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Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

developers.meethue.com

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Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#111

Post by raverbashing »

WorldMaker wrote: post #100
raverbashing wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that applies to china mobile chargers and a lot of other devices that nobody worries about (and also to CFDs and any led lamp that might be today in your house) And of course it's not a software issue

> And of course it's not a software issue Funny thing though, but that AC/DC converter is manipulated by firmware activated by a wifi protocol. If the fire only starts when the converter is activated into its highest conversion rate in a particular sequence by certain commands sent across that wifi protocol and those commands are being chosen by a user of an app on a mobile device two rooms away, is that a software i…

If your DC/DC converter has a duty-cycle of 100% most likely the controlling FET will burn out and stop working

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#112

Post by kbutler »

golergka wrote: post #108
emp_zealoth wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about time Windows actually stops dragging the concrete boots around (riddiculous backwards compatibility) - it's infuriating how broken stuff in Windows is, and some of the brokeness has been around for YEARS. Just do an XP fork for VM to run all the legacy stuff on and start fixing stuff already, damn!

> Just do an XP fork for VM to run all the legacy stuff on and start fixing stuff already, damn! Oh yeah. I can just see "most people" powering up VMs to run their outdated broken software that they depend on. Why I'm sarcastic? Because the situation is completely broken, there's no right solution. All that's left is to ridicule all sides of the argument, because everyone who thinks that there is a way to make it rig…

The point is that the xp vm would be transparent. Microsoft has done various compatibility layers before - see windows on windows and windows on windows 64.

The core question is how much isolation optimizes future development while maintaining the ability to run older applications.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#113

Post by kbutler »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53
nkrisc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overestimating the technical savvy of most people.

From my observation, people are generally smart enough that if they bought expensive product A that works and is of a well-known brand, and then later they bought some unknown noname-brand cheap product B which doesn't wok with A, they'll blame the product B, not product A.

You are asserting that the major brand doesn't need to defend its brand image because people have a strong recognition of the brand image...

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#114

Post by revelation »

HelloNurse wrote: post #78
revelation wrote: post #66

Not sure why people are screaming "boycott". Philips never advertised their system as being compatible with third-party lights. The fact that they use an open protocol to communicate with their own lights doesn't change this. It's like connecting to your office chat with an IRC client because you figured out that's what they are using under the hood. Why would you scream bloody murder when one day your IRC client sto…

Not bothering to test and actively support devices from other vendors would be reasonable, but customers have the expectation that a product does a decent effort to respect the standard; whitelisting a subset of Philips lightbulbs and deliberately refusing to work with anything else means giving users a bad product for the sake of anticompetitive business practices. This kind of deliberate, obviously harmful abuse is…

Except I don't think Philips advertised that they are using an open standard. It's just what they used for the implementation.

They are free to mutilate that standard as they see fit for their own product, and since they didn't make it into a selling point, there is no reason for them to expect compatibility.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#115

Post by prolepunk »

mdip wrote: post #24

A point brought up in the replies to their forum post warrants repeating: They claim that they were concerned about the quality of their brand being eroded by third-party bulbs that didn't reproduce the same quality experience that first-party/certified bulbs did. They had the solution available to them from day one. Since they can clearly identify third-party bulbs, they could have simply presented a warning along t…

That's such a weak excuse some marketing person has come up with to cover his or her ass.

I can argue that the value of their brand is being eroded when the company is openly hostile to interoperability with other products, and of course customers will have shitty experience because this systems is stand-alone and can't be connected to anything or used in any way except for one specific case.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#116

Post by masukomi »

geon wrote: post #95
jads wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in tech support for many years, and the vast majority of people would blame the PC manufacturer or the operating system for the problems. I spent many years on the Genius Bar (back in the PowerPC and early Intel days) and, in almost, every interaction, the device was to blame - as far as the customer was concerned. In some cases, they were right, in others it was due to outdated software, buggy third-part…

> I spent many years on the Genius Bar (back in the PowerPC and early Intel days) and, in almost, every interaction, the device was to blame - as far as the customer was concerned. Selection bias. The people coming to the genius bar obviously think there's something wrong with the computer.

yes, selection bias but the fact that he had a constant stream of people thinking that proves the point that many folks just don't have a freaking clue about how computers work or what's responsible for what.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#117

Post by supergeek133 »

mdip wrote: post #24

A point brought up in the replies to their forum post warrants repeating: They claim that they were concerned about the quality of their brand being eroded by third-party bulbs that didn't reproduce the same quality experience that first-party/certified bulbs did. They had the solution available to them from day one. Since they can clearly identify third-party bulbs, they could have simply presented a warning along t…

The average consumer would blame philips for even allowing the bulbs... people on HN or various other tech circles know better. But do you know who leaves reviews on Amazon and calls their customer support line? The average consumer.

And most companies usually pay per call/minute to their customer care contractors.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#118

Post by mdip »

culturestate wrote: post #31
mdip wrote: post #24

A point brought up in the replies to their forum post warrants repeating: They claim that they were concerned about the quality of their brand being eroded by third-party bulbs that didn't reproduce the same quality experience that first-party/certified bulbs did. They had the solution available to them from day one. Since they can clearly identify third-party bulbs, they could have simply presented a warning along t…

I don't think this would accomplish anything vis-a-vis brand protection, since consumers have been conditioned to just click "OK" at every dialog box that doesn't look like it will explode a mine. Six months down the line, nobody would remember the warning -- they'd still get mad at Philips when a third-party bulb breaks.

they'd still get mad at Philips when a third-party bulb breaks

I don't disagree with you -- a subset of customers are going to be angry regardless of warnings, they only go so far. But the issue at hand is how best to deal with the problem they have publicly stated was the reason for this decision: Some subset of third-party bulbs do not work ideally in their ecosystem. Option #1 was to warn customers of this problem and let them decide. There are several other options that were available to them. The farthest down that list, and worst option they had was to disable the bulbs. I would expect that last option to be used only for bulbs that caused fires or other safety issues. That wasn't the case (or I would have expected them to have stated that directly since it would have been something a lot of people would have understood). I don't think Philips realized how major of a feature this is, particularly to early adopters.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

masukomi wrote: post #116
geon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I spent many years on the Genius Bar (back in the PowerPC and early Intel days) and, in almost, every interaction, the device was to blame - as far as the customer was concerned. Selection bias. The people coming to the genius bar obviously think there's something wrong with the computer.

yes, selection bias but the fact that he had a constant stream of people thinking that proves the point that many folks just don't have a freaking clue about how computers work or what's responsible for what.

No one is disputing that there are many people like that; the question is, how many in relation to more savvy customers, and whether this amount is in any way significant for the company.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

kbutler wrote: post #113
TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my observation, people are generally smart enough that if they bought expensive product A that works and is of a well-known brand, and then later they bought some unknown noname-brand cheap product B which doesn't wok with A, they'll blame the product B, not product A.

You are asserting that the major brand doesn't need to defend its brand image because people have a strong recognition of the brand image...

I'm asserting that avoiding support calls by the minority who can't reason about technology at all is not worth the tarnishing of the brand Philips did to itself when trying to get rid of those calls.
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