So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years?
That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.
That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.
Looking at the wiki [1], v2 wasn't released until October 2015, and presumably v1 remained on some shelves for a couple months after that. So more like they need a new $60 bridge after 4 years.
This bothers me about phone updates - my manufacturer provides "two major version updates" - but in the case of my particular phone, it launched one version behind mainline, received the first update couple weeks after launch, I bought it when it was almost a year old because of the release cycle, and got the "second" update two weeks after purchase. They followed their update policy, but still leaves the public hanging.
All that said, I wouldn't buy smart lights anyway, and this situation doesn't bother me and seems like a somewhat reasonable timeline, since it doesn't totally break their functionality.
Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
> Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
See how your analogy doesn't work? A manufacturer of a hammer doesn't have to continually expend resources to keep your hammer operating, secure, and compatible with other devices. Because it's just a hammer.
A manufacturer of "dumb" bulbs doesn't have to continually expend resources to keep your bulb operating, secure, and compatible with other devices - simply by the virtue that the bulb isn't a smart bulb.
To fail your analogy criteria, the bulb just have to be a "dumb" one or the hammer can be a smart-hammer (you can concieve that for the sake of a thought exercise).
Even the v1 bridge will still work, it’s just loosing a feature.
Buy it and never use their cloud services or knowing that it can always disappear - if it doesn't work without Internet connectivity, don't buy it. Doesn't take a genius.