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The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

wsj.com

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Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#101

Post by m463 »

dzikimarian wrote: post #66
m463 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"smart" televisions just means long boot times and... intrusion. Why would smart cameras end up any different? I will say the DSLRs understand the necessity of immediacy - turn it on and take a shot. (well, there is the "turn it on" part) Honestly I don't know why phone cameras haven't understood the immediacy thing. why not dedicate one button to ALWAYS take a picture, getting the shot even at the expense of acciden…

Maybe not one, but double-press power and then volume button and you have photo pretty fast.

android, right?

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#102

Post by shortcake27 »

m463 wrote: post #100
shortcake27 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something Apple has put a lot of work into and iOS handles photography UX very well. Wake the screen and swipe left (no need to authenticate). Camera loads in about 1s on my 4 year old XS. No shutter lag so you get the picture you see in the viewfinder. Also, “Live Photo” is enabled by default which takes multiple photos before and after you press the shutter and combines it into a single entry in the UI. You…

I frankly don't think apple has put enough work into it. I use it (swipe from locked screen) from time to time, but it sometimes (like gloves) swipe doesn't work and you miss the shot. You have to look and interact with the screen and that's a failure. I guess most "i am elegant" tech companies just don't go for buttons. (apple, tesla, etc)

Oh yeah that's an interesting point. Could be a product of the environment. Product designers in Cupertino aren't having that issue, so it's probably "not a problem" in their eyes.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#103

Post by gameman144 »

ilyt wrote: post #79
cs702 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not that I disagree but... :-) Keep in mind: Customers thought they were purchasing cameras with seven days of storage.

I mean if you thought you will pay flat fee and get online hosting till the end of time (and most likely didn't read the fine print that said it isn't infinite in time), that's on you

Eh, I disagree here. Like some responsibility is always on the consumer, but clear information is essential in good markets.

If I pay for a hard drive and get one TB of space, I get it til the end of time. If some other product says "1 TB of storage", with no other context, it'd be easy to confuse the two (especially for people who aren't tech-savvy).

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#104

Post by pixl97 »

josephcsible wrote: post #76
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard for the average user to even tell what’s local and what’s not. Perhaps some labeling similar to energy efficiency labeling could be regulated where anything that doesn’t allow for use without the remote service gets a big red “D”sticker, while things that are completely local gets a big green “A”? Some of the best gear I have uses different cloud services but I won’t buy something that would be a pap…

> It’s really hard for the average user to even tell what’s local and what’s not. Especially when there's no legal consequences for manufacturers publicly and unambiguously lying about it. Remember how Anker said that their Eufy product line stored all of your data locally, and then they didn't get punished when the truth came out?

Exactly. You could buy a local device and then run a manufacturers update and suddenly you have a non downgradable online device.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#105

Post by pixl97 »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #64
voisin wrote: post #3

This problem will only be solved by legislation. If countries seek to reduce e-waste they need to force electronics makers to ensure a minimum length of support on the same conditions as existed on the date of sale - say 10 years.

Perhaps. But the hardware isn't the issue here. The hardware works, but the company is no longer offering free software / storage. The customes need to switch to a paid plan. While it makes a case for self-hosting your software that doesn't come for free either. Ideally, you get to control your own destiny, but not for free. The lesson? Nothing is free. There's always cost / risk; hidden or otherwise.

Then we need to ensure that manufacturers are not allowed to say 'free' when they mean something else.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#106

Post by Semaphor »

logbiscuitswave wrote: post #97
Semaphor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do own the camera. They just don't own the cloud service that makes the camera useful. Or even operable. I don’t know the model, but the article makes it seem as if the cameras work perfectly well without it? I hate online-only products and think they are between scam and trap, but this seems more a case of false advertising than anything like that.

Well-ish depending on your use case. It still requires their app, hub, and cloud services to work even just for steaming. There’s no completely “local only” mode. You can use local storage to save recordings by connecting flash storage to the hub, but it’s only really useful a backup. You can’t view it in the app (you have to sneaker-net the storage to a computer), and it can only save triggered recordings. Basically…

Oh wow, that’s horrible. I wish articles focused on that instead of some minor marketing issue :/

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#107

Post by JohnFen »

gedy wrote: post #4
voisin wrote: post #3

This problem will only be solved by legislation. If countries seek to reduce e-waste they need to force electronics makers to ensure a minimum length of support on the same conditions as existed on the date of sale - say 10 years.

Or vote with our dollars and reject "cloud" connected devices

I never buy equipment that requires connecting to a server somewhere to work. A couple of years ago, I bought a some surveillance cameras and a recorder unit to manage them.

Finding one that didn't require an internet connection was exceedingly difficult. It can be hard to even tell if they require an internet connection or now -- and it seems most of them do.

I did eventually find one, but if I need to do something like this again, I'll build it myself. It would be much faster and easier.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#108

Post by JohnFen »

eropple wrote: post #21
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard for the average user to even tell what’s local and what’s not. Perhaps some labeling similar to energy efficiency labeling could be regulated where anything that doesn’t allow for use without the remote service gets a big red “D”sticker, while things that are completely local gets a big green “A”? Some of the best gear I have uses different cloud services but I won’t buy something that would be a pap…

Transparency in terms and branding is a really good idea, but it's probably insufficient. In this scheme, devices marked "A" will effectively be restricted to people with the time to manage local infrastructure--recording cameras, for example, will eventually have disks fail, and at that point the repairs are likely beyond more than a subset of people. Probably a small one, at that. Cloud stuff is here to stay. We de…

> at that point the repairs are likely beyond more than a subset of people.

Replacing a hard drive trivial, though. But in any case, if someone doesn't want to do such maintenance every decade or so, there are repair shops that will do it for them.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#109

Post by JohnFen »

pixl97 wrote: post #105
chiefalchemist wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. But the hardware isn't the issue here. The hardware works, but the company is no longer offering free software / storage. The customes need to switch to a paid plan. While it makes a case for self-hosting your software that doesn't come for free either. Ideally, you get to control your own destiny, but not for free. The lesson? Nothing is free. There's always cost / risk; hidden or otherwise.

Then we need to ensure that manufacturers are not allowed to say 'free' when they mean something else.

This is the real issue, yes. Manufacturers lie and get away with it.

Re: The cameras worked fine, but their maker said they had reached their end of life

#110

Post by JohnFen »

travisporter wrote: post #16

I’m just waiting for this to happen to newfangled connected cars. Hopefully then people will start to vote about the issue

Indeed. I cannot imagine a circumstance where I'd be willing to buy a car that requires a connection to someone else's server.
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