Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#131

Post by wnevets » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 5:38 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36

culturestate wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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…

> 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 gotta disagree. I tend to find "normal" people will blame the manufacturer or microsoft whenever anything goes wrong regardless of the actual cause.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#132

Post by jhall1468 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #104

CydeWeys wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Because a practicing engineer and an anonymous person on the internet that seems like the "engineering type" is the same thing?

There is zero reason for an engineer to have "anti-sentiment" to an open platform because it's moot. Most likely, an engineer would be completely indifferent to a decision like this.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#133

Post by jhall1468 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

lightbritefight wrote: post #129

sspiff wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Their management / decision makers aren't familiar with the hacker mindset, but they responded to public criticism quickly by acquiescing to the demands. I don't so anything bad about this. They mad a public about face, admitting that their decision was not the right one for their audience, and changed it. That's not easy to do for most people, let alone companies.

They didnt really admit the decision was bad for the audience. They said "well, we were just looking out for you, and highly recommend you doing what we want, but I guess you can do that too, but you shouldnt." The tone is very much "we did nothing wrong." I don't expect more, but I was hoping for it.

I disagree. The tone was more akin to "This really doesn't impact a lot of our customers, but the customers it did impact caused a significant (unexpected) response."

That's perfectly valid. They felt that it was a minority doing it (which is probably true) so this would be a non-issue. It wasn't, so they reversed it.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#134

Post by supergeek133 » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:09 PM UTC

mdip wrote: post #123

supergeek133 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If by average consumer you are referring to "average purchaser of light bulbs", you are referring to a market that the Philips Hue products are not yet in. The average Philips Hue customer is an early adopter who was willing to spend a large amount of money on a next-generation lighting system. This customer is an early adopter. The question is not whether they should allow third-party bulbs, they already allowed thi…

And in their mind it might be a 'rip off the bandaid' move as it becomes more mainstream... these things are starting to be on endcaps in Lowe's, Home Depot, etc.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#135

Post by School-Cotton » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

stefs wrote: post #91

fastball wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this magical place where I can find free hardware?

To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.

GP's point still stands. Open hardware is very rare.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#136

Post by afarrell » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #119

masukomi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To build on and adjust that: you actually want to compare how vocal the people like that are.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#137

Post by imtringued » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:38 PM UTC

sismoc wrote: post #2

I won't be so quick to "roll-back" my decision to boycott their products.

Are you trying to say that reversing their decision was a mistake?

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#138

Post by jerrysievert » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

Nilef wrote: post #110

Any recommendations for third-party lights?

the GE Link bulbs are pretty nice. they have a great hue (pun actually not intended).

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#139

Post by fleitz » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:50 PM UTC

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…

Yup, I worked tech support at an ISP back when NIC drivers could be a PITA.

There was a phenomenon I called 'first blamer advantage', whoever the customer called first whether it be the NIC maker, Microsoft, their ISP would blame their problems on someone else and the customer would think whoever was blamed was at fault.

Usually we'd blame the NIC company, and then offer to send a tech out to fix the problem we blamed on them as a courtesy which made the customers accept the ridiculously long time it took to get a tech out.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#140

Post by fleitz » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 6:52 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59

dtech wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Windows crashes because of an badly coded third-party driver, do you think people will blame Windows or the driver manufacturer? Most people will not internalize the workings of the system and just blame the system as a whole, which in this case has the brand name Philips on it. I think it's a smart move and reasonable compromise, similar to Microsofts WHQL program.

Badly coded driver is a special case, because it often crashes the system in a way seemingly unrelated to the installation itself (or software it came with), showing you a nasty blue screen (which is known generally as "the Windows problem"). I know most people get confused about cases like these (and had more than enough experience with fixing them for such people). But I used a different analogy on purpose. You bou…

Fuck tell me about it, I had some servers flaking out on 2K3, it took months of windbg to find out it was the SCSI controller driver borking the whole thing.

It took especially long since I had rewritten most of System.IO to support 32K paths in .NET so I assumed that I had subtly fucked something up, it was only when the SQL Server started crashing that I even considered drivers.