Thank God Logitech doesn't build toilets, or else we'd be in serious trouble soon.
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Logitech Considers 'Forever Mouse' With Subscription Fee
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What sort of ‘feature’ could one add to the dumbest device on a desk to justify a subscription? Actually what sort of future, possible (maybe) ‘feature’ could one tease to sell me the stupid thing in the first place? When was there an innovation in mice that I missed?
We have $8 mice and other pointing devices in the office that are 20+ years old and they do EVERYTHING the $60 trackball (carpal tunnel, yo!) I bought last year does. You know magical things like moving a cursor and clicking.
We have $8 mice and other pointing devices in the office that are 20+ years old and they do EVERYTHING the $60 trackball (carpal tunnel, yo!) I bought last year does. You know magical things like moving a cursor and clicking.
The number of clicks on this story probably earned MacRumors at least that much!
Seems like an attempt to subvert the free market: Get their money first, then deliver crap. People eventually tired of cable TV using that approach.
If the constant software improvements are irresistible then offer each as a one time cost and let the market decide it’s value. It’s healthier for everyone, particularly the seller.
Twenty year old $8 mouses that are still working? I would love to have an stress-free job like that.
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I have used these for 20 years and I cannot find a more comfortable mouse. The first one became faulty after about 14 years of continual use. I purchased another for £9 which is what sits on my desk today. A subscription mouse sounds horrendous.
I still have same mouse in black and in beige. I use the black one often.
Bought them in college, around 2000-2002ish.
This reminds me of when Notability changed their model to include a subscription. I u derstoof what they were doing and why; what irked me about that was that the new model was going to limit edits of pre existing (made prior to the subscription model) notes. I had used Notability to track all of my dialysis nlood pressures/medications and issues. They were *not* taking my medical information away from me. I switched pencil note taking app, laboriously shared everything to Goodnotes and deleted Notability.
As others have said; what could Logitech offer that would/could possibly justify a subscription model? Anyone?
I need point, click & move. Macros would be nice, but then I pay a bit more upfront for a macro capable mouse. Higher dpi? Same thing; a bit more $. The more premium a mouse, the more I expect to pay. I’ve no problem with that.
I don’t expect an OS upgrade to break basic functionality.
Guess I have to avoid ourchasing Logitech products and I have no problems with that.
Tom, who just bought an $8.97 BT mouse from Amazon Canada.
As others have said; what could Logitech offer that would/could possibly justify a subscription model? Anyone?
I need point, click & move. Macros would be nice, but then I pay a bit more upfront for a macro capable mouse. Higher dpi? Same thing; a bit more $. The more premium a mouse, the more I expect to pay. I’ve no problem with that.
I don’t expect an OS upgrade to break basic functionality.
Guess I have to avoid ourchasing Logitech products and I have no problems with that.
Tom, who just bought an $8.97 BT mouse from Amazon Canada.
I would not buy a repairable mouse. A broken mouse gets replaced on the spot and we get back to work.
I have a drawer full of sub-$20 mice I’ve accumulated over the years (many years) and none has failed so far.
All but one are wireless and most are BT.
I do have a MX Master 3 and a Microsoft Arc, both were quite a bit more expensive but they had some very specific features that I wanted.
In the hindsight, while MX is probably the nicest mouse I have, it’s also the one I could most easily give up and replace with a similar no-brand mouse. The Arc is fantastic and I love it for what it is. But I would never pay a subscription for it.
Tim Apple is currently trying to corner the market on iAir™, which is a subscription model for breathing in oxygen. Seriously, this subscription stuff is getting completely out of hand.
I can think of one... might have some privacy implications, but let's just go with it. A mouse that works with software paired to learn your most common shortcuts in every program and reconfigures itself from program to program to best match your usage patterns. You can do things like this manually already and I do, but the amount of work it is to optimize an input device around your favorite programs is a lot of work that very few people would be interested in doing.
If they ever do something like this, it'll be because they think they've got something paradigm shifting to the point that it's not really a mouse as we think of it today. It's really a new type of device that just happens to also work as a mouse.
I'm not fond of subscriptions, but this kind of thinking is good. Almost none of us do it. You think a few steps into the future beyond what we can see or know and take some steps so you might end up meeting it half the way. They may also be envisioning this paired with evolved operating systems in 10 years that might have predictive capabilities.
They have been since they completely killed the Harmony remote, rather than wither selling it or open sourcing it.
Same as Sphero... Just killed all their Star Wars toys and the Awesome lighting mcqueen and you cannot get the app anymore making them dead. You can get the Android app BUT if the toys were not updated in the last year they go into a server update loop... something they could have fixed easily but keeping that update server alive for a few dollars a year, but nope.
Sonos was another one. Bricked all the original kit completely. Never buying again.
Microsoft have made two good products in their history. BASIC in ROM for 8 bit computers and the optical Intellimouse.
However, betcha that the Intellipoint software that came with the Intellimouse won't run on Mac OS Sonoma or Windows 11....! However, I've got a couple of 20-year-old intellimice as emergency backups and last I tried the worked fine without software...
Actually, as of a few months ago, the website for Logitech Harmony was still live and I was able to re-program my Harmony One remote - but it did require having an x86 Mac with an old-is OS to run the software.
...the flaw with the Harmony was always the horrible point-and-drool software and its reliance on downloading binary blobs for configuration.
I don't know about open source, but there is a well-defined standard, supported by MacOS, Windows and Linux:
USB human interface device class - Wikipedia
...and, AFAIK, virtually all mice use this. That's why even a MS Intellimouse that's old enough to vote still works. They may need proprietary drivers for some of the bells and whistles but the essential mouse functions - including multiple buttons - should work without proprietary drivers. I've never installed the Logitech driver software for my MX Master on my current machine, yet both scrollwheels and all 5 buttons work fine. The only thing that doesn't work is the weird thumb button "gestures" feature - which I can live without and the lack thereof is hardly going to send the mouse to an early grave. I note that there are a number of 3rd party tools to add mouse functionality.
Then some of the newer Logitech mouse/keyboard features are now duplicated by MacOS's own "Universal Control" features - but I've been using a third party product called Synergy to do that across Mac, Windows and Unix for years.
The only bit of proprietary Logitech software I've needed is the tool for pairing the unifying receivers (...and there's an open source Linux app for that, solaar, which looks as if it might eventually make it to MacOS).
...but it's bad design if that depends on a proprietary driver - it could be implemented as a USB HID Mouse plus a USB HID keyboard, that would Just Work with any software on the host machine that could map function keys to macros.
I completely understand the desire for software subscriptions for some software. You can't expect to pay a one-off $50 for a bit of software and get lifetime updates. For starters, Apple seem determined to break MacOS every year, requiring a lot of testing and fixing. Then, some types of software depend on regular updates even if they don't get broken by MacOS (the clearest example would be accountancy software where the tax rules change every year).
I think I paid about £10 on a special offer for Pixelmator in 2012 and it still got an update this year (although there is a shiny new Pro version) and I got 8-9 years of free updates for Affinity Designer after buying it for about £70 (although in that case I did succumb to the Shiny New Version this year) - now, kudos to these firms, but that really doesn't sound sustainable to me - programmers need to be paid, and the experienced programmers who understand the application need to be retained - not dumped as soon as you have a slow quarter. I'd say a fair subscription should be:
- A better deal than buying a new version at, say, 20% discount from the original one-off-price, every 3 years - after all, the seller is benefitting from a regular income
- A subscription for updates - after a clearly specified minimum period, you get to "keep" the existing version for as long as its still relevant. Otherwise, it enables producers to lock-in customers without providing an adequate service.
- Justified: the software does need & receive regular updates
However, that doesn't justify getting greedy by charging $10/month for software that used to cost $100 one-off. It certainly doesn'y justify artificially tying a bit of hardware to software just so you can charge a subscription.
There have been rumors about leasing Macs and other hardware for years. Like leasing a car for three years you could have the latest, greatest hardware for a monthly charge.
Then there’s software subscriptions that tech blog commenters rail against. It’s here no matter what and leased hardware is likely coming too.
Then there’s software subscriptions that tech blog commenters rail against. It’s here no matter what and leased hardware is likely coming too.
"so much room to create more value in that space as we make people more productive"
This is rent-seeking behavior, and it is now endemic to our economy.
It's disgusting and vile.
This is rent-seeking behavior, and it is now endemic to our economy.
It's disgusting and vile.
I had been using the original Magic Mouse from 2009 until 2019 when I got an iMac that came with the newer one. I gave the old one to someone else and have been using the newer one for the past 5 years. No way in hell I’m ever paying a mouse subscription. I swear CEOs are so lazy nowadays. Instead of pushing for innovation in tech, they push for innovation in pricing.