Today on the 5: A lot of people got heated over some comments from the new Logitech CEO over a possible "future mouse" the company is exploring. While a lot of this discussion is really just far future conjecture, the idea of Logitech charging a subscription for access to device software highlight a shortcoming of the company. People aren't going to pay for bad software, and that's a lot of what Logitech has lately.
Ozone Nightmare
The Software Deficit
Welcome to daily five for Wednesday, July 31, 2024. If you follow technology news at all, you may have seen some heated discussion over a suggestion. And it's barely even that by the new CEO over at Logitech that they are exploring the idea of a subscription based forever mouse. They're calling this the forever mouse, where you would buy a piece of hardware for some type of premium price. And then you would pay a subscription to keep that device updated via, you would assume firmware, drivers, updates, software. Some of it is definitely tied into AI because that comes up in the course of that conversation. And people just lost their minds over this. And so I went back and looked at the actual virtual site and I'm going to link to the interview here. It's part of their decoder podcast, but they also transcribed large portions of it. And what became immediately apparent to me is that this is one of those times where something got picked up and it's now being reported. And there's a lot of distortions happening in it. But there's also another side to, well, let's assume it's true that I think is going to be a problem for Logitech. But let's start with the distortion problem, which is sadly not very uncommon anymore. And this is that in the course of this, if you read this, the CEO, because the $200 mouse thing was getting thrown around, the CEO never suggested that also be $200. Neelai Patel, who conducted the interview, is the person who introduced that price point. The CEO didn't dispute it, but she also didn't agree with it. And what she was talking about was specifically the idea that you would pay for these updates. And there was mention of AI tools, which guess what, we've known this is going to be what's happening because as many people, including me have said, numerous times discussing AI, it's not going to stay cheap. It's going to start getting expensive. And apparently there's going to be a button that Logitech's going to put on all their products, which is just ridiculous on its own. So I'm kind of happy it's on the high price models, because I like Logitech stuff, but I'm not going to buy an AI mouse from them that you're going to hit this button. And I would assume it has some kind of microphone or whatever built in that would invoke an AI chatbot or whatever to do a query for you. But the other part of it is, and this is the thing where if Logitech is seriously exploring this, and as far as this interview suggests, this is merely in a prototyping stage at best. There is no proctor even close to being ready to ship. The CEO says at one point that they're not at the forever mouse yet, but they that she thinks they're close. But let's say they did, let's say that they launched next week, Logitech comes out with a forever mouse, whatever that really means. The problem here is that if you're going to charge a subscription model for software that supports some kind of computer peripherals or hardware, then you'd better have really good software. And this is probably the place where the CEO maybe is being the most optimistic of all. Because if you've bought a Logitech product, especially a complex one in the last five or 10 years, you're probably very well aware that their software competency is maybe not where it needs to be. Now, as far as the actual hardware, I like Logitech stuff. In fact, I have multiple Logitech devices because I don't have to rely on their software. It's for basic stuff, keyboard, mouse, things that are less complicated. But the couple of times that I've run into having to use their software, it has largely been just short of nightmarishly bad. And to a comic extent, if you go into Reddit and you start looking at Logitech, as far as what problems people are having or any of the Logitech forums, you are very quickly going to find things that do not suggest this company is in a position to realistically expect people to subscribe to their software support. In some cases, their software barely even works. I ran into a problem where I got caught in a Logitech G Hub loop, I want to say six, seven months ago or something like that. And I honestly couldn't tell you how I fix it. I was trying all different kinds of stuff. And finally, it went away after multiple reinstall. I was screwing around with all types of things and it finally did get resolved. But I'm really not sure how I did it. It was not a Logitech update. I think I probably just managed to initiate enough steps and probably went in and cleaned out registry keys and everything else. Things that most normal people are never going to bother with. And then finally, the things started up properly. And this is what I mean about putting aside the pricing and everything else and whether a subscription model for a mouse makes sense that doesn't. They're going to have to be able to back up what they're doing. And right now, I cannot really see this being something that is a viable option. So this feels like a new CEO who's saying things for shareholders to hear, for the market to look at to indicate growth and that they have a plan and that they have some idea of what they're going to do in the future. But do I think that there's any practical reality to this, especially in the near term? No way, not a chance, not based on what they're doing now. So will Logitech at some point have a forever mouse that you'll have to subscribe to? Sure, it's possible. I wouldn't exactly be shocked. But is it going to happen anytime soon? No, I don't think so later.