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Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

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Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#251

Post by gedrap »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'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…

>>> I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions.

Or, if you look it at from a different angle, it's a user friendly decision. Maybe there were enough people saying hey this $NO_NAME_CHINESE_MANUFACTURER bulb doesn't work therefore Philips sucks. Can it contribute to introducing a monopoly? Sure. But it's a luxury good so I don't have much problem with that. If Philips controls what is compatible and what is not, it can ensure to a greater degree that customers experience is satisfactory.

I understand the general BigBadCorporation vs Open Standards sentiment over HN but, really, it's sometimes for the better.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#252

Post by markild »

kamaal wrote: post #94
roymurdock wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. I own Hue bulbs, and the only reason I've bought more, after my initial purchase, is because they have an API that let other systems control my lights.

Currently, I'm using home assistant (https://home-assistant.io/) for controlling the lights, and if I ever buy other lights, they'd be controlled from there as well.

What should be interesting now is to wait and see if they lock down the API as well...

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#253

Post by pmontra »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #102
roymurdock wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not shown: the part where the Hue consumer product line takes a nose dive, resulting in an organizational shuffling, the loss of some jobs, and general agony and frustration on the part of everybody in the division except for the Boss, who moves on to another position because he/she was able to demonstrate how they squeezed profit out of the product.

Also not shown: when the current hub technology is discontinued and replaced with something newer and better and incompatible and you need to replace all the lights in your house unless you want to stick forever with the old hub. Ops, new lights and other stuff that talks with the hub won't work with the old one so you hope you'll never need anything new anymore. Probably not something somebody in this kind of things does.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#254

Post by [deleted] »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'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…

[deleted]

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#255

Post by incepted »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'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…

> I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions.

Really? It's pretty easy to understand.

There's very little to lose and a whole lot to gain.

Sure, you'll piss off a few people who read Hacker News but most buyers will just shrug and keep buying the only One True Brand, thereby making them millions and granting them a monopoly.

If the plan doesn't work, you can still backtrack and open up to third parties.

But there's really no downside to trying to force yourself into a monopoly, which is why Phillips, and before them Keurig, Apple and countless other brands, have tried and will try again.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#256

Post by bryanrasmussen »

gherkin0 wrote: post #161
cbsmith wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whe…

It's a total dick move on Philips's part to "update" incompatibility into existing products that people already own and have spend money and effort to integrate. These people bought product with the expectation of compatibility, now they're out their investment because of Philips's selfish business decision. Even they have elevated support costs, Philips's made their bed by offering compatibility in the first place f…

wonder if that is open to a class-action suit.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#257

Post by lostlogin »

cgriswald wrote: post #213
usaphp wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I have a less-than-a-year old iPhone 6+ that runs like a legless alligator ever since I upgraded to iOS 9. Your first gen iPad isn't supported by iOS 9 and there are a lot of apps that don't support it either. But backward compatibility does not preclude Apple from being an upgrade company. Apple may not have invented the hardware upgrade cycle, but they've mastered it. That's what their keynotes and media interactio…

Something must be wrong with it then. My 5s runs great on most recent release. It's axtually better than when I bought it. How many devices get better as they age?

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#258

Post by lostlogin »

cdcarter wrote: post #229
odbol wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones can't even send files to other iPhones or Mac or anything over Bluetooth. In fact iPhone doesn't even HAVE files. It's 2015 and still the only way to share files from your iPhone is to plug it in.

An example file that you can share from iPhone to iPhone or iPhone to Mac is a photo.

A pdf? Or today, a dicom. I didn't know I could do that.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#259

Post by lostlogin »

simcop2387 wrote: post #108
rizwank wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe this is true now given all the third party frameworks available.

From what I understand you still need Xcode to sign the package with your developer key to either load it onto a device to test or to send it off to the app store. Though that might not be the case anymore as I haven't looked in a long time.

I don't find that having a Mac helps me with the code signing all that much. It just doesn't work sometimes.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#260

Post by PinguTS »

When I read this statement[1] from Philips, that third party that is assigned will continue to work and only commissioning is blocked, then the reason for that seems to be as simple as the Master Key for commissioning got released[2].

So, Philips just started to issue a new Master key that now has to be implemented in all those third party devices. But Philips will issue that Master key probably only under very strict NDA with selling your first child and such things.

[1] http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753

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