The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Power tool DRM would, inevitably, be used in an anti-consumer fashion.
Power tool DRM would, inevitably, be used in an anti-consumer fashion.
Watch pre-DRM and 'jailbroken' power tools become highly sought after, lol.
A WiFi MP3 player with "unlimited music through life" and few paid premium tracks, which the client planned to suddenly switch into not so unlimited, and subscription only in the course of 2-3 years through the power of fine print, and legalese. Bait, and switch.
Stuff like DRMed consumables for water filters, coffee machine capsules, subscription only air fresheners, and DRMed packed fresh food! is already a reality.
And if you don't believe about microchipped, DRMed food, here it is:
Each pack is made of a very, very sturdy piece of plastic, and an NFC chip, and a single use QR code which will invalidate itself after a single online lookup for an unlock key.
User puts this "food cartridge" into the machine, and scans the code. The machine will cut open the cartridge, and cook the stuff inside.
It will of course refuse to cook if your "food subscription" is expired, or if it thinks the NFC chip is fake. Or at least this is how they wanted it to be in their original design proposal.
Whatever engineering company who took them as a client probably managed to tone down their fantasies a bit.
Brave new world...
You could buy a third-party manufacturer's tools because they're cheaper, but when they can't keep the lights on and they shut off the authentication servers, well you're SOL
Tesla makes software performance unlocks, K-Cups have DRM on their pods, and your xbox or playstation hardware is subsidized by the license costs on the games you're gonna buy in the same way your printer is cheap because the ink cartridges are expensive.
Only a matter of time before you can buy a $20 cordless drill but the charger requires a $15/mo Battery Conditioning Cloud subscription.