Tech Shouldn’t Die Young, But Increasingly Does

The Humane Pin has died and HP has killed it. The burial of last year’s tech darling, DOA as its concept was from the get-go, isn’t that important in itself, but continues the troubling trend of things we buy dying unnatural deaths.

This wasn’t the first time the company formerly known as Hewlett-Packard was the assassin, even. A decade and a half ago, the company bought early mobile pioneer Palm before quickly losing interest. A year after buying Palm, and just over a month after launching the TouchPad, perhaps the best non-iPad tablet ever made, HP pulled the plug.

To be fair, this time, HP is being upfront: it bought Humane for the startup’s talent and patents without even pretending to want the product. Nor is the problem purely HP’s.

The problem is that we live in a world where so much of what we buy and use, from lightbulbs to automobiles, have become dependent on the manufacturer’s continued support in order to function. The number of perfectly good devices that are paperweights because the company either can’t or won’t continue support is growing alarmingly.

It wasn’t always this way, even with computers. I first cut my computing teeth into a TI 99/4A, a delightful 1980s “home computer” that was killed off by more popular rivals, Commodore and Atari. My whole experience with the computer-in-the-keyboard was from after it was discontinued, but it still served as a perfectly competent way for a kid to learn about computing. Software was available for purchase a decade after it was discontinued and a fully functional BASIC programming environment still cheerfully accepts commands 41 years after the last TI computer was made.

In days gone by, one never had to worry if a computer might be put in forced retirement prior to it simply becoming too slow for its job any longer. We retired them when the latest things we wanted to do required more resources, not because the manufacturer declared the machine dead. Now, even household appliances and other formerly low-tech items are vulnerable to a plank walk.

The difference, of course, is the Internet and its evermore pervasive presence. We expect our computers (and virtually everything else) to talk to the wider world today. We appreciate notifications when the laundry is dry or lights turning on at a voice command rather than fumbling in the dark. The convenience comes at a cost: dependence on something somewhere both to relay that communication and someone to provide the necessary security updates to fend off malevolent elements.

The deepening dependence on AI and other resources that require more power than any one device may be able to provide only worsens the situation. When HP killed the TouchPad, a time bomb started: eventually, there would be a security hole too big to ignore, or a necessary feature for future communication would never be added. But, two months after HP retired it, the TouchPad could still do everything it was intended to do.

Fifteen years later, the Humane Pin’s buyers are not so fortunate. Utterly tethered to Humane’s cloud system it connects to, the $700 device will simply quit working in any useful way later this month. From thereon out, it will be able to report its battery status and serve as a fashion accessory for those who want to say, “I burn money for fun.”

The last few decades are a rapidly filling graveyard of similarly ill-fated projects, leaving TI 99/4A-level longevity of even “failed” products as a distant memory. Fitbit consumed Pebble, the maker of one of the first smartwatches, for the purpose of adding talent to their naiscent smartwatch efforts. (Bigger fish Google then swallowed Fitbit itself.) Like Humane, they had no interest in the existing products and those products’ users.

The Pebble community has cobbled together efforts to keep the watches going with greater than average tenacity because the watches’ e-ink displays, long battery life and unique UI remain attractive even a decade later.

Emphasis on cobble, though, as praiseworthy as the effort has been. Those of us who want a watch to wear — not a project to tinker with — were left up a creek as the necessary bandages grew more complex.

This sort of unpredictability that the things we will buy may not even live out the life of their warranty is bad for the future of innovation. The Humane Pin appeared to be a non-starter, but there are plenty of similarly oddball ideas over the years that turned out to be much more useful. Who will give startups a chance, though, if their products might not function for more than months?

Each innovation requires willing customers. The increasing rate at which products get snipped in the flower of youth creates an ever more insurmountable hill for new innovation to break through.

The problem stretches beyond outright bricking and venerable brands — not just the upstarts they buy — are guilty. In 2006, Sony’s PlayStation 3 video game console was a surprisingly high-performance device, capable of officially functioning as a full-fledged Linux computer. Until it wasn’t. Four years in, Sony presented users with a choice: give up the Linux functionality that many folks bought the console for or give up receiving the system updates that allowed its game console functions to fully operate.

Amazon has likewise repeatedly modified its Kindle e-readers in user antagonistic ways. Most recently, dropping sideloading of purchased books. This eliminates the ability to backup those books, which is far more than a euphemism for “attempting to pirate.” After all, Amazon previously deleted users copies of — wait for it — 1984.

What happens if the book files are now further locked down and Amazon someday abandons the Kindle line altogether?

I’ve long made the Apple case, given that it does a far better job than most at offering long-term updates for its devices. They still have a share of guilt. Long time OFB readers will remember Dennis E. Powell had an update go poorly and de facto brick his phone. Even if Apple made it possible to go back to previous iOS releases, in the present moment, that’s untenable, leaving one vulnerable to untold security problems as the software ages. (And iOS’s locked-down model eliminates any other alternative, such as third-party fixes to old code.)

Just last month, Apple rolled back part of its Apple Intelligence notification summary support. They pulled it back because it wasn’t working accurately, but what if you liked it enough to want to keep using it? Or bought a phone because of it? Too bad, so sad.

We are paying ever more money for products ever more dependent on companies’ goodwill to keep them functional. I found myself thinking about this as I installed some new light switches at the church a few weeks back.

“Smart” switches were only slightly more expensive than regular dimmer switches. I’ve had issues with people leaving lights on, so it made sense to pony up an extra buck or two for ones that could be programmed to turn off. But as I removed the decades-old dimmers that were starting to go on the fritz, it occurred to me these new switches were already ticking down to the day they were declared obsolete.

Nonetheless, the switches were a step in the right direction of connected products. I bought Matter-compatible TP-Link switches. Matter is a standard that prioritizes local control and interoperability, instead of dependence on the manufacturer’s continued diligence to past products. My older, personal smart home devices that lack the standard are less fortunate.

As useful as, say a washer with Wi-Fi can be if you have the machine in the basement, we need to demand it uses a standard like Matter. Otherwise its continued functioning is all too dependent on the whims of the appliance manufacturer. Doubly so on even larger purchases like cars, which now carry those ticking time bombs of obsolesce, like GM’s Ultifi system. Designed to make us more dependent on buying add-on services from automakers, this attempt to build the tech into the car (rather than mirroring content from far more easily updatable phones) dooms us to the day they quit updating a particular car’s system and core features quit working.

But, let’s be honest: that’s just not what we’re thinking of when we make the purchase.

So it goes with too many of the ever-more connected world of household products. Many times the ones that have little or no dependence on the manufacturer’s long-term resilience are a lot more expensive and less feature-filled. Moreover, it’s one thing to make wall switches communicate locally (as they always should have); it’s another to make ever more AI-dependent hardware work without particular cloud services.

A somewhat happy resolution gives a hint of what could start to solve these problems, though. I rarely praise Google, but to their credit, when Pebble’s founder Eric Migicovsky asked them to open source the long abandoned PebbleOS, they agreed.

Good for Google, which just gave a gift to customers it long ago inherited and Fitbit ignored. But, this is the sort of outcome we shouldn’t just hope for, but demand of the things we buy. Though I’m a couple of decades out from my personal hopes of a totally Free and Open Source world, is it really too much to ask companies if they decide to abandon a product, that they release the code behind it?

This is the solution to arbitrary product bricking. Imagine if Humane had a pre-existing commitment to open the source code to its AI pin if it went belly up? Not only would it serve abandoned users well, it might have provided an extra boost of confidence to draw in early adopters whose purchases would have saved it.

The revived Pebble community is a fantastic test case. Migicovsky, some of the original Pebble developers and the Rebble open source community are working together to provide a modern firmware for existing watches. No longer trying to duct tape a blackbox of code, they can actually make the watches work again. Migicovsky also aims to start a new line of Pebbles based on that open source foundation.

True, there are plenty of abandoned open source projects. At least there is hope when the device’s code can be carried on by those who care.

True, it doesn’t solve the whole cloud services issue, either. We need to fight this cloud creep by putting our money towards products that favor local control whenever possible.

Amazon has trounced Apple on the smart home in no small part because consumers saw the cheaper prices of Alexa-compatible, cloud reliant devices and didn’t bother to think about the local control advantage of more expensive Apple HomeKit enabled ones.

Matter is a fresh start opportunity for the smart home, in no small part derived from HomeKit. A similar spirit of local control, which I am sure will be a hallmark of a project like the resuscitated, open-source Pebble, is the key to properly long-lived devices.

Some cloud reliance is unavoidable with functionality we expect nowadays, sure. A lot of AI processing is too demanding to be on-device yet, for example (though we should keep encouraging open source options that someday could run on device). Data synchronization, too, is only really useful with the cloud. All of that is true, but at least open source code allows one to switch cloud services if one goes belly up.

Here’s to many more Rebbles, because for every stinker like Humane Pin, there are plenty of gems like Pebble, or plainly functional items, like lightbulbs, undeserving of the waste pile.

Full Disclosure: Tim does own some Apple stock (AAPL).