The Responsibility Held by Great Tech

Smart home device manufacturer Hive has recently discontinued support for some of its early legacy devices and some of its users are starting to find out. Starting with home thermostats and the smart home hub, Hive has unveiled plans to sunset additional products between now and 2025. After just seven years since their launch, customers might be justified in feeling a little short-changed over being pushed to shift from more traditional and longer-lasting home heating solutions. Is this move towards short-lived tech a sign of the times, a trade-off for convenience, capability, and control, or do tech companies have a responsibility to consumers that’s not currently being upheld?

Something that has to be repeated often among engineers is the mantra “Software is not hardware”. This is a surprisingly crucial point that’s difficult to fully grasp. There are a lot of fundamental differences in hardware design, development, and distribution that software engineers tend to take for granted. If a robust hardware design doesn’t plan for a more limited service offering in the future then you can easily become stuck with unreliable and insecure products needing to be shelved. Though, this challenge shouldn’t be underestimated.. Integrating old products with new services is hard and keeping legacy systems alive in a consistently changing ecosystem is a time-consuming and costly challenge.

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