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by userbinator 4297 days ago
Beyond the issues of relinquishing control over a service to a third party, I think another disturbing aspect is all the waste this causes: perfectly good electronics get thrown out just because some company goes out of business. The fact that these "cloud connected" devices are often proprietary and locked-down (for "security reasons") makes it worse.
1 comments
sleepybrett 4296 days ago
Except the email I just got says if they can't find a way to keep the service running, they will open source it and open source the firmware on the cloud device.
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gioele 4296 days ago
This is possible, but rare. If your GPS navigator requires "cloud maps", it will be useless the moment its provider goes out of business or turns off the v1 servers in favour of v2 servers. This as already been discussed in the Ars Technica's article about Android and the problem of old phones with "broken" apps.

(Well, the reality is that it will be useless for 3 years, after which somebody will finally crack the DRM and put a OSM-based replacement on it that has 90% of the features of the previous software, but it nowhere as polished as it.)

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40...

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toomuchtodo 4296 days ago
> This is possible, but rare. If your GPS navigator requires "cloud maps", it will be useless the moment its provider goes out of business or turns off the v1 servers in favour of v2 servers.

I have a 10 year old GPS receiver in a box, with no way to update with maps from Garmin, not because Garmin went out of business but because they just choose not to support the device anymore.

Do I want to spend hours trying to figure out how to update a 10 year old device? Or would I rather spend $100-$200 on a brand new one with the latest maps?

Obsolescence isn't a bad thing, its how we move forward. We just need a clean process to recycle the waste that process generates.

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userbinator 4296 days ago
The issue is that a GPS navigator is basically a solved problem, and the only part that requires updating are the maps.

Do I want to spend hours trying to figure out how to update a 10 year old device? Or would I rather spend $100-$200 on a brand new one with the latest maps?

The ideal situation would be a device that you buy once, but it's also one you could use with whatever map data sources you want (OSM, commercial, etc.) - based on an open format.

(I know GPS is also dependent on the satellites being available, but since it's government-owned and critical to many parts of the infrastructure, it's likely to stay around for the forseeable future.)

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toomuchtodo 4296 days ago
> The ideal situation would be a device that you buy once, but it's also one you could use with whatever map data sources you want (OSM, commercial, etc.) - based on an open format.

Like an iPhone/iPad/Android phone/Android tablet? Tomorrow's tech will be available to me soon, and much cheaper than today's tech. Support = people's time = expensive.

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