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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.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

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?

SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

So Logitech can bill every one of its customers every month.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

No sale. It’s ridiculous.

grue ,

No sale.

Joke’s on you; they’re into that shit. Their techno-feudalist wet dream is to force you into rentals for everything.

ASDraptor ,

This is not about you, but about them. It’s not that you need a subscription. It’s that they need you to have a subscription.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

But they need to convince me that the subscription is worthwhile!

kubica ,

If you are going to ask questions maybe you are not the target demographic.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Damned straight! I’ll stick with my boring old non-ai grandpa mouse.

meco03211 ,

Back in my day the mice had a tail, no scroll wheel, and only 2 buttons!

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

When I were a lad, we used vi.

Morphit ,
@Morphit@feddit.uk avatar

Back in my day, mice had balls.

Imgonnatrythis ,

We used trackballs and loved them. We greased the mechanism with our forehead sweat as was the fashion at the time.

partial_accumen ,

But they need to convince me that the subscription is worthwhile!

They’ll remove any mice from the market that doesn’t have a subscription model and others will follow suit.

Future mouse DLC: “Special promotion! $5 discount on unlocking right mouse button!”

TheEighthDoctor ,

They’ll remove any mice from the market that doesn’t have a subscription model and others will follow suit.

Good luck with removing aliexpress mice from the market

BearOfaTime ,

Damn, I never thought to look there! Thanks!

AbidanYre ,

I doubt the open source options will be adopting this strategy either.

I have a ploopy trackball and love it.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

How does it compare to the m570?

AbidanYre , (edited )

I use a left handed one, so I can’t really comment on most ergonomic computer accessories.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

They look nice, but quite expensive.

BeardedBlaze ,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

If they only had a thumb trackball…

AbidanYre ,

Like this?

BeardedBlaze , (edited )
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

Dang phone, not sure hire I missed it. Thanks! Although oof on the price… Another poster mentioned elecom, they have a quite the variety of thumb trackballs, think I’ll buy few of those for the price of one ploopy: elecomusa.com/collections/trackball

AbidanYre ,

True, they are expensive. But it’s one of the very few left-handed, ergonomic mice/trackballs I’ve ever found.

floofloof ,

Not if they and their competitors remove all the other options.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Nah. There will always be companies just selling a mouse.

Morphit ,
@Morphit@feddit.uk avatar

You wouldn’t print a mouse.

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Hell yeah!

vext01 ,
@vext01@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Are they bluetooth?

Nougat ,

I used an HP dead stock "this ships with every computer we sell" optical mouse for twenty years before it broke.

BearOfaTime ,

All my mice are similar ages, even my Logitech wireless.

I did just have a 15 year old one die, but it got used about 8 hours a day all that time.

TimeSquirrel ,
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org avatar

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

Almost none, why the hell would a mouse ever need firmware updates except to fix fuckups? It has one job, translate clicks and movements into signals for the computer.

Wrench , (edited )

This from a company who refused to update their drivers for a USB speaker system for 7, even though it was still actively being sold at stores.

I had bought it a few months earlier at a Fry’s, on sale. I think the sku was just about 2 years old, just expiring on their support policy, as a new OS dropped.

Their customer support told to me kick sand.

Fuck Logitech. Their Mice are the only thing I’ve continued to use because they are actually reliable. But now they’re trying to enshitify that behind a subscription, so that’s it.

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.

BastingChemina ,

Yes, A dim bulb is extremely inefficient, it will use a lot of electricity for a very small amount of light.

On the other hand you can make very efficient lightbulb that will be very bright for a small amount of electricity but last only for a few minutes.

The 1000 hours limits is a his middle ground.

ColeSloth ,

And what of the noble gas filled bulbs that were both brighter and longer lasting?

ColeSloth ,

Not if you read/believe most of the info on the wiki. US government fined GE over it in 1949.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

stefenauris ,
@stefenauris@pawb.social avatar

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

NegativeInf ,

If anyone’s job could be replaced with ChatGPT, it’s these chucklefucks.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

And now I no longer wish to buy Logitech products…

wolfshadowheart ,

I no longer wished to use Logitech products after using G-Hub. Most horrible software.

hedgehogging_the_bed ,

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.

stealth_cookies ,

Logitech pissed me off years ago when they didn’t honour a warranty because I bought a flawed product before they extended the warranty on them.

I have not even been tempted by their products because there are so many other peripheral manufacturers out there that put out great products.

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?

calcopiritus ,

With subscription you don’t own the product, but also you don’t pay up front.

With subscription, you should be able to buy as many months as you want. With extended warranty, I think companies usually only sell 1 extended warranty per item.

(I’m pulling the prices out of my ass, don’t try to calculate which one is more “worth it”.

Extended warranty:

30€ for the mouse (3 years warranty) 5€ 1 year extended warranty.

You are sure to have the item for at least 4 years. After that, you can use it until it breaks.

Subscription:

1€/month

You get to use the mouse for exactly the months you paid for. No more, no less

Also, with subscriptions you are likely to get a second hand item. But when you buy the item you are gonna get 1st hand unless you shop at Amazon.

I personally wouldn’t buy a subscription, I prefer to own it. However, I’ll admit that it’s not black and white, and subscriptions also have some benefits.

Another way instead of per time window is per use. For example, in the case of a mouse, per clicks.

So if you buy 1.000.000 clicks and rarely use the computer, you get to own the mouse for a very long time for very cheap, just in case you ever want to use it. This is basically today’s planned obsolescence, except the item doesn’t become trash, the company would just reset the counter and you or the next client can keep using it. If you use it a lot, it’s going to become real expensive real fast though.

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

almost1337 ,

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.

CaptDust ,

Oh see I didn’t interpret the forever mouse as a single product, more likely they’d like to use even cheaper switches and components and make RMA/replacement normal under the subscription. New mouse every year for just $14.99/month - what a deal! Right, guys? Guys?

circuscritic ,

Instant Pot didn’t simply go bankrupt. It was busted out by private equity.

doxxx ,
@doxxx@lemmy.ca avatar

The Instant Pot is actually great at cooking rice using the pot-in-pot method: put a plain metal bowl with your rice and water (usually 1:1 ratio) in the Instant Pot on a wire rack and add about 1 1/2 cups of water to the Instant Pot. Steam for 10 minutes for white rice. Perfect every time.

almost1337 ,

We just got a rice cooker instead

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

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.

bane_killgrind ,

My g9x is getting flakey, and I’m very sad.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

My MX510 from 2005 died recently. I’m sure it’s just a cable issue since if I straighten it out perfectly, once in a while I can still get a signal through. So I’m contemplating of desoldering it and put a new one in, it was otherwise flawless.

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.

EvilBit ,

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.

BearOfaTime ,

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

Nope, fuck you Logitech.

solsangraal ,

same. every logitech peripheral i’ve ever had was great, and the one time an old mouse i’d been using for 2 years broke, i emailed them about it and they sent me a MX master 2S, which was several tiers above the one i had, for free.

oh well. time to find a new mouse brand

traches ,

Their flight sim stuff is absolute fucking garbage

homesweethomeMrL ,

Bite my shiny metal PS/2 adapter

FartsWithAnAccent ,
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io avatar

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

rImITywR ,

With open source firmware. Preferably QMK + VIA.

lemmyng ,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

User-serviceable switches would be so nice…

cmrn ,

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.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

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

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

With OneDrive …

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