, this case teaches us that being customer-hostile and abusive pays off. Which is sort of obvious if you think about how the market works, but people still act surprised.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#93They're going for vendor lock-in. Someone peered over Apple's garden wall and liked what they saw.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#94I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…
Boss: We introduced Hue back in 2012 w/ a plan to lose money the first 3 years developing the hub, subsidizing partners, and getting our product out in the market. Tell me we're seeing a positive ROI now. Hue PM: Hue is profitable, but only marginally so. Our strategy of making up the initial investment on $60 per bulb hardware is being undermined by cheap 3rd party lighting fixtures. Plus we're incurring costs respo…
Fine strategy until the universal controller app arrives.
After that, the same Boss would hope they should allowed their app to control third party bulbs, since that way at least they would have a brand presence, and by that way that would have allowed them to sell their bulbs better than others.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Official Reason: "The lamp that cannot be added may be a lamp from another brand. Philips does not test and cannot guarantee the behavior of all bulbs from other brands connected to the Philips Hue system. To guarantee the quality of consumer experience only Philips Hue and Friends of Hue lamps can be added using the the Philips Hue [Hub]." [1] Real Reason: We invested money into our hub and building out our partners…
Do you have evidence of the "Real Reason" scenario as opposed to the Occam's Razor scenario that (a) Philips really can't guarantee the protocol works with any lights they don't explicitly test against and (b) the reason some manufacturers can slide in at a fraction of the price is that they're cutting necessary corners in either hardware or protocol compliance? ;)
Occam's Razor favors 'we want more money so wall in the garden'.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#96This is the Philips controller software (app) that is refusing to talk to or control 3rd party light bulbs. I don't really see this as being a problem. It's not the nicest thing, perhaps, but neither is 3rd party companies building bulbs (presumably by ripping off the design and protocol of Philip's bulbs), and then relying on Philips to build the software so they can actually be used. In other words, Philips is refu…
I wouldn't describe 3rd parties as "ripping off the design and protocol" when bulb hub communication is done using the ZigBee Light Link protocol. Philips didn't develop that. Standard here: http://www.zigbee.org/?wpdmdl=2132 [pdf warning] And no, lights from other manufacturers (I have several from GE) no longer work via the Hue app or any of the 3rd party alternatives. I made the mistake of accepting Hue's "update…
> This is like Apple saying "Laptops from other brands are no longer supported on Airport wireless networks so that we can ensure devices are fully compatible."
Didn't Apple do that with Bluetooth once? I recall reading that at least one iteration of iPhones could not send files via Bluetooth to non-Apple devices.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. Because they can. John Doe will think "oh, I just need to shell out some money to get it working again", or "oh, the system needed an upgrade anyway". The mobile bonanza (well, that one company who gets majority of revenue from hardware) in last couple of years perverted the word "upgrade" from "a software upgrade, which adds new features and…
> that one company who gets majority of revenue from hardware I hope you are not referring to Apple, because compared to other companies , iPhones and iPads are the one who can run current software on older devices with almost no issues. Samsung and other android manufacturers on the other hand have not supported older devices at all until recently (and even now not as good as Apple does). My first gen iPad still run…
Don't forget Sony. They are pretty reliable about updating their Z-series.
Full disclosure: have a Z3, mostly for this and because it was waterproof. The screen is now partially detached in the top after less than one year of use which annoys me but I hope to get it resolved under warranty.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And yet, lots of people don't avoid Apple. On one hand, having to use Apple's proprietary Lightning connector sucks. On the other, having Apple be heavy handed with iOS App Store submissions means I have a higher confidence with my iOS Apps behaving compared to those I install on my Android Device.
The thing that deters me from ever writing something for iOS is that you have to own a Mac to do it.
I do not believe this is true now given all the third party frameworks available.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#99I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…
Boss: We introduced Hue back in 2012 w/ a plan to lose money the first 3 years developing the hub, subsidizing partners, and getting our product out in the market. Tell me we're seeing a positive ROI now. Hue PM: Hue is profitable, but only marginally so. Our strategy of making up the initial investment on $60 per bulb hardware is being undermined by cheap 3rd party lighting fixtures. Plus we're incurring costs respo…
That doesn't seem like a fair view of the analysis.
If the real value was in the hub, and these other lights were getting a free ride on it, then the opportunity would be to charge more for the hub.
What is far more likely to be the case is that the support costs around problems caused by random third party components messing with the Zigbee network were exceeding the value of providing that support, particularly when you factor in that the customers they really wanted to grow wouldn't be using anything other than Hue's.
So, while blocking out 3rd party devices decreases the perceived value of the hub, the drop in perceived value is far exceeded by the drop in support costs. Easy win.
It's still hostile, but to a distinct use case, rather than their entire customer base.
Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights
#100Why have they done this? Is it because the 3rd party bulbs were cheaper?
I'd refrain from making assumptions until more is known. Another hypothetical possibility is that there is some corner case of the open standard that nobody realized was ambiguous until Philips changed an implementation detail that broke (non-compliant) third-party devices, and they're now stuck in the rock / hard-place situation of deciding whether to roll back their change and remove whatever functionality or fix j…
Thanks for the charitable interpretation. It certainly is possible, IIRC the first Hue bridge was on the cutting edge of ZigBee and it is possible to imagine that it didn't quite get the standard exactly correct.
Whatever the reason, this is an interesting hiccup in the Internet of Things.