Welcome to the age of forced obsolescence

Nest recently announced it will be turning the $300 Revolv smart-home hub into an expensive and useless piece of wall art by shutting down the service next month.

The device, which lets users control light and security features in their homes via a smartphone app, was sold with a lifetime subscription to the service. But with that lifetime quickly coming to an end, it raises questions about what consumers can really do in a high tech world where forced obsolescence is right around the corner.

In 2014, Google-owned Nest acquired Revolv. Last month, Revolv founders Tim Enwall and Mike Soucie said they would be pouring all their energy into Works, an upcoming upgrade for Nest.

“Unfortunately, that means we can’t allocate resources to Revolv anymore and we have to shut down the service,” the pair wrote.

The Revolv fiasco is an example of the evolving conversation surrounding planned obsolescence – the practice of developing products with an intentionally short life cycle, says Karthik Sankaranarayanan, assistant professor of operations management at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

“But what’s happening now is forced obsolescence in the case of Nest,” he says. “It’s very unfair, if they say that their hub is not going to be working anymore, they should have slowly phased it out.”

[The cloud storage required for Revolv to work will soon no longer be available. / Digital Trends]

As for recourse, while Nest is allegedly considering compensation for users on a case-by-case basis, Sankaranarayanan sees forced obsolescence becoming more of a challenge as we dive deeper into the Internet of Things, where connectivity makes its way into the basic functions of home systems.

“Right now, nobody knows (how to fix this challenge),” says Sankaranarayanan.

He points to Windows Vista as a good example, which offered to support customers up to 2017 but beyond, users will likely be forced to upgrade to Windows 10, or use a dated system with no support. A system no longer supported by a company means it’s vulnerable to security flaws that would be otherwise patched by the

Realistically, says Sankaranarayanan, the outdated system isn’t a revenue generator for them.

“But they cannot just say ‘hey, guess what, this is not making money for us so we don’t care about what the consumers are going to think’ because in the long run it’s going to effect the image of the company,” he adds.

The way of the future

Unfortunately, this is kind of the society we signed up for. While appliances and home devices have had a half life since the proliferation of consumer goods in the ‘60s – look no further than televisions – it’s gotten shorter.

“We are in a world where technology is changing every six months – think about the LG g5 which just came out,” says Sankaranarayanan. “Five months back the g4 came out, things are changing so fast.”

It’s a fast-paced world where the only way to game the system is to choose to abstain.

“There is a limit and the onus is on the consumer – do you want to invest $2,000 or $3,000 on a TV that you probably won’t be using too much?” he says. “I tell my students and I tell my family, don’t buy anything for a year, wait and watch.”

And if you absolutely must purchase the latest device, invest in the service aspect.

“I’m a big Apple fan, I buy the three year warranty because I know I’m going to use this for a long time,” he says. “These are the things consumers should think about.”