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

During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shed some possible insight into the company’s view on one of its most important products. Saying that “the mouse built this house,” Faber shares the planning behind a Forever Mouse, a premium product that the company hopes will be the last you ever have to buy. There’s also a discussion about a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.

For now, details on a Forever Mouse are thin, but you better believe there will be a catch. The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.

InternetUser2012 ,

Hard pass.

homesweethomeMrL ,

Bite my shiny metal PS/2 adapter

Gerudo ,

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.

barsquid ,

No.

Astronauticaldb ,

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.

LinusSexTips ,

Man the Logi settings app was utter trash, so slow to run or even change settings.

Ratbagd + Piper gave me the ability to change my DPI (no switch on the super light) without any bloat.

Astronauticaldb ,

That sounds perfect for what I need actually. Thanks for sharing that!

LinusSexTips ,

Was another perk switching to Linux, my keyboard I can bake in profiles (using a windows VM) then dispose of that VM once my keyboard is setup the way I wanted.

SteelSeries software is horrendous, up there with the Razer.

lemann ,

The first thing I did after purchasing an MX Master a few years ago was block the update server, after realising it downloads update binaries over plain HTTP and tries to automatically run them on boot 🤡

Very nice mouse tbh, just such a shame the company and their software is toilet water

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

Kekzkrieger ,

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.

systemglitch ,

I was a flunky of Logitech for most of my life, but after multiple mice in a row that developed the double click issue in far too short a time, I have vowed to never buy another.

I’ve been super happy using simple, cheap assed mice and I can’t tell the difference in the slightest.

$20 mice ftw.

GooseFinger , (edited )

If you have basic soldering skills and care enough to do this, the mouse buttons can be replaced for less than a dollar each. Not that this excuses Logitech’s poor QA, but my g502 g305 will last damn near forever if I keep replacing the switches like I have been.

Smokeless7048 ,

Yep,

I tried this, but damaged my middle click in the process.

did you ever watch the youtube ‘deepdive’ into the double click?

Turns out they are using an older switch which, while great at the time, wants a higher voltage than modern, electricity diet, mice.

youtu.be/v5BhECVlKJA

GooseFinger ,

I haven’t, but I’m also an electrical engineer so I’m pretty familiar with the issue haha

Fun thing you can do, is open your mouse and look up the PN of your switch on DigiKey. Filter for components with the same package/footprint, then sort by actuation force. Get a few different ones and try them out. They sell good brands there.

I play a lot of shooters, so my left click is real easy to press, and my right click is ~3x harder.

Smokeless7048 ,

the video makes a point that the wetting current for the switches Logitech uses is… i think 5v, however modern mice use much lower voltages. He doesn’t attribute it to malice, more “we have been using this part for 2 decades, why switch”

I ordered in these myself: www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004754399010.html but damaged the middle mouse click during disassembly.

eronth ,

My latest issue is the rubber on the g604 is starting to warp. No idea how I’ll ever fix that in a satisfactory way.

aesthelete ,

The true Achilles heel of Logitech gear is their rubberized feeling coatings on things. My mouse’s coating started to fail from daily use in a couple of years.

SaltySalamander ,

Mine started rubbing off after ~6mo

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

oh man that’s what killed my MX Ergo. I’m back to using M570’s with a simple plastic shell because they don’t rot.

systemglitch ,

I really should have done that. I replace capacitors in monitors and do other bits of soldering, including making my own audio cables. Seems like a natural extension. I bet I still have those mice in a storage tub.

wjrii ,

I have an old M560 that I actually really like. Other than ABS shine, the only sign of age is that the “back” button you click by nudging the scroll wheel from right to left does double clicks. Do you happen to know if that is similarly fixable?

ScreaminOctopus ,

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?

Krackalot ,

I’ve owned a g502 for over a decade now. I know their products are such shit now, I don’t know what I’ll do when it breaks. Definitely not get a mouse subscription, at least

PanArab ,

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

Buffalox ,

I have a Steelseries Rival 3 I’ve used for years now, it’s a lower end cheap one, but the quality is really good, and it’s still as good as new.

SaltySalamander ,

I'll never buy a wired mouse again 🤷‍♂️

winkerjadams ,

I never want to have to worry about charging my mouse 🤷‍♂️

Fuzzy_Red_Panda ,

A mouse that takes AA batteries are the best! No charging needed, just replace the battery once or twice a year.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Or use rechargeable AAs.

I am getting sick of one-off proprietary batteries in a form factor I’ll never see again or worse are permanently baked into a device.

skyspydude1 ,

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.

TheReturnOfPEB , (edited )

Thank you for typing this up because I was not capable of doing it because vitriol messes up my WPM.

Cethin , (edited )

Partially true, but also they wouldn’t invest in something that lasts forever (without it costing an absurd amount of money or the subscription requirement). I like this video that shows the issue pretty well. (TLDW: Communist Germany made glass so durable it didn’t break as a product to sell to the west. No company would purchase it though because they made most of their profit from selling replacements. The glass is now what we call Gorilla Glass, which is really only available on phones, which are designed to be replaced every few years anyway.)

ColeSloth ,

100 years ago there was a meeting amongst lightbulb manufacturers that all collectively agreed to only design light bulbs to last about 1,000 hours. They were known as The Phoebus Cartel and Included Phillips and GE. Up until this agreement lighbulbs were typically lasting up to 2,500 hours. The manufacturers essentially created the concept of planned obsolescence because people weren’t buying as many lighbulbs as they wanted and it was decided to stop making longer lasting bulbs with higher costs. The whole thing started falling apart (competition of non members that were making bulbs, but they were all small operations, as well as patent expirations that GE had) and the start of world War two pretty much broke it up, as the Cartel couldn’t keep everything regulated and tested due to all the travel restrictions and such. But it still remains as the first global wide creation of planned obsolescence.

Extra fun fact: the common light socket screw design/size has remained the same since 1880.

Cethin ,

That is mostly a myth. They did agree of the lifetime, but it wasn’t planned obsolescence like people act. The lifetime of a bulb is directly related to how bright it is. If you make a really dim bulb it lasts a long time, which is how that one in the firehouse is still alive. It’s so dim it’s effectively useless. The group met to decide on a luminosity target, which also is a lifespan target effectively.

mirisgaiss ,

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

ArchRecord ,

100%.

Even today, you can buy a component kit and 3D print your own custom shell for a DIY mouse. (the hardware quality is alright)

I can only imagine what the OSS community will do once companies like Logitech try rolling this crap out on a larger scale. It’s like the outrage against all things wrong with printers, except so much lower tech that almost anyone could build their own.

wjrii ,

In the DIY space, I think trackballs have seen more development, mostly because there’s really only three or four companies that make usable trackballs at all, and one of them is Logitech.

TrickDacy , (edited )

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.

mp3 , (edited )
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

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…

ZetaLightning94 ,

I havent bought a mouse in 15 years. My current one was a spare while working IT.

BeardedGingerWonder ,

My previous mouse lasted about 15 years, replaced it with an MS intellimouse and it’s been going for about 3-4.

dandu3 ,

Customs fees are BS, but I’ve never had to pay them on a replacement product. Yet. I’m waiting on a couple OtterBoxes from the USA next week

pachrist ,

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.

douglasg14b ,
@douglasg14b@lemmy.world avatar

They don’t even make good mice technically because of planned obsolescence.

Their switches die, intentionally, long before the life time of any other components on their mice. And have for nearly 10 years now.

calcopiritus ,

They way I got introduced to hardware as a service is that it was a solution to planned obsolescence.

In theory, a hardware subscription means that if you pay for X months of that hardware, you gonna get it. Doesn’t matter if it breaks, it should be replaced while your subscription lasts.

So taking that into account, the less the hardware breaks, the more profit they have. So not only should it eliminate planned obsolescence, it would make engineering for durable products an actually very profitable business.

Masamune ,

So, what is the difference between this approach and just selling an extended warranty?

Xenny ,

The Logitech k120 is a worthy warrior. Id never get an expensive keyboard from them though

Krauerking ,

It’s really insane that they want the good press and loweree manufactured volume of a quality item… But also for it to fail and you need to buy up whenever they arbitrarily say so.

It’s horrifying. Absolutely broken fucking mindset that only works if we truly are trapped having to buy from them and I just don’t see how that can be true before someone says fuck it and competes.

It’s so grossly profit seeking I just will feel really defeated if it actually works.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

The Logitech UltraX Flat was hands down the best keyboard I ever used in my life. Sadly after decades of use (with a ps/2 to usb adapter) at some point some key pressure sensors started failing, so I had to switch. But I swear if I ever see a new one on ebay, I’ll get it in a heartbeat.

VirtualOdour ,

I used to just buy Logitech when I needed something because it’s good quality and good value, they seem to be intent on moving away from both

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