Logitech CEO Wants to Sell You a Subscription-Based 'Forever Mouse'

premium mouse that receives constant updates

Come on. How many firmware updates can we really expect for a mouse?

I've had an m570 for about 10 years. Every time it broke, I fixed it. Why do we need a subscription?

Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

Bull-fucking-shit. That's just not how any of this works.

There are plenty of companies that make appliances that last a long fucking time, and don't have to rely on fucking DLC micro transaction AI bullshit. The reason Instant Pot went bankrupt is the same reason a ton of popular companies have recently had issues: They got bought by private equity (who also owned Pyrex and fucked them over), saddled with a shitton of bad debt, squeezed of every bit of brand value they had, and then left to fall apart as the PE firm made off with millions.

The fact that the writer correlated "quality, durable good" with "unsuccessful business and bankruptcy" is absolutely one of the worst takes, and really shows just how pervasive this disgusting idea of "must be disposable to be profitable" really is.

Businesses could save a lot of money by just firing their CEOs

And now I no longer wish to buy Logitech products...

Logitech's desire to put AI in my IO devices is exactly why I am moving to a different manufacturer. I want solid hardware, not hardware as a service. HP also is trying this with printers and it's total bullshit.

If I am paying a monthly fee, I'd better not also have to buy garbage hardware. That better be provided for free and replaced when it inevitably fails.

I hate this approach to business.

Coupling subscriptions with forced obscolecence is a nightmare. If HP made the best printer money could buy, using it with a subscription model would be a hard sell. But they make shit printers that die at the drop of a hat, so coupling them with a subscription is asinine.

Logitech makes a decent mouse, passable webcams, and shit keyboards.

Just in case anyone from Logitech ever reads this, I own 2 MX Verticals, an MX Ergo, and an MX Master 2S. I love them all, but I'd rather use an OEM bog standard Dell mouse than pay for a subscription.

I've already got a Forever Mouse though... I'm using a $25 Logitech M705 I bought 10 years ago, before they cheaped out and replaced the metal scrollwheel with a plastic one. Works great. I have to replace the battery once every two years or so. I've got an 11-year-old Logitech mouse at work too.

The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

Man, we had to replace the fuse on ours four times before we gave up on it; I don't think 'product longevity' was a major factor in the brand's downfall. It also did a shit job of cooking rice.

I also highly doubt Logitech's ability to make a "forever" mouse with how many I've had to RMA due to faulty left click switches. Get your product design, supply chain, and QA in order before you start trying to tie people down with wholly unnecessary and unwanted subscriptions. Shitty ent seeking MBA vampires fucking everything up for everyone.

Another proof ceo's that most of those cunts in charge either got there by winning the birth lottery or bullshitted their way up and are complete clueless idiots. Any sane person with an idea of what they are doing knows its all bullshit.

The answer to this is simple. Go private. Get a buyout and delist so you aren’t literally required to permanently and constantly grow your company bigger and sell more than you did last year for the rest of eternity in the name of the almighty shareholders.

Sell great hardware to people who need it, develop a loyal fan base, and treat them right, forever. I guarantee that the rate of valid, reasonable purchases of high-quality, durable new mice and keyboards is more than enough to sustain a very healthy company full of very talented employees forever, as long as they aren’t required to always make more money than ever before.

Welp, looks like I just bought my last Logitech mouse. I've sworn by them for over 20 years.

Nope, fuck you Logitech.

Trying to make a flagship product and keep it pumped up through subscription sounds a lot like live service games.

And those all fucking suck.

Weird, because I'm pretty sure all other mice can be used forever, as long as they don't break.

Fuck that, no thanks! How about you build repairable mice that can last forever instead?

Meh, I'm going to hold out for a subscription-based AI-enabled mousepad.

Oh I have a Forever Mouse. Bought a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical in 2001 or so. Still works. Use it with my Raspberry Pi sometimes. Also bought another Microsoft wireless laptop mouse like a decade ago. Still works just fine.

...The Logitech mouse that I bought against my better judgement in 2020 is starting to show signs of fatigue.

Also how the everliving hell do you add AI to input devices? Are they just going to guess what I'm pointing at?

Another piece of the Forever Mouse puzzle is the software. Logitech uses its Options Plus software which essentially walks people through making prompts to interact with AI. But Faber says this is just the start:

This is intended to appeal to investors instead of customers.

Bite my shiny metal PS/2 adapter

Hard pass.

I don't see the point of this. Why would a mouse need constant software updates? I could plug in a 20 year old mouse and it would work just fine on my PC, no updates needed.

Since we’re pretty much all in agreement that Logitech has enshittified with the Great Ones like Ubisoft, Hewlett Packard, and more, let’s talk about our last great products they made that we will no longer recommend! 😃

These are all my products that I love, and have been extremely high quality. All of them work just fine to this day!

• Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum mice (I own two, bought in 2018 I believe and still using)
• Logitech C920 1080p 30 FPS webcam
• Logitech G613 Lightspeed Wireless keyboard (great keyboard I use for work, hate that the keys are painted and will eventually wear away)
• Logitech G603 Wireless Mouse (for work, works fantastic!)
• Logitech Litra Beam LED lights (I own two)

Oh Logitech. Why can’t you just make products we can own instead of following the greedy “As a Service”? Ah well! Bound to happen one day (Steam, please please don’t ever become public).

"This is a premium feature. To unlock the right-click menu, just enjoy this 30 second ad, or click to add to your monthly subscription."

Reminder that getting a subscription service means moving away from something you buy occasionally to something you pay forever

This reminds me: I got a Logitech mouse as a gift a while back, and to get it functioning I needed to install a settings app for it for some reason. Today, I find in my Task Manager that they somehow installed an AI assistant platform thing using that settings app. I'm currently in the market for a new mouse lol.

And I don’t want to buy it. Not everything needs to be a subscription.

You know, a subscription-based, AI-enhanced mouse is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm so pumped! And for only $200 upfront plus a monthly subscription? Sign me up!

I hope they'll also make it easy for me to top up my monthly mouse-click credit through an app that just needs to know my precise location and my contacts and be allowed to display itself over other apps for accessibility reasons. Hopefully I can even check my mouse's status remotely through the app too, and adjust the colour of its LEDs to reflect my unique personality.

And maybe they'll even be able to personalize my mousing experience so my mouse can serve me better, by anonymously tracking what I hover over and click on. That'd be fantastic. And if the AI could also use this information to notify me about relevant deals and offers from their trusted partners, that would be the cherry on top.

This is going to be great! Thanks Logitech - I love it!

So many CEOs these days have their heads completely up their own ass when it comes to the concept of "buy it for life".

I will continue buying cheaper (and wired) mouses from no-name Chinese brands.

I'm curious what monumentally terrible ideas they have for adding machine learning or LLM features to HIDs.

I'll go out of my way to avoid ever owning any of them, but I'm curious.

So its a 'Forever Mouse' as long I 'Forever Pay'

looks down at right hand resting on a Logitech M570 I've made several repairs on

I can see their strategy. Keep using microswitches rated for 1,200 clicks and you might need a subscription to these things if you don't know your way around a soldering iron.

There’s also a discussion about a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.

This line made me think that maybe the subscription was a different thing? So I googled and found this interview: https://www.theverge.com/24206847/logitech-ceo-hanneke-faber-mouse-keyboard-gaming-decoder-podcast-interview:

I’m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse?

Possibly.

And that would be the forever mouse?

Yeah.

So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse.

Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again, which is not unlike our video conferencing services today.

But it’s a mouse.

But it’s a mouse, yeah.

I think consumers might perceive those to be very different.

[Laughs] Yes, but it’s gorgeous. Think about it like a diamond-encrusted mouse.

Okay...

Also from that interview:

Some only have a mouse or only a keyboard, but many of them have both. But the thing that shocked me was that the average spend on that globally is $26, which is really so low. This is stuff you use every day, that sits on your desk every day, that you look at every day. That’s like the price of four coffees at Starbucks or less than a Nike running shirt. There is so much room to create more value in that space as we make people more productive — to extend human potential.

Guys, you are not giving Logitech enough money! You can do better!

I think this idea is even stupider than it seems, and that's already pretty fucking bad. I don't think this idiot understands that people who still buy mice are people who didn't "upgrade" to iPads or just use their phone as their only computer. We are power users, and are more likely to smell the bullshit than anyone else.

Yeah that's gonna be a no for me dawg.

Last mouse I bought from them had a 2 years warranty. I thought okay fine. 1½ year after purchase, it started double-clicking.

Reached out to customer service, proof of purchase and everything. Agree that mouse need to be replaced, so they send me a new mouse, but for some reason they shipped it from the US to Canada and the custom duty was almost the price of a new mouse.

Big wtf, next time I'll ask for either a refund or some kind of way to get a free replacement from a store in Canada..

I'm not sure Logitech can build a forever mouse anymore with the way their QA's gone. Who's buying new mice regularly anyway?

Logitech already offers a forever mouse for many years: G502. There is noting more to add to a perfect and lasting mouse.

And now they want to reinvent the wheel? Sounds like this is already going wrong.

Buy a ploopy mouse and have your mouse forever. It is fully open sourced with QMK software.

Why my favorite mouse company gotta start with this bullshit. GOT-DAMN!

Not everything has to be a subscription.

Unless you’re a greedy CEO. Then everything should be a subscription!

Maybe they could focus on making better mice! The super light x 2 is falling behind more and more every year

Reminds me of what happed to GE’s lighting division. They used to have a steady stream of income from people replacing burned out bulbs. The CFLs and LED bulbs came in.

GE made a ton of money selling the new bulbs to homes, businesses and cities, but then the money dried up because the new bulbs lasted way longer.

Then they started scrambling to do weird shit with lighting. Like cramming cameras and sensors into bulbs so lights could be used for surveillance in cities and stores. They were basically struggling to find a new reason why you’d want to by a new bulb.

If I made my thoughts known about this development, I'd be permanently banned from lemmy.world.

Logitech stuff is already sort of a subscription based service, since their stuff is designed to fail after around 2 years.

Damn Logitech, you've been my go-to for peripherals for a couple of decades now

Don't fuck this up

Oh God if they put AI in the MX Master Mice then I'm boned.

Logitech's quality has been steadily dropping. Got fed up with thumb trackball buttons failing in less than 2 years. Logitech was my go to for most computer peripherals, but I just can't justify replacing all my family's trackballs every two years at $60 a pop.

Switched over to Elecom because they are one of the only brands selling wired thumb trackballs and so far they are great. It's unfortunate, my first Logitech trackball lasted at least 10 years. It never broke, just got lost in a move. Used to love their stuff but, the only thing left from the Logitech I bought my first trackball from is the name.

Faber states that “[It] was a little heavier, it had great software and services that you’d constantly update, and it was beautiful.”

And I want whoever came up with this idea to spontaneously combust, but neither of us is going to get what we want.

Logitech CEO can fuck right off.

Magnesium mouse

OR

Forever subscription

Hard to decide here, fellas. Idk.

Try getting them to last longer than 2 years before the scroll wheel breaks before you try to stump this shit

More like the never mouse, you can keep the monthly sub peripherals.

If I mistake your shit ideas as an Onion article, you should be fired. Who would pay monthly on a mouse?

MaaS?

given how much is going on in the diy / open source keyboard community, I'm sure there's going to be some options

I use a computer a lot, and I have an expensive keyboard and mouse. I'm the target market in a sense; if there was a compelling enough upgrade to either, I'd probably buy it.

I can't imagine what software features they could possibly offer that would qualify, doubly so as a subscription. I picked my mouse because it has lots of buttons, a responsive sensor, low-latency wireless, and it runs on a standardized replaceable battery. It would be hard to improve any of that with software.

it was these keycaps: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001681753913.html

Came with the wrong size space, so had to order a smaller in (not shown in the pic), which isn't listed on Ali anymore.

I think it's time to stop with subscription bullshit.

I understand that they prefer that, but it quickly becomes the only purpose fulfilled by these devices which is not fulfilled by more normal ones, while the main purposes suffer, looking closer to an excuse.

Also the argument of businesses going bankrupt when something is done too well - that's by design. Progress works via removing bottlenecks one after another. Businesses which were located at those bottlenecks die. It's fine, the society doesn't need them anymore. Management and employees have mostly transferable skills and experience. If they earn less, then maybe their work is worth less, since the business failed. Investors lose money, and that's fine, it's the purpose of investment - judge wisely and win, judge poorly and lose.

It still irritates me how sometimes socialist-minded people say that it's bad that in capitalism businesses (and whole industries) fail, and this should be fixed, but then blame capitalism for the results of preventing businesses (or whole industries) from failing.

I have internalized all the leftist arguments heard here, some are fundamentally and practically very true, but sometimes fixing the thing you have would yield results just as good or better as looking for that better thing you don't know where.

OK, I've diverted from the point.

Somehow businesses making nails and screwdrivers don't complain about making too good a screwdriver. Because, well, the good screwdriver still dies after sometime, and the amount of people who need tools grows, yadda-yadda.

This should work the same way in computing, but hype-scamming customers is such a norm there, that doing business the normal way seems the way to bankruptcy to them. They should all fail. We are doing - for the real-life useful output, not for FLOPS and IOPS, - just a bit more than in 90s, but for orders of magnitude bigger cost.

Guess I'm either stocking up a couple extra 502 mice now, or I need to find a new mouse. I'm not looking forward to trying to find a new mouse, the 502 is perfect in my hand.

lol

Insanity. I spend $5.00 or so on $eCommerceSite and am perfectly happy with the result.

I make that expenditure maybe every four or five years. I don't need a 'forever mouse,' they already last practically that long.

No.

Mousepad subs coming soon

Pass

They can try. I'm so used to Linux that driver updates aren't a concern of mine.

If they somehow make it windows only then I'll have an issue

Who here uses the vendor supplied software with their mouse?

In my experience it's almost entirely useless, except for remapping buttons maybe.