Tethers: Bad For Business
from the yup dept
Siva Vaidhyanathan has written up a quick article explaining how the new trend of "tethering" (linking your device to only your components whether its coffee makers, printers, electronics companies, and specifically music players and music download stores) is bad for business. Giving customers fewer options, fewer opportunities to make their devices useful and fewer reasons to buy seems like an obviously bad business decision. Suing others who make your devices more desirable seems doubly stupid, but, like some people, "I guess I just don't have a head for business."
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Printers
I have some HP injets. Horrible, never buy one again. Thought I'd be smart and invest in a Magicolor 2200 from Minolta, much worse. The Minolta even has fuses encased in plastic parts that have no electronics in them, that are blown at a certain number of copies by the electronics. Then you have to buy another, unless like me you happen to x-ray the part, see the blown fuse, and dig through the encapsulant to replace it, after which 10,000 more copies are available. Price of simple plastic part with foam rubber roller? $150. Now I can't see any other messages on its lcd screen because it's complaining my drum life is low -- yet print quality is still perfect. I can buy a new refurb printer for less than that will cost me, or maybe hack the linux it runs and find out how to turn this off I suppose. And so on -- there's more on this model, but it's long and boring. I hear similar tales of woe from everyone I ask. I do need a printer to run my business, and no, my 20+ yr old Okidata dot matrix (which still works!) won't quite cut it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]