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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#471

Post by izacus »

mlrtime wrote: post #184
saaaaaam wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that the Unifi UNAS is just a dumb storage array without any of the ecosystem of apps that a lot of Synology users seem to like - the photos app, being able to run Plex, etc.

Synology photos is garbage... it does do one thing ok which is backup photos. The software stack of usability is severely missing. So they have a lot of software that kind of works, but none of it well. In that case I'd rather have the cheaper Unifi that only does storage.

Synology Photos works amazingly for me and significantly better than any alternatives I've tried.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#472

Post by pfexec »

osivertsson wrote: post #51

When leadership makes decisions that are so out of touch with their customers it also severely impacts internal morale. Yeah, so they reversed eventually. But the technical and support people at Synology probably tried to fight this and lost. That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years. I bet many woke up feeling that the magic that made Synology a good place to work…

Would you say the same thing about Apple?

The "replaceable" SSD in the M4 Mac Mini is proprietary and will not accept a standard M.2 module. This was a deliberate choice.

Assuming you locate an exact match, you need a second, working, Mac to provision it.

The entire process is user-hostile from start to finish yet the criticism is few (and I've even read praise of this practice on Mac fan sites).

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#473

Post by glenstein »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #404
Aurornis wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical Vagueposting out of necessity: I worked at a different company that made popular consumer products and had leadership with technical backgrounds. That company also went through a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, which everyone hated. The root cause was that the technical leadership had started to think two things: That th…

> a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, .... their customers were so loyal to the brand that they wouldn’t leave Isn't that a contradictory position? Locking in raises the cost of disloyalty, loyal customers (by definition) don't need to be locked in. You only need to lock in loyal customers if you are planning on turning customer hostile.

A good habit to practice is to see how far you can go reconciling apparent contradictions with charitable interpretation. I think in this case, I can see "brand loyalty" on a continuum ranging from "feels good about product" to "so completely loyal that lock-in would be redundant". The furthest extreme would produce an effective contradiction, but anything short of that can make sense of the term while leaving space to understand lock in as a rational, or at-least non-contradictory action.

I think that can backfire spectacularly, as we're seeing with Synology, but I suspect that a non-trivial amount of the time, it simply happens and works, no revolt is staged, and profits flow (for better or worse).

The example coming to my mind right how is Pitney Bowes, which sells big envelope stamping and sealing machines. They sell a proprietary sealing fluid (wtf) that, as far as I can tell, is water with blue food coloring. And a costly proprietary red ink cartridge for stamping. But people sign the contracts and the world keeps on keeping on.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#475

Post by phoenix3200 »

Six years ago my box shit the fan. Synology could have recovered it for me, but they insisted I "upgraded" to their newest box. That was when I realized that I would never buy from them again. Thank goodness their hybrid raid is at least MDRAID.

https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/d3cmq2/ds1512_tha...

Honestly, old server equipment is more powerful than most of these RAID boxes. The only caveat there is that old server equipment is often not quiet, and rather power hungry (200W at idle with no power save mode).

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#477

Post by bombcar »

ffsm8 wrote: post #101
zeroflow wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. The appeal for me was the "it just works" factor. It's a compact unit and setup was easy. Every self-built solution would either be rather large (factor for me) and more difficult to set up. And I think, that's what has kept Synology alive for so long. It allows entry level users to get into the selfhosting game with the bare minimum you need, especially if transcoding (Plex/Jellyfin) is men…

Surprising to read your take Transcoding was the reason I moved away from Synology. The rest was fine , not great but ... Okay But there was no way to improve transcoding performance. If a stream lagged, it would always lag. Hence I jumped ship and just made my own

I gave up on transcoding and just recoded everything into the format the Apple TV with Infuse wants.

But my “NAS” is ex-lease enterprise server.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#478

Post by Aurornis »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #412
Aurornis wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical Vagueposting out of necessity: I worked at a different company that made popular consumer products and had leadership with technical backgrounds. That company also went through a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, which everyone hated. The root cause was that the technical leadership had started to think two things: That th…

Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile business decisions? > Regarding employee morale: It was very depressing for me during this period to open Hacker News and see threads complaining about my employer. I can confirm that it spurred a job search for me. Indeed. I believe that if you're a shareholder em…

> Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile business decisions?

The only peers at the company who were enthusiastic about the decision were the ones who were buying more company stock and wanted it to go up. They thought that anything that increased the bottom line would increase the stock price, and therefore they were on board.

So, no, I don't think increased employee ownership solves anything.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#479

Post by tristor »

Every time I've looked at Synology, I've been shocked at how anemic the hardware is for the cost. I've always self-built my own NAS. I've sometimes felt regret when I have run into an issue that required more babysitting than I wanted to do, but when considering alternatives, I've always realized doing it myself was the right choice. I wasn't aware they'd even done this, but the fact they did is just more reason to always build your own NAS.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#480

Post by gosub100 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #249
8fingerlouie wrote: post #162

The decision to restrict 3rd party harddrives may be part of the reason why sales (allegedly) plummet, but i'm guessing lack of innovation also plays a big part. Synology has been resting on the laurels for years. They had a "hit" with DSM 6, then did mostly nothing for a decade, released DSM 7, and again, nothing but minor things since. On the hardware side of things, they're mostly still using decade old hardware,…

Synology was in the back of my head for years as a straightforward home server product, but emphasis on "years". The other day I saw a competitor that had a hand grenade sized alternative, a cooling with 4 or 8 1 TB M2 SSDs arranged around it. And I thought, why the fuck is Synology still top of mind? I suppose they have plenty of corporate customers still, companies that are too small for their own proper servers (s…

I think they are for premium segment creators like photographers, videographers or musicians. They have the money to invest and want a plug and play experience.
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