During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shed some possible insight into the company’s view on one of its most important products. Saying that “the mouse built this house,” Faber shares the planning behind a Forever Mouse, a premium product that the company hopes will be the last you ever have to buy. There’s also a discussion about a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.
For now, details on a Forever Mouse are thin, but you better believe there will be a catch. The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.
I think this idea is even stupider than it seems, and that’s already pretty fucking bad. I don’t think this idiot understands that people who still buy mice are people who didn’t “upgrade” to iPads or just use their phone as their only computer. We are power users, and are more likely to smell the bullshit than anyone else.
Damn Logitech, you’ve been my go-to for peripherals for a couple of decades now
Don’t fuck this up
You know they will, just making a good product isn’t enough, they need to somehow sell us more bullshit so they can make infinitely more money than ever all the time. So Logitech will absolutely go through with something like this
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Yeah, I bought two expensive Logitech mice and my impression was they got WAY too much cash from me for it. Their reaction? Nope not remotely enough. Need a guaranteed stream from all customers.
I think I’ve bought my last Logitech product. I also have one of their keyboards and one of their webcams. In all cases they are semi okay products and the only reason I bought them is how bad some the other options I found out there are. Not that I looked at their lines and said “oh these seem great.” They were always a last resort.
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I hate this approach to business.
Coupling subscriptions with forced obscolecence is a nightmare. If HP made the best printer money could buy, using it with a subscription model would be a hard sell. But they make shit printers that die at the drop of a hat, so coupling them with a subscription is asinine.
Logitech makes a decent mouse, passable webcams, and shit keyboards.
Just in case anyone from Logitech ever reads this, I own 2 MX Verticals, an MX Ergo, and an MX Master 2S. I love them all, but I’d rather use an OEM bog standard Dell mouse than pay for a subscription.
They don’t even make good mice technically because of planned obsolescence.
Their switches die, intentionally, long before the life time of any other components on their mice. And have for nearly 10 years now.
They way I got introduced to hardware as a service is that it was a solution to planned obsolescence.
In theory, a hardware subscription means that if you pay for X months of that hardware, you gonna get it. Doesn’t matter if it breaks, it should be replaced while your subscription lasts.
So taking that into account, the less the hardware breaks, the more profit they have. So not only should it eliminate planned obsolescence, it would make engineering for durable products an actually very profitable business.
So, what is the difference between this approach and just selling an extended warranty?
With subscription you don’t own the product, but also you don’t pay up front.
With subscription, you should be able to buy as many months as you want. With extended warranty, I think companies usually only sell 1 extended warranty per item.
(I’m pulling the prices out of my ass, don’t try to calculate which one is more “worth it”.
Extended warranty:
30€ for the mouse (3 years warranty) 5€ 1 year extended warranty.
You are sure to have the item for at least 4 years. After that, you can use it until it breaks.
Subscription:
1€/month
You get to use the mouse for exactly the months you paid for. No more, no less
Also, with subscriptions you are likely to get a second hand item. But when you buy the item you are gonna get 1st hand unless you shop at Amazon.
I personally wouldn’t buy a subscription, I prefer to own it. However, I’ll admit that it’s not black and white, and subscriptions also have some benefits.
Another way instead of per time window is per use. For example, in the case of a mouse, per clicks.
So if you buy 1.000.000 clicks and rarely use the computer, you get to own the mouse for a very long time for very cheap, just in case you ever want to use it. This is basically today’s planned obsolescence, except the item doesn’t become trash, the company would just reset the counter and you or the next client can keep using it. If you use it a lot, it’s going to become real expensive real fast though.
It’s really insane that they want the good press and loweree manufactured volume of a quality item… But also for it to fail and you need to buy up whenever they arbitrarily say so.
It’s horrifying. Absolutely broken fucking mindset that only works if we truly are trapped having to buy from them and I just don’t see how that can be true before someone says fuck it and competes.
It’s so grossly profit seeking I just will feel really defeated if it actually works.
The Logitech k120 is a worthy warrior. Id never get an expensive keyboard from them though
The Logitech UltraX Flat was hands down the best keyboard I ever used in my life. Sadly after decades of use (with a ps/2 to usb adapter) at some point some key pressure sensors started failing, so I had to switch. But I swear if I ever see a new one on ebay, I’ll get it in a heartbeat.
I used to just buy Logitech when I needed something because it’s good quality and good value, they seem to be intent on moving away from both
Magnesium mouse
OR
Forever subscription
Hard to decide here, fellas. Idk.
No.
Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.
Bull-fucking-shit. That’s just not how any of this works.
There are plenty of companies that make appliances that last a long fucking time, and don’t have to rely on fucking DLC micro transaction AI bullshit. The reason Instant Pot went bankrupt is the same reason a ton of popular companies have recently had issues: They got bought by private equity (who also owned Pyrex and fucked them over), saddled with a shitton of bad debt, squeezed of every bit of brand value they had, and then left to fall apart as the PE firm made off with millions.
The fact that the writer correlated “quality, durable good” with “unsuccessful business and bankruptcy” is absolutely one of the worst takes, and really shows just how pervasive this disgusting idea of “must be disposable to be profitable” really is.
Thank you for typing this up because I was not capable of doing it because vitriol messes up my WPM.
Partially true, but also they wouldn’t invest in something that lasts forever (without it costing an absurd amount of money or the subscription requirement). I like this video that shows the issue pretty well. (TLDW: Communist Germany made glass so durable it didn’t break as a product to sell to the west. No company would purchase it though because they made most of their profit from selling replacements. The glass is now what we call Gorilla Glass, which is really only available on phones, which are designed to be replaced every few years anyway.)
100 years ago there was a meeting amongst lightbulb manufacturers that all collectively agreed to only design light bulbs to last about 1,000 hours. They were known as The Phoebus Cartel and Included Phillips and GE. Up until this agreement lighbulbs were typically lasting up to 2,500 hours. The manufacturers essentially created the concept of planned obsolescence because people weren’t buying as many lighbulbs as they wanted and it was decided to stop making longer lasting bulbs with higher costs. The whole thing started falling apart (competition of non members that were making bulbs, but they were all small operations, as well as patent expirations that GE had) and the start of world War two pretty much broke it up, as the Cartel couldn’t keep everything regulated and tested due to all the travel restrictions and such. But it still remains as the first global wide creation of planned obsolescence.
Extra fun fact: the common light socket screw design/size has remained the same since 1880.
That is mostly a myth. They did agree of the lifetime, but it wasn’t planned obsolescence like people act. The lifetime of a bulb is directly related to how bright it is. If you make a really dim bulb it lasts a long time, which is how that one in the firehouse is still alive. It’s so dim it’s effectively useless. The group met to decide on a luminosity target, which also is a lifespan target effectively.
Not if you read/believe most of the info on the wiki. US government fined GE over it in 1949.
No, even the wiki (under “purpose”) says the myth is probably not true. It was a cartel though, and therefore illegal in many/most places. It just wasn’t because the planned obsolescence. Lowering lifespan also led to selling more bulbs though, so it was useful for that.
Yes, A dim bulb is extremely inefficient, it will use a lot of electricity for a very small amount of light.
On the other hand you can make very efficient lightbulb that will be very bright for a small amount of electricity but last only for a few minutes.
The 1000 hours limits is a nice middle ground.
And what of the noble gas filled bulbs that were both brighter and longer lasting?
i mean, all incandecant bulbs are filled with a noble gas, Argon. If they didnt any bulb would have a lifespan measured in seconds.
Back in the 1920’s and earlier they were commonly just in a vacuum.
They can try. I’m so used to Linux that driver updates aren’t a concern of mine.
If they somehow make it windows only then I’ll have an issue
I was a flunky of Logitech for most of my life, but after multiple mice in a row that developed the double click issue in far too short a time, I have vowed to never buy another.
I’ve been super happy using simple, cheap assed mice and I can’t tell the difference in the slightest.
$20 mice ftw.
If you have basic soldering skills and care enough to do this, the mouse buttons can be replaced for less than a dollar each. Not that this excuses Logitech’s poor QA, but my
g502g305 will last damn near forever if I keep replacing the switches like I have been.My latest issue is the rubber on the g604 is starting to warp. No idea how I’ll ever fix that in a satisfactory way.
The true Achilles heel of Logitech gear is their rubberized feeling coatings on things. My mouse’s coating started to fail from daily use in a couple of years.
Mine started rubbing off after ~6mo
oh man that’s what killed my MX Ergo. I’m back to using M570’s with a simple plastic shell because they don’t rot.
I really should have done that. I replace capacitors in monitors and do other bits of soldering, including making my own audio cables. Seems like a natural extension. I bet I still have those mice in a storage tub.
Yep,
I tried this, but damaged my middle click in the process.
did you ever watch the youtube ‘deepdive’ into the double click?
Turns out they are using an older switch which, while great at the time, wants a higher voltage than modern, electricity diet, mice.
I haven’t, but I’m also an electrical engineer so I’m pretty familiar with the issue haha
Fun thing you can do, is open your mouse and look up the PN of your switch on DigiKey. Filter for components with the same package/footprint, then sort by actuation force. Get a few different ones and try them out. They sell good brands there.
I play a lot of shooters, so my left click is real easy to press, and my right click is ~3x harder.
the video makes a point that the wetting current for the switches Logitech uses is… i think 5v, however modern mice use much lower voltages. He doesn’t attribute it to malice, more “we have been using this part for 2 decades, why switch”
I ordered in these myself: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004754399010.html but damaged the middle mouse click during disassembly.
I have an old M560 that I actually really like. Other than ABS shine, the only sign of age is that the “back” button you click by nudging the scroll wheel from right to left does double clicks. Do you happen to know if that is similarly fixable?
More like the never mouse, you can keep the monthly sub peripherals.
Oh wow I never wanted to stop buying Logitech before. I guess there’s a first time for everything. Fuck this noise.
Really? They went to shit over a decade ago. Cheap $30 Chinese Amazon mice surpassed Logitech in quality around 2013. I was getting so sick and tired of spending $80 on a mouse with a middle click that was going to break in a couple of years.
Yeah I bought a Logitech mouse and a little after a year the right click went bad. It would randomly click twice, never stop clicking, or not click at all. I ended up ordering some replacement japanese switches on digikey for like $5, unsoldered the old ones and resoldered the new ones. It’s been close to 10 years now and with the new switches, it’s the best mouse I’ve ever owned. I’m not happy with Logitech but I am happy with my custom mouse
2013 might be an exaggeration, but yea most Chinese brand mouses (Lamzu for example) are solid picks unless you care about software
I really like their master MX master mice. I find them much more comfortable than alternatives.
yeah, I’ve always gone for Logitech and they have had great customer support. i guess I’ll have to look for something else next time i replace a peripheral.
MaaS?
This reminds me: I got a Logitech mouse as a gift a while back, and to get it functioning I needed to install a settings app for it for some reason. Today, I find in my Task Manager that they somehow installed an AI assistant platform thing using that settings app. I’m currently in the market for a new mouse lol.
Man the Logi settings app was utter trash, so slow to run or even change settings.
Ratbagd + Piper gave me the ability to change my DPI (no switch on the super light) without any bloat.
That sounds perfect for what I need actually. Thanks for sharing that!
Was another perk switching to Linux, my keyboard I can bake in profiles (using a windows VM) then dispose of that VM once my keyboard is setup the way I wanted.
SteelSeries software is horrendous, up there with the Razer.
I use Solaar to change the mouse settings
The first thing I did after purchasing an MX Master a few years ago was block the update server, after realising it downloads update binaries over plain HTTP and tries to automatically run them on boot 🤡
Very nice mouse tbh, just such a shame the company and their software is toilet water
Considering I’ve only ever bought a new mouse with an old one broke, and therefore did not work at all, I can’t foresee any possible reason to buy one of these things. Unless they’re made of fucking titanium with and have an 80-year power supply. In which case they probably cost like $200 and I’m still going to just go buy one for 10ish bucks because I can always replace it in a few years if necessary and it’s still cheaper.
