Comment by itopaloglu83
4 days ago
Nowadays, companies see the users of their platforms as captive audiences, and they try to extract as much money from them as possible.
This completely destroyed the resale value of this product as well. It's not a product we own, but it's their product we happen to use, and we're still subject to all kinds of ads and traps for subscriptions etc.
Tricking the customer into an exploitative subscription is more profitable than earning loyalty by providing good value.
And it requires less work to boot!
I'm on holiday at the moment so reopened the app to transfer photos from my camera directly to my phone again after a while of not using it (at home I just use the microsd card readers in my computers). Anyway, I discovered Canon now has a mandatory account requirement. There wasn't even an account option when I bought the camera. Luckily the old apk from APK mirror still works on my phone.
You'll want to keep a copy archived for reverse engineering if/when Google decides to prevent these "loopholes".
A $100 scale isn't really that captive, especially if continuing to use it costs that much per year. There's no shortage of scales for tracking weight loss and the Apple health integration in my Withings is pretty useless from experience.
I have a $100 Garmin scale as well as a watch [1] and some similar devices and it seems like a good value to me but many people I know say "gee, that's expensive!"
I am really impressed with my Apple hardware but the services strike me as uniformly shoddy and dare I say a lifestyle brand that seduces people into treating garbage as if was gold. Ok, I like what they did with Foundation, I really do, but I think Apple Health, Apple Home and all of those things are for suckers and Withings probably thinks so too. For all I know Apple is charging them an arm and a leg to participate. On the other hand, Garmin Connect takes my active lifestyle seriously.
[1] with 100% satisfaction after discovering third party charging cables!
I like my Apple watch but Apple health app is pretty bad. It's just noisy and complicated. Withing's chart's in the app was good enough.
I'd probably prefer a second more fitness dedicated watch otherwise so that data integration was better.
1 reply →
Yes, it's not as captivating as a $1,200 iPhone or $4,000 MacBook Pro. But we're talking about habits, and gradual changes and engagements.
However, once you're within a system, and used to interacting with it on a daily basis, you would lean towards their slight nudges and pushes, and over time subscribe to a $2/month service, or their "new solutions" etc.
Not to forget their continued advertisements in the app, and constant pushes. You're no longer a customer that purchases a product, but instead a captive audience that is constantly being engaged and steered towards one thing or another.
I'm a cheapskate so I'd probably make a shortcut so I can say "siri, log my weight at 165 lbs" and have that put my weight into apple health or a spreadsheet. It's a bit more friction, but if the data is useful that's what I'd do. If I find that I'm not using the shortcut, then the data probably isn't useful.
You don’t even need a shortcut: “hey dingus, log a weight of 156.3” and it gets logged to HealthKit. Just did it minutes ago (because I long ago gave up on getting that Withings scale to do the same).
At first I was think of the people who signed an agreement for their solar roof (which was entangled with solar credits, etc)
nowadays selling your tesla involves the new owner identifying themselves and uploading their identity documents to tesla.
> nowadays selling your tesla involves the new owner identifying themselves and uploading their identity documents to tesla.
wait does this mean you cannot buy a used tesla anonymously (to tesla), not the reseller (?)
If so, that's crazy