Light Bulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out Of Third-Party Bulbs With Firmware Update
from the Patch-notes:-Adds-'buyer's-remorse' dept
The world of connected devices is upon us and things have never been better. Criminals can access your email account by breaking into your fridge. Your child's toys and your television record your conversations and send them to manufacturers' servers, where criminals are (again) able to access them. Your home thermostat goes HAL 9000 and attempts to set your house on fire. And, now, your light bulbs won't do the one thing you expect them to do: produce light.
Purchasers of the Philips Hue "smart" ambient lighting system are finding out that the new firmware pushed out by the manufacturer has cut off access to previously-supported light bulbs. (h/t William Neilson Jr.)
Philips just released firmware for the Philips Hue bridge that may permanently sever access to any “non-approved” ZigBee bulbs.ZigBee is the underlying standard that controls these smart lighting systems.
[...]
The recent change seems to suggest any non-Philips bulbs from manufacturers such as Cree, GE, and Osram will not be supported in many situations, whereas “Friends of Hue” branded product are. At the time of publication, it’s unclear whether 3rd party bulbs will stop working immediately after the firmware update or if they may only become inaccessible after the bridge is reset. We’re also not sure if being “reset” means rebooted or factory reset. This appears to apply to both the round v1 bridge and square v2 HomeKit-compatible bridge after the latest firmware update is applied.
ZigBee is the open, global standard of choice for connected lighting applications providing ease-of-use and low-cost installation and maintenance for both consumers and business.Philips uses ZigBee, which should mean any bulbs compatible with this standard will work with its Hue fixtures. Not anymore. The firmware update removes this support, limiting this "open, global" standard to Philips' own bulbs and those it has designated as "Friends of Hue."
Needless to say, purchasers aren't happy.
Literally. Philips has just slapped fans like us in the face and kicked interoperability out the door. Without any communication they delivered a new firmware to the system that disables adding products that they don't approve of. Basically they are banning other Zigbee Light Link products despite the fact that they are a Connected Lighting Alliance member whose mission is to promote interoperability.Philips only began delivering nonsensical statements about its removal of previously-existent functionality after the complaints began to roll in. And like so many other companies that have wielded this DRM-esque tactic against their own customers, the excuses offered may as well just read "because this makes us more money." Seriously, are any of Philips' pissed off purchasers really going to believe this excuse?
As it seems (and unless this is just a huge mistake on Philips' side), they have without a warning turned their open product into a walled garden. They have also destroyed the value of the solutions that the customers have set up based on Philips' promises.
And the worst thing is that Philips has done this to their most enthusiastic fans. To the early adopters. To those who enthusiastically recommended the system to their friends.
While the Philips Hue system is based on open technologies we are not able to ensure all products from other brands are tested and fully interoperable with all of our software updates. For guaranteed compatibility you need to use Philips Hue or certified Friends of Hue products.TL;DR: While technically an open system, we've closed it because $$$. These early adopters have already performed the heavy lifting on the compatibility end. They're the ones who have road-tested ZigBee-compliant bulbs and reported their findings to others. So, when a company removes support (by pushing a firmware update without prior warning) for compatible bulbs and claims the issue is "compatibility," it's so blatantly false as to be laughable. Unless you can't laugh, because you already bought one.
And Philips is apparently incredibly socially awkward. Trying to find which other bulbs are supported as "Friends of Hue" via Philips' websites is pointless. One just leads you to a page informing you that you can use Siri to control your lights. Searching for "Friends of Hue" brings you to another Philips website… which only lists products sold by Philips. In fact, while the "program" appears to allow third parties to sell products for its Hue line, it appears that every new development is sold under the Philips brand, which means that the competitiveness the phrase "Friends of Hue" implies is, in reality, no competition at all.
A walled garden is still a walled garden, no matter how beautifully lit it is. Philips has chosen to screw paying customers by locking them out of their choice of bulbs in pursuit of maximum profitability. There's nothing smart about that decision.
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Filed Under: drm, hue, iot, lightbulbs, smart lightbulbs, standards, zigbee
Companies: philips
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Re: Aaaaaand .. queue the lightbulb jokes
Here at Philips, light bulbs screw you.Subscribe: RSS
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Don't talk about it or you could find yourself being sued.
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I find the lack of visibility and control we have over smart phone network traffic (that we're paying for) irritating. Especially seeing how it's all scooped up by bad actors such as the NSA, GCHQ...
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Most advertising libraries store tracking data locally. As soon as the smartphone has internet those libraries are notified and tracking data is exchanged.
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DRM
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He's sort of like Marshall McLuhan, that way. Because Stallman wasn't (as McLuhan once explained his own success at "predicting the future") really attempting to predict the future, but rather was simply describing what he could see happening right in full plain view of everybody, but nobody was paying attention, nor generally cared to.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra#Family_and_gift_of_prophecy
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... Which he is. However, I tend to sneer at people who say that. Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin could've been called the long haired hippie radicals of their time. Even Barry Goldwater defended extremism in defence of liberty, and he was certainly no hippie.
I can respect the stereotypical Marine Corp or Airborne grunt, and even cops, for their ability and devotion to duty, but it's tough to give them more than that when they blindly follow orders they damned well shouldn't.
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Needless to say, I am very, very pissed off. Now to continue using the things I have I need to purchase a Wink or Smartthings Hub and deal with twice the connection setup.
Screw Philips, they're not getting a dime more.
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Someone should invent a lighting system where you can just use any bulb you want and which only requires a simple, low-cost switch to turn them on and off. I wonder why nobody has invented anything like this yet...
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More like friends of F-U
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This is a bit unclear. Is the new firmware installed magically via Over The Air updates, making it impossible for users to avoid even if they know what is coming, or is the new firmware manually installed, but classified as "without communication" because it does not warn the user about this huge anti-feature? If the latter, spreading the word quickly and wide could protect users from installing this disaster. If the former, it's tin-foil hat (tin-foil house?) time.
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Re: Update
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Looks like this might be next.
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It is, thanks to Section 1201 of the DMCA.
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Ahh, the internet of shit
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Re: Ahh, the internet of shit
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Aaaaaand .. queue the lightbulb jokes
A: Two thirds.
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Re: Aaaaaand .. queue the lightbulb jokes
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Re: Aaaaaand .. queue the lightbulb jokes
A: 2, but don't ask me how they get in there...
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Re: Re: Aaaaaand .. queue the lightbulb jokes
All of them
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They're also teaching people not to buy Phillips and not to trust any interoperability standards. Way to go.
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Chilling effect
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Re: Chilling effect
Except, they were definitely on my "hopefully next year" list. Now? Not so much. And they definitely WON'T be Philips.
GJ Philips DRM exec! /s
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So Hue's on First?
"How many lightbulbs does it take to screw over a customer?"
Screw you, Hue.
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Minor Adjustments
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure they learned the lesson just about as well as the two pigs that now know they can relax and build crappy houses because their brother will take care of them when something bad happens.
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Just make crap quality knockoffs for a tenth of the price that sell for half what the "Market Leader" sells theirs for and the suckers at Walmart will wind up buying five of them as they burn out via planned obsolescence and manufacturing defects. They're very popular in the "don't want it" Xmas present recycling market and thrift stores, not to mention landfills.
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I know we all want to live in a society where businesses dont try to ream you for every penny but we arent there yet and wont be for decades, if ever. This is why standards groups should be created by non interested third parties and when someone even as big as Phillips turns evil their products should be ejected from the group. It would almost behoove standards bodies to require participants to put in a back door so they could revoke the functionality altogether. I hate to say it but I foresee a class action coming.
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Osram invented "planned obsolescence"
So Osram got together with the other manufacturers and they wrote up an agreement that bulbs shouldn't last more than 1000 hours.
Around here planned obsolescence is DRM, so -ergo- lightbulbs not only already had DRM, they invented it.
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Re: Osram invented "planned obsolescence"
(Because I Googled, and you shouldn't have to.)
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Re: Re: Osram invented "planned obsolescence"
From that page, which mentions that started in 1924:
Because I read what you Googled, and you should have too. :-) I'd have to say the person you replied to was correct. I'd also have to say there were a lot of dirty players in the market and it goes back a long time. This latest dirtbag move on the part of Philips is just in keeping with that tradition. You'd think if "market forces" were anything worth relying on, all these jerks would've crashed and burned decades ago. Ergo, free market? Chyaa, right!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Osram invented "planned obsolescence"
Thanks. :-) It is an interesting, educational vignette. I'd never heard of Osram, and though I'd read some mumbling about lightbulb planned obsolescence, I'd no idea it was this institutionalized and multi-national, and that it went back as far as the 1920s. Meanwhile, GE & Philips have just kept on rolling along, la de daa, de daa.
Depressing, but enlightening. No pun intended, honest.
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Re: Re: Re: Osram invented "planned obsolescence"
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So sad
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Nothing new here.
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Cue the lawsuit
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Other way around
I know this is shocking, but there ARE other controllers out there...
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I'm sure arstechnica will have a "sponsored" excuse for this.
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The store will probably balk at refunding your money. Your state Attorney General's office would probably appreciate reports of stores refusing to accept returns of defective merchandise, seeing as various warranty and consumer-protection laws require them to.
You won't be any worse off than you were, and you've caused financial and legal pain for people Philips has a harder time ignoring.
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and this is the relevant question. Does the update still fall within the Zigbee protocol specs. If so then, unless there is a problem with the protocol, the problem is with the bulbs. If not then the problem is with the fixtures.
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update-surprises
This is why people should always disable automatic updates and always do at least a minimal amount of research before updating anything -- or brace themselves for the possiblility of a nasty surprise.
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I wonder if Phillips is going to get lawsuits from people who got injured when suddenly, in the middle of the night, neccessary lighting suddenly ceased to work.
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That's going to lead to injury at some point. I'm not sure how these things are set up, but even if firmware is set to update during the day to avoid this risk, there's still going to be people walking through a basement or attic.
Sadly, that's going to be where the real comeback against this DRM is going to be in these cases. It won't be due to the anti-competitive nature, the anti-consumer nature or the uselessness and ridiculousness of the whole thing. It'll be when people actually get killed or injured by their attempts to keep their prices elevated.
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First World Problems
Cry me a river.
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Re: First World Problems
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Re: First World Problems
Hope that didn't spoil your sarcasm.
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Re: Re: First World Problems
Excluding a few specific applications, like spotlights, anyone who pays more than $10 for a light bulb has more money than common sense.
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Well, the typical starter package of a couple of bulbs plus controller is considerably more than $30.
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I'm ticked at Phillips for introducing the non-campatability, but want to roast them for that, not some exaggerated cost figure.
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Thanks but no thanks to all this automation. I'll stick with $1.99 light bulbs and switches I have to get off my butt to use.
...somehow I knew that one day, being the dinosaur I am would come in handy.
The only thing my computer runs is ... my computer. As it should be.
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But how are you going to send your light bulbs a "like" if they aren't on the internet?
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Next update: Hue will accept only "green" energy
Hue can then be programmed to reject all non-green power.
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Re: Next update: Hue will accept only "green" energy
And I'm sure that it will help against child pornography in some manner as well.
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Can't look for DRM keys under this Hue lamp-post
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And God said, Let there be light:
And God saw the lack of light, and it was bad;
sudo apt-get install Philips-certificates
And there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good:
and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Huey,
and the darkness he called Phooey.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
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Bad Phillips
so hey Phillips your potential customer here is no longer even thinking of your brand
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https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/12/05/0622206
I didn't dig into the details but basically old heat sinks weren't compatible with new processors but they worked fine on old ones. Some in the comments said that it's because the old processors met standards stricter than the those specified by Intel and so some heat sink manufacturers built heat sinks based on behavior and not specifications and the new processors behaved differently but were still within the standards put forth by Intel. Others claimed that the standards changed but some heat sink manufacturers never read and applied the new specs. Either way it's not Intel's fault unless Intel put forth heat sinks that don't meet their stated standards.
So here is what needs to be asked. If the fixtures meet open standards and the bulbs don't meet open standards but are tested to work with the fixtures before the update and the fixtures receive a firmware update that still meet open standards but no longer work with these bulbs that don't meet open standards then the problem is with the bulbs and not the fixtures. If the fixtures break open standard protocols after the update then it's the fixture's fault. In theory if both the bulbs and the fixtures meet open standard specifications then they should both work together unless there is something wrong with the standards. So the question here is who is violating the open standards protocol or is there anything wrong with the protocol itself.
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The real question is simple: Is the appliance still Zigbee compliant? Locking out Zigbee compliant components would make them non standard and no longer compliant (one would think, anyway).
Is there any clear example of a Zigbee compliant and certified bulb that will not work? Maybe I missed this in the story, but potentially there is an issue.
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The timeline shows the lies.
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Phillips could tomorrow think that all this bad press has changed it's mind about this DRM. But the bad publicity has already turned me against their products. I may not read they changed their minds, if they do, the damage is already done. Phillips will not be the product I take home.
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Screw Philips
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Phillips DRM
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free light bulbs
I remember being confused when I had to pay for light bulbs.
(PG&E)
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But I don't have a Philips box to check what they claim.
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Maybe it was when they sold it, but it just didn't stay that way.
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COMMERCIAL SUICIDE
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Buying Philips was the first mistake
An it's getting worse with every firmware update.
I am sure as hell not buying any philips product again.
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stop complaining
Avoid the evil!
you buy Philips - so it's your fault.
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Re: stop complaining
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Make a chargeback
You should get your money back, Philips on the other hand looses the money and do not get an used product back.
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Arrrgh!
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Never again
I will NEVER buy one of your products again, Philips!
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Philips is on my non-buy list...
And yes, a two year old machine (which did cost quite some bucks) was "out of service" then.
Sorry Philips - you have some fine products but your customer relations are fubar.
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Stop buying this crap
Make better choices.
http://www.openhab.org/features/introduction.html
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Re: Stop buying this crap
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There is a happy ending to this story, of course.
a) Phillips realizes quickly they boobed and fixes things with proper degrees of contrition or...
b) Hackers (read: competitors) come to the rescue, provide working unofficial fixes and teach everyone that when you're a professional pirate, you're always in the best of com-pan-eeeeeeeeeeee!
Note the whole Keurig-cup DRM affair (of which Phillips was on the opposite side of the debacle).
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Re: There is a happy ending to this story, of course.
Can users install their own firmware updates, or are they at the mercy of Phillips?
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http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/friends-of-hue/apple-homekit/
https://nest.meethue.com/
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Overall, it makes me never want to buy any Philips products again. These bulbs were not cheap. I feel completely ripped off them as a company, and I deeply resent it.
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zig-bee
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hue lighting
Hi Hue developers,
Please read the following statement on the Friends of Hue program / blocking 3rd party bulbs.
We recently upgraded the software for Philips Hue to ensure the best seamless connected lighting experience for our customers. This change was made in good faith. However, we under estimated the impact this would have on a small number of customers who use lights from other brands which could not be controlled by the Philips Hue software. In view of the sentiment expressed by our customers, we have decided to reverse the software upgrade so that lights from other brands continue to work as they did before with the Philips Hue system.
We are working on the reversal of the upgrade and will shortly confirm when this will be available.
Philips remains committed to providing our customers with the best possible connected lighting experience. That is why we launched the Friends of Hue partnership program to test and certify that products and platforms from other brands work seamlessly with Philips Hue. Customers using uncertified lights may continue to have the same incompatibility issues as before, such as lights not dimming to off, creating the right colors or scene experience.
Philips welcomes other brands to join as Friends of Hue so that we can work together to ensure seamless and great lighting experiences.
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Re: hue lighting
"... for a small subscription and handling fee."
In other words, "Crap, they're not falling for it and we're going to lose sales for our monopolistic behavior. Crap, okay, sell "Friends of Hue" status to other manufacturers (bastards!) at egregious prices and we'll try to find less obvious ways to enforce our monopolistic tendencies to eventually cut them out of our market. Fscking standards!"
I wonder why it took Philips this long to twig to Microsoft's "Embrace and extend" strategy. Kinda slow on their part. Perhaps the two markets are so different there were few ideas crossing between them.
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Re: Re: hue lighting
It's embrace, extend, extinguish. You forgot the most important part! ;-)
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Re: Re: Re: hue lighting
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Re: Re: Re: hue lighting
I always interpreted it as "embrace, lock, and extend" anyway. If you fall for it, you're in. Don't fall for them, and you can still get away/defend yourself. :-) There's two more steps threatening to come up which you've managed to avoid.
It's the weekend. Enjoy. Don't look too far into anything.
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Re: Re: hue lighting
But, point any of this out, and you'll just get some inane marketing drivel about how it's all to "protect their customers".
"I wonder why it took Philips this long to twig to Microsoft's "Embrace and extend" strategy."
Like most recent examples, they try to emulate the printer manufacturers' "force people to pay more for ink than any other substance on Earth" strategy first. Then, they try different levels of screwing the market and their customers until they find a happy medium. Sanity is a backup plan to be implemented when that fails.
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Blog
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