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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

#101

Post by throwaway2048 »

izacus wrote: post #86
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 In some cases, they were right, in others it was due to outdated software, buggy third-part…

Honestly, so what?! We've survived through 30 years of computing with this and somehow the big brands didn't implode. Why do we start compromising future technology due to some minority refusing to understand the basics of how their stuff works? People calling tech support are a minority of users and do not represent the full market. It's really strange that smart people here are actually proposing making the product…

its simply a post hoc justification, nothing more

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#102

Post by pmontra »

jads wrote: post #71
TeMPOraL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'd still get mad at Philips when a third-party bulb breaks. Would they? Wouldn't they blame their bulb first? It's like complaining to your PC manufacturer that a program you downloaded doesn't work. Most people would blame the program and look for another one. I'm sure there are some who have it backwards, and they probably will be calling support, but I can't imagine there's enough of them for a company to ac…

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 In some cases, they were right, in others it was due to outdated software, buggy third-part…

Well, I think this was the point of all the complaints yesterday: people couldn't connect a 3rd party bulb to Philips' hub and assumed that the product (the hub) is terrible.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#103

Post by pkgapkg »

mdip wrote: post #14

I'm glad to see they've reversed the decision. It was the only reasonable choice they had with such an immature market that could have them dethroned as the leader very quickly. Their reasons for lock-in made no sense. For a product like this compatibility is a feature and many people chose the Philips products because of the ecosystem of compatible products available, the ZigBee protocol and third-party light bulbs.…

Their move concerned me, because now I don't know if this is "we won't close our ecosystem" or "we won't close our ecosystem YET". I don't feel like waking up and discovering that they've decided that they now have enough market share to be abusive and controlling. Most of my existing ZigBee stuff isn't as slick as the Hue stuff, but I know it won't get turned off.

I get that people make mistakes, but their original move showed that Philips has essentially NO understanding of their market, and that they are willing to casually engage in extraordinary hostility towards their customers. This isn't a winning combination.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#104

Post by throwaway2048 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #94
rrrx3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision to only support Philips products came most likely from the engineering division themselves. Marketing probably had a shit-fit because losing a marketable feature is a giant regression to your general user. People in Marketing and Product tend to be way more in-tune with customers and don't make boneheaded decisions like this. Another easy tell: the company was shocked by the reaction of users. That meant…

> The decision to only support Philips products came most likely from the engineering division themselves. I disagree. I don't see engineers coming up with or getting on-board with such a clearly anti-open-standards decision. Much more likely, what I think happened is that this decision was forced on engineering from above, morale hit all-time lows, there was much grumbling and consternation as they implemented this…

Read the comments here, many engineering types are falling all over each other to excuse phillips. There is a massive anti-sentiment towards open platforms there days it seems, likely driven by apple's success and the startup "industry".

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#105

Post by throwaway2048 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #99
fastball wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples and oranges. Pure hardware is a lot easier to make compatible consistently than hardware+software.

Huh? There's a lot of software involved in wired networking. Way more than for lightbulbs, I'd suspect. And yet they all interoperate via open standards, and any vendor that tried to sell equipment that only worked with their own equipment would be laughed at of the market.

Welcome to the new normal, where everything is a walled garden and a 'platform'. Pushed publicly for bullshit and spurious reasons, but privately is all about profit and control.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#106

Post by scrapcode »

jads wrote: post #71
TeMPOraL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'd still get mad at Philips when a third-party bulb breaks. Would they? Wouldn't they blame their bulb first? It's like complaining to your PC manufacturer that a program you downloaded doesn't work. Most people would blame the program and look for another one. I'm sure there are some who have it backwards, and they probably will be calling support, but I can't imagine there's enough of them for a company to ac…

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…

The vast majority of who? If you mean a vast majority of your customers calling into a support center, I'd argue that is a very small amount. I'd venture to say very few of peers in my circles call into support outside of account level tasks.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#107

Post by nichochar »

I really respect philips for having the humility to come back on a decision like this. As someone who already owns hue and has bought into the ecosystem, this makes me want to promote their brand further, and I will.

Hat down to whoever made this happen over there! The world is better when things are open.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#108

Post by golergka »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #93
TeMPOraL wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. I spent a lot of time fixing "computer stuff" for those people. I remember Vista (ironically, I'm probably the only person I know who didn't have a problem with it and, besides the slow file copying, geneally liked it) - but there, in a way, some blame towards MS was justified. They were releasing a next iteration of their operating system to the already mature software market that's built on interoperability.…

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 right is wrong.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#109

Post by [deleted] »

jads wrote: post #71
TeMPOraL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'd still get mad at Philips when a third-party bulb breaks. Would they? Wouldn't they blame their bulb first? It's like complaining to your PC manufacturer that a program you downloaded doesn't work. Most people would blame the program and look for another one. I'm sure there are some who have it backwards, and they probably will be calling support, but I can't imagine there's enough of them for a company to ac…

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…

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