211–220 of 270 posts
This kind of anti-consumer lock in seems to be the natural course of things when more and more stuff runs software which the buyer has no control over. I don't think we can fight this with consumer decisions only, it is just too profitable to shakedown consumers like this.
The primary reason the software is there is for vendor lock-in and rent seeking.
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I live in an extremely rural area. The Deere integrations are a huge reason. Another that's not talked about is Deere field service. It's just DAMN GOOD. If you're running a serious tractor(7-9 series ) and it's the middle of planting/harvest hours can be the difference between red and black margins. Deere will roll out a team with 30ft trailer of parts out in hours if you have an issue. CaseIH will sorta match this,…
Exactly, and at the moment in time you don't care about "right to repair" - you need to get back up and running now . Which has led me to believe "right to repair" is a ruse, but for what?
No-one wants to sell hardware any longer, it's not as profitable as providing it on a subscription (dare we say "rent") and forcing all support, maintenance and additions to go through your channels as part of the subscription package. Unfortunately this trend is everywhere now. It happened to servers, media, has started to happen to cars... but it's happened already to agricultural hardware. Super profitable if you…
The flipside to this, is that there is perhaps no longer an incentive to sell hardware with a limited lifespan.
I just want to throw my 2¢ out there, as a mid-20's who went to a high-rural-population high school, there's an entire new generation of farmers who have a) accepted that Deere's need constant/regular service calls, and b) don't care to learn how to fix it (or older equipment) themselves. At the end of the day farming is just a business same as any other, it's the same reason why a lot of trucking companies lease the…
You must know my neighbour. He was running a Kubota for a year or two, but it didn't take him long to replace it with a Deere. I have most of the major brands in my shed. I don't particularly care much about what colour I'm using. Purchases have been made based on cost, which has included some green equipment when a great auction find has been found. My experience says that JD has the UX nailed. When you're spending…
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I also grew up in a rural high school with a large farming population. I categorize farmers into three types: 1. Professional - Usually highly educated, good business sense. Probably obtained an advanced degree in agriculture science, though not always, some self-educate very successfully. These farmers generally do not like John Deere and think they are overpriced, not as good as they once were, and find the lack of…
Wow. What an incredibly offensive comment. I love how HN understands the right to repair when it comes to their gadgets, but when it comes to tractors it's probably because the farmers are uneducated hicks. Please tell me more how they don't understand AG science enough, but you have such a strong grasp on it. JD tractors were and are reliable and top tier in quality, that's why they are popular and that's why people…
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, we had a bunch of old farm equipment, some from like the 1930s-era. Mostly a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s.
And like every bit of equipment on the place had special operation rules.
"Don't run that tractor past 5k RPMs" or "Don't use the PTO Shaft (Power Take Off, the gear in the back that hooks in to power towed equipment) from Tractor A with Equipment Item B since it'll blow out." "Remember Tractor J is Brand X, but it has an engine from Brand Z, and a PTO shaft from Brand Y..."
Point being, like every piece of equipment was rigged together with duct tape. It's horrible unsafe. When you buy used equipment, nothing comes written down... like you try it, break it, and duct tape it all back together again.
Parts from Brand Y in Engine X -- because that's what the implement had in stock when you needed to repair something. Lots of home-welds, lots of splice jobs. Need a new hose? Grab one off a car... it's not rated for the tractor, but it sort of fits... and it lets you get the job done today... so cool, "works" and then likely just forget about it until it breaks.
So how on earth could John Deere be liable for the performance or safety of their equipment? If a John Deere tractor blows up, or more aptly some part suffers catastrophic failure and hurts someone... who's at fault? Does John Deere have to honor a 10-year warranty, if you cut corners on the repairs?
And, in the case of accidents, even if it's the farmer who is at, the brand suffers from the news report, "A farmer father of 7 was killed today when his John Deere tractor malfunctioned..." Left out of the story is the fact that the farmer didn't repair it to spec, or the guy the farmer bought it from didn't repair it to spec...
Anyway I side with John Deere here. It's chaos not to lock this stuff down. Who owns liability? These things are used hard, they break frequently -- especially with age. How to you know something actually works right if you don't lock down the repair process?
I wonder why JD does not make a large simple tractor that is mostly mechanical and hydraulic using standard/common parts and sell them at a higher price? They could advertise them to be owner repairable to justify the higher price. It seems there is a demand.
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In fact, the pattern is that people don't want to spend a lot of money upfront and companies like sustained income. So given the choice between a $50k tractor which cannot be repaired unless you pay a lot of money and an easy to repair $100k tractor, both farmers and manufacturers will chose the first option. Of course, farmers want an easy to repair $50k tractor, but manufacturers have to make money. And manufacture…
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to have any kind of sympathy for a manufacturer who wants to offer a worse product for more money. Especially when that directly translates to higher food costs for everyone. I'm not saying communism is the answer, but a free market where your choices are a crappy "cheap" product or an acceptable product for twice the price isn't something to be proud of. Oh, the market will solve the pr…
Apple.
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Wow. What an incredibly offensive comment. I love how HN understands the right to repair when it comes to their gadgets, but when it comes to tractors it's probably because the farmers are uneducated hicks. Please tell me more how they don't understand AG science enough, but you have such a strong grasp on it. JD tractors were and are reliable and top tier in quality, that's why they are popular and that's why people…
Deere does not have a monopoly on quality. Yes, if you compare them to Kioti (a discount brand), they are superior, but there are other manufacturers (NH, Mahindra, Kubota, etc) where they stand up just as well.
At this point it's better to buy a Kubota to avoid the lock-in, but JD is still far superior when it comes to the attention to detail.
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Even if it weren't illegal, we are rapidly entering an era where it won't be practical anyway: I work directly on these issues--participating in the DMCA exemption process every cycle and serving as a witness during the hearings--and the whole process just feels kind of dumb knowing that "sure, so let's say it is legal to jailbreak your tractor: they still have to make a mistake in a world where bootloaders are becom…
The DMCA is the least of your worries. The EPA has figured out that the only only reason people actually want to update software on their tractors is to turn off emissions controls.
All of this decrease the useful lifetime of equipment.
And no, all of this is not required, a trucked was able to pass California regulations with an old pre-EPA-regulations diesel engine, but the tolerances are a lot tighter (ie. forget about that chinesium oil pump with a couple thousands too much shaft end play), maintenance is a lot trickier...