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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

#31

Post by culturestate »

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.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#32

Post by anc84 »

They can still control it and reverse the reversal in the future. You are at their whim. It is not user-friendly unless it is free software (and hardware). Amazon can still remotely remove books and no one bats an eye. This is just an issue because at the moment these kinds of home automation are per-dominantly "nerd" territory while e-book readers are already mainstream.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#33

Post by TeMPOraL »

eli wrote: post #28
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…

Will that stop people complaining to Philips support when it doesn't work well?

The only real solution to this is to go Google way and just refuse to have any support altogether. Otherwise you can't really stop people calling in with absurd requests. It's a general rule in all consumer sales - the smarter / more savvy a customer is, the less likely is that he'll be calling.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#34

Post by soylentcola »

joezydeco wrote: post #13
ohitsdom wrote: post #8

"We underestimated the impact this would have upon the small number of our customers" Do they really believe it is a small number of customers that use non-Philips light bulbs? I mean, good for them in reversing the decision, but the damage is already done (check out Amazon reviews for one) and it should have been easily foreseen.

Translation: "we'll do this to shut up the pro users that are generating all this bad P/R, and it really doesn't matter since 99.9% of our customers won't care about this anyway." Can't say I disagree with the idea. Everyone wants a system like this to be open on principle, but in reality it won't really get used that much. This stuff is still too hard for the average consumer.

I dunno. I bought a Hue starter kit (hub+3 bulbs) and three more bulbs when I moved into my new house. I wanted something cool and "gadgety" to set up in the new place. They've generally been OK but I haven't bought any more bulbs since that first setup two years ago.

This is mainly because the Hue bulbs are quite pricey and I've had a couple of them semi-fail (some colors in the spectrum stop working due to the blue LEDs crapping out). I've been keeping an eye out for compatible bulbs that are a bit more affordable since Hue prices haven't dropped at all and I'm more likely to drop $20-30 on a fancy bulb than another $60 when they can still fail.

Granted, I've already got the hub so they have my money. Their risk is that I only buy third party bulbs instead of Hue bulbs from now on. Still, the next time I go to buy more lamps to expand my setup, if there are less expensive options that are reasonably equivalent, I'll buy them instead anyway. If Hue lamps become more affordable, I'll stick to first-party by default. But if Hues are still $60 each and some other platform starts selling good RGB LED bulbs for $15-25 each (and Hue has locked out third party bulbs), I'll just drop Hue in general and cut my losses.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#35

Post by eveningcoffee »

rubidium wrote: post #16
eveningcoffee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not mad at this at all. I am. Because it is a way to extort money out of other ZigBee participants.

It's not extorting. It's making sure your house doesn't burn down because you bought the el cheapo bulb from knockoff brand C.

You maybe want to look at http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/how-hue-work... to reconsider your position: They [the lights] are connected to the bridge via an open standards protocol called ZigBee Light Link.

If you want an analogy, then it is similar to the case where MS Office would refuse to open ODF documents from another office suites and then after uproar would only support documents from friends of Microsoft.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#36

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

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 actually care about damage to the brand those people may be doing.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#37

Post by hoorayimhelping »

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…

A lot of us are in software here and have seen how users use things. I'm not sure I believe that users would read that messaging at all. Even if they did, I doubt it would have much of an effect on users complaining to Phillips later.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#38

Post by sspiff »

gnulnx wrote: post #5
sismoc wrote: post #2

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

Hey, give them some credit. They listened to their customers and responded very quickly.

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.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#39

Post by TeMPOraL »

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #37
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…

A lot of us are in software here and have seen how users use things. I'm not sure I believe that users would read that messaging at all. Even if they did, I doubt it would have much of an effect on users complaining to Phillips later.

Here's how Hue app apparently looks like (I don't have it myself):

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Hue.png

See those warning marks on the middle screen? I'm not sure what they do, but this is where I'd put them, along with a small text "this bulb is not supported by Philips and may not work properly", and people wouldn't miss it. It would be a constant reminder for them that if something breaks with one of those bulbs, it's their fault.

Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform

#40

Post by eveningcoffee »

themartorana wrote: post #12
eveningcoffee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not mad at this at all. I am. Because it is a way to extort money out of other ZigBee participants.

Sure, that's fair. But from their standpoint it's a bit "damned if you do, damned if you don't." This is conjecture, but I imagine supporting cheaper third-party devices is becoming a headache. In the last thread about this, a former ZigBee developer noted how difficult it was to code to the platform. It may not all be evil.

But from their standpoint it's a bit "damned if you do, damned if you don't."

No, it is not. They have two options - have their own standard or support other ZigBee devices. This has not been a problem with another similar standards like KNX.

but I imagine supporting cheaper third-party devices is becoming a headache

It is not about supporting some cheap third-party devices but other ZigBee devices that Philips claims to support.

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