3 mo. ago • 96%

Logitech’s Subscription Mouse Idea Pulled Back After Backlash

www.techdirt.com Logitech’s ‘Forever Mouse’ Idea Pulled Back After Backlash

It was just a few months ago that we had some fun with Logitech over it’s amazing, never been done before AI mouse… that was actually just a rehash of a previous mouse that had a button…

55 comments

I hate AI being intrusive in everything, who needs a mouse button to open the AI prompt!

76
- But also, if you want that, loads of mice have a bunch of buttons you can assign to pretty much anything you want.
  
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  And none of them require a damned subscription.
  
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  Or a keyboard shortcut.
  
  My keyboard cost £10 with a mouse. The keyboard has 104 keys and I would expect it to last at least 5 years. That's £0.02 per key per year. To be competitive, a subscription model for an AI button needs to be less than £0.00333 per month.
  
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  Really? Anything??? Can I assign it to bring me self esteme to see myself as worthy of finding happyness? Or will I just remain the same piece of garbage I was before I bought this stupid mouse?
  
  Ya know what? I'm just gonna sleep in the dumpster again. Hopefully this time the garbage men don't notice me, and compact it down.
  
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- The most annoying thing was them adding that bullshit to my current mouse’s software without warning.
  
  Logi AI prompt crap I don’t need or want, that I can’t disable, keeps starting up if I kill the process, eating 5-10% of my CPU cycles.
  
  Thankfully there was enough backlash to knock that on the head and they now let you disable it but they seriously got caught up with their own hype there.
  
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- I have a regular old non-AI Logitech mouse and keyboard, and I'm already enjoying the benefits of Logitech AI:
  
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  They should rewrite it in Rust (A safe memory programming language) ...
  
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HAY GUYS LOOK AT HOW CUSTOMERS LOVE HP AFTER THEIR SWITCH TO SUBSCRIPTION PRINTERS. WE SHOULD DO THAT TOO!

--Overheard from the Logitech C-Suite, probably

56
- It’s just unoriginal thinking. What does every business want? Lots of cash that comes in automatically on a known schedule. How can we do that? Have our customers subscribe. What will they subscribe for? Hmm lifetime speakers? Lifetime cable replacement?
  
  Side note business idea: subscription usb power bricks. We send you a variety of cables that work for everything. If one breaks we send you another. $30/yr
  
  Never worry about broken cables again!
  
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  See the problem here is the price. At $30/yr that's worth considering. The problem is they'd charge $30/mth.
  
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  Surprisingly I could see that being a worthwhile thing for a lot of people I know
  
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  My post was supposed to be a dystopian warning, NOT AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL, YOU MONSTER!
  
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- It's probably more "Hey look at what HP got away with. Let's try it".
  
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The term this story should have introduced everyone to is: "Trial balloon"

Logitech were just floating a trial balloon, that is all.

38
Well, this is basically all companies. The management are so disconnected from reality.

19
Was just a dopey idea in the first place. Nobody replaces a mouse because it's lacking software features, they replace a mouse when the switches wear out.

16
- Which is planned obsolescence anyways.
  
  It's not a dopey idea, it's an enshitification one, and one we will see again because there are no consequences.
  
  Logitech will have subscription hardware, guaranteed. They'll just go back to the drawing board on how to market anti-consumer practices better.
  
  And similarly are antitrust regulations have done nothing to prevent companies like Logitech from just acquiring all of their competitors and then doing this anyways once there is no more competition. And even using potential competitors into bankruptcy before they can actually compete.
  
  11
  
  It's always the same thing.
  
  Corpo push dog-shit idea and receives backlash.
  
  Pull back for a moment, and goes a little bit softer than the last and see if it sticks.If it sticks, it becomes the new standard for every similar corpo.
  
  Rinse and repeat.
  
  Just look at when Bethesda tried to sell a horse armor for Skyrim. Now it's the norm.
  
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- And if you can solder you can usually just replace the switches.
  
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For now.

12
The first attempt of many, the tech industry will normalise a subscription model alongside the hardware they just need to find the right justification that doesn't have universal push back. It worked for games, the trojan horse used was (often token) multiplayer addition and it will work in hardware too once they find the right combination.

12
- Isn't it already like that with tractors and some phones?
  
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- once they find the right combination
  
  Car.
  
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  For those unaware, already a thing: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature
  
  7
Why pay for something you won't be using all the time? Why not just pay for it only when you're using it? Oh--well yeah, you'll have to buy it first--but then you'll only have to pay to use it when you want to use it, and only when you want to use it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What a fucking breakthrough

11
- Ohhh, you get to pay based on the meters of mouse movement you do. Usage based billing, perfect.
  
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  Ooh, then your mouse can stop working when you run out of meters and then you have to buy more to top it up! Excellent.
  
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at this rate, in 20 years some asshole capitalist will figure out how to monetize air as a subscription service and we'll all be living in a true dystopia

10
- "GIVE THESE PEOPLE AIIIRRR!!!"
  
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- Property tax
  
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- I was hoping for a Spaceballs reference here...
  
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Pulled back for now, to be retweaked and pushed at a later time

10
- It was never a proposed product. The host asked if they could envision it someday and they said yeah.
  
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"Forever Pay For Your Mouse"

8
- We already do, with intentionally fast breaking switches. They get away with charging $100 for a mouse, and ensuring a $0.30 part will break long before the devices useful lifetime. Generating mountains of ewaste.
  
  Why can't they get away with the next step, which is charging a subscription fee to use their mice as well?
  
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- That's a more accurate branding.
  
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A feel a little bad for the Logitech CEO here. It was basically a softball question, do you ever think you'll have software subscriptions, which is a common thing, and he answered "Yeah, that's possible."

Obviously for a mouse it doesn't really make sense, but paid software updates are common in the industry so who knows.

Obviously it's stupid, but it's funny to see it play out.

8
- Ya, but they were gonna make me buy a subscription for a mouse!
  
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