Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
I don’t understand the consumer outrage about that though. It is like paying to unlock satellite TV reception (even though we are receiving the signals the whole time).
The best (worst) example I’ve seen in recent memory has been seat warmers. BMW and other manufacturers tried forcing a subscription on people just to use the seat warmers that are (1) already present in the car, (2) already wired up with buttons in place, and (3) cause no additional outlay of effort on the part of the manufacturer once they’re installed. There’s no valid reason to charge a subscription for something like that beyond straight greed.
It is like having a grandstand at a football stadium which costs extra to use. Do you resent that?
Do you resent the satellite TV example I gave earlier?
It’s absolutely nothing like that, my dude. There’s no extra service being provided. The product has been manufactured and purchased. It’d be like buying a drill only to find out that you have to pay a fee to use the drill bits you already own, or buying a block of wood and being told that you have to pay the seller money to use the tools you already own to make it into whatever you’re building.
That is not a good comparison because people don’t buy the car expecting the seats to have the warming feature. It probably is even offered as an option that the customer rejected upon purchase.
When I download software and pay for the basic tier it has the pro features built in anyhow. I can pay to unlock those pro features but I don’t expect to use those features already just because I already have them.
If I go to the football and the crowd is small enough to fit in the grandstand but only those who explicitly paid for it are allowed into the grandstand I don’t complain about my entitlement.
Whether they’re expecting it or not, the hardware is there and there is no additional technical intervention necessary from the manufacturer necessary for it to function. A monthly fee for a button to turn on my seat warmers is idiotic. Your bizarre infatuation with comparing cars to stadiums is also as frustrating as it is nonsensical.
I would prefer you discussed the point rather than trying to bully me into agreeing.
It is quite possible that the current seat warming arrangements are such that it ends up cheaper for those who want it (since it isn’t custom installed physically) and is of no consequence to those who don’t want it.
If it was enabled for everyone the price of the car could conceivably go up for everyone. Admittedly that may not necessarily be how it works out but it is a possibility.
It costs more to implement the hardware necessary to lock them behind a paywall in the first place, though. And I’m not bullying you by telling you that the comparison you’re making between cars and stadiums is, in fact, utterly nonsensical. I’m not borrowing space in a stationary building for a set amount of time. I’m purchasing a product that already had the feature in the first place. If it’s already there, it’s already adding to the cost of the vehicle, and there is no additional cost to the manufacturer whether they use it or not. I’ve given you multiple examples of how this logic would look in other industries where there are actual parallels, but for some reason you keep coming back to the unbelievably fallacious idea that buying a car is somehow akin to renting a seat at a sports game. They are not the same, in case I wasn’t being clear enough.
The cost to install the hardware has already been paid. Fine. What extra monthly effort is required on the part of the manufacturer to ensure the continued functionality of the seat heater? The answer is NONE. Therefore, what right does the manufacturer have to demand a monthly payment for people to use the hardware which is, again, already fucking installed in the car they just spent $60,000+ on? It doesn’t require server time. You’re not hiring a dude to come out and warm up your seat with his butt every time you activate it. I repeat there is no continued cost to the manufacturer, therefore they have no justification for charging a monthly fee, and the only reason the price goes up is the extra hardware cost from installing the system that charges the monthly fee.
I’m done with this conversation. Please seek help.
Yep, bully, as I said. An entitled one.
And you conveniently avoided the software example (basic vs pro).