Moving forward Logitech will no longer manufacture Harmony remotes | Hacker News Reader

Moving forward Logitech will no longer manufacture Harmony remotes

support.logi.com

7 pointszdw8 comments

I think Logitech is the Google of input devices. And not in a good way. They tend to design awesome, clever, stylish devices (used to be of good quality too, not so sure recently) only to kill them silently after a short time. And when I want to recommend one to others, buy a second one or replace mine a couple years later, I find they no longer exist. I've largely stopped buying higher-end Logitech devices because of that, even though I love(d) so many of their products.

Among cool Logitech products which have been killed even though they had no equally cool or better alternative:

1) Logitech diNovo Edge (a beautiful keyboard with an upright stand, ideal if you need desk space)

2) Logitech Presenter with green laser, timer and display

3) Logitech diNovo mini (the best ever tiny media center keyboard IMO which ran circles around the $20 cheap China ones you can get exclusively now; it looked so futuristic, it was even used (unmodified) as a prop in a sci-fi TV show as some kind of futuristic communicator

4) Logitech Cordless Optical Trackman (where the ball is in the middle and not operated by the thumb). This device is so great and coveted that it now goes for high three figures on eBay (originally less than $50).

And a couple more which I can't think of off the top of my head right now.

They came up with a few interesting products in the last years which I would have totally loved to buy but just didn't because I knew they were going to be killed again within a year or two.

What weird world is this where keyboards, mice and laser pointers become expensive "fashion accessories" and you can't rely on equal or better replacements being available at least for a 5-10 year lifespan?

It must be so frustrating to be a product designer at Logitech, designing all these beautiful, close-to-perfect devices only for some bean counter to pull them off the shelves if they can't create hundreds of millions in revenue from them... :-(

>I think Logitech is the Google of input devices. And not in a good way.

This encapsulates my view and experience.

In the case of Google, I have learnt not to rely upon their services, and trained myself to move quickly through the stages of grief to find alternatives. As for Logitech, although, I mourn the death of Squeezebox, and have generally stuck to mice and keyboards ─ they are still somewhat replaceable. However, the news of killing Harmony is making me feel really anxious. I have some old devices, where the remotes are either lost or damaged, and there are no decent alternatives, to replicate all the features in an 'all-in-one' or universal format.

I would sincerely hope Logitech sees some sense and open source the firmware, and also do the decent thing by letting the community support the software and maintain the database, instead of letting their devices end up in the graveyard.

K760 Solarcell powered Bluetooth KB.

Managed to find a replacement on eBay. Actually happy with the Cyrilic.

The K750 (black/Win version) is still available but has severely gone down in quality. I have a personal one that's about 6 years old and they seem to have gone through an undisclosed iteration (no new model number, although you notice tiny differences) - I recently tried to buy four new ones for another deployment - they were ALL faulty, slow or creaky and had to be RMA'd. I was stupefied. So you're probably lucky that you got an "old" model from eBay anyway ;-)

Thank you. I was not aware.

I bought their most recent harmony remote and it’s gathering dust.

They designed it so to switch to a different device you have to power off the current device. Lots of people asked for this to change in their forums but their stubbornness was unreal.

They could have been amazing but the product owners in the Harmony division had contempt for their customers.

Market leader afaik, albeit in a niche market. Perhaps insufficient replacement rate and planned obsolescence los deemed inappropriate?

I have one, I worry about replacement. Perhaps a spare is worth getting now.

> Perhaps insufficient replacement rate and planned obsolescence los deemed inappropriate?

I get what you're saying and I agree that that's probably the cause, but how perverse is that!? Used to be that it was the pride of a company and their engineers to create a device that lasted half a lifetime (or at least a reasonable amount longer than just two or three years, which is all you get now, if you're lucky).

Planned obsolescence is illegal in many countries now (and rightly so), although difficult to prove and not punished enough, but I hope as a society we will find a way out out of the perverted incentivization that makes companies behave this way...

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