Logitech CEO lays out the potential future of the mouse and keyboard. Logitech is working on a forever mouse that has a subscription-based model.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Another piece of the Forever Mouse puzzle is the software. Logitech uses its Options Plus software which essentially walks people through making prompts to interact with AI. But Faber says this is just the start:
This is intended to appeal to investors instead of customers.
Oh I have a Forever Mouse. Bought a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical in 2001 or so. Still works. Use it with my Raspberry Pi sometimes. Also bought another Microsoft wireless laptop mouse like a decade ago. Still works just fine.
...The Logitech mouse that I bought against my better judgement in 2020 is starting to show signs of fatigue.
Also how the everliving hell do you add AI to input devices? Are they just going to guess what I'm pointing at?
I don't see the point of this. Why would a mouse need constant software updates? I could plug in a 20 year old mouse and it would work just fine on my PC, no updates needed.
Since we’re pretty much all in agreement that Logitech has enshittified with the Great Ones like Ubisoft, Hewlett Packard, and more, let’s talk about our last great products they made that we will no longer recommend! 😃
These are all my products that I love, and have been extremely high quality. All of them work just fine to this day!
Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum mice (I own two, bought in 2018 I believe and still using)
Logitech C920 1080p 30 FPS webcam
Logitech G613 Lightspeed Wireless keyboard (great keyboard I use for work, hate that the keys are painted and will eventually wear away)
Logitech G603 Wireless Mouse (for work, works fantastic!)
Logitech Litra Beam LED lights (I own two)
Oh Logitech. Why can’t you just make products we can own instead of following the greedy “As a Service”? Ah well! Bound to happen one day (Steam, please please don’t ever become public).
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.
You know, a subscription-based, AI-enhanced mouse is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm so pumped! And for only $200 upfront plus a monthly subscription? Sign me up!
I hope they'll also make it easy for me to top up my monthly mouse-click credit through an app that just needs to know my precise location and my contacts and be allowed to display itself over other apps for accessibility reasons. Hopefully I can even check my mouse's status remotely through the app too, and adjust the colour of its LEDs to reflect my unique personality.
And maybe they'll even be able to personalize my mousing experience so my mouse can serve me better, by anonymously tracking what I hover over and click on. That'd be fantastic. And if the AI could also use this information to notify me about relevant deals and offers from their trusted partners, that would be the cherry on top.
This is going to be great! Thanks Logitech - I love it!
I made an RMA request for a Logitech universal remote within 10 min of opening the package. I got to the part of mandatory Logitech account/app download and noped it right back to the vendor.
Weird, I've had my mouse practically forever and it works just fine. I guess I better throw it in the trash so I can jump on this subscription based opportunity.
I’m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse?
Possibly.
And that would be the forever mouse?
Yeah.
So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse.
Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again, which is not unlike our video conferencing services today.
But it’s a mouse.
But it’s a mouse, yeah.
I think consumers might perceive those to be very different.
[Laughs] Yes, but it’s gorgeous. Think about it like a diamond-encrusted mouse.
Okay...
Also from that interview:
Some only have a mouse or only a keyboard, but many of them have both. But the thing that shocked me was that the average spend on that globally is $26, which is really so low. This is stuff you use every day, that sits on your desk every day, that you look at every day. That’s like the price of four coffees at Starbucks or less than a Nike running shirt. There is so much room to create more value in that space as we make people more productive — to extend human potential.
Guys, you are not giving Logitech enough money! You can do better!
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.
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.
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..
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.
Logitech's quality has been steadily dropping. Got fed up with thumb trackball buttons failing in less than 2 years. Logitech was my go to for most computer peripherals, but I just can't justify replacing all my family's trackballs every two years at $60 a pop.
Switched over to Elecom because they are one of the only brands selling wired thumb trackballs and so far they are great. It's unfortunate, my first Logitech trackball lasted at least 10 years. It never broke, just got lost in a move. Used to love their stuff but, the only thing left from the Logitech I bought my first trackball from is the name.
Reminds me of what happed to GE’s lighting division. They used to have a steady stream of income from people replacing burned out bulbs. The CFLs and LED bulbs came in.
GE made a ton of money selling the new bulbs to homes, businesses and cities, but then the money dried up because the new bulbs lasted way longer.
Then they started scrambling to do weird shit with lighting. Like cramming cameras and sensors into bulbs so lights could be used for surveillance in cities and stores. They were basically struggling to find a new reason why you’d want to by a new bulb.
I use a computer a lot, and I have an expensive keyboard and mouse. I'm the target market in a sense; if there was a compelling enough upgrade to either, I'd probably buy it.
I can't imagine what software features they could possibly offer that would qualify, doubly so as a subscription. I picked my mouse because it has lots of buttons, a responsive sensor, low-latency wireless, and it runs on a standardized replaceable battery. It would be hard to improve any of that with software.
There's one way subscription-based hardware might be a good idea: it would motivate the companies to focus on quality and repairability, because they would be the ones who have to deal with that stuff. Unless of course if the EULA of such hardware is complete shit. Which of course it will be.
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.
Considering I've only ever bought a new mouse with an old one broke, and therefore did not work at all, I can't foresee any possible reason to buy one of these things. Unless they're made of fucking titanium with and have an 80-year power supply. In which case they probably cost like $200 and I'm still going to just go buy one for 10ish bucks because I can always replace it in a few years if necessary and it's still cheaper.
I think it's time to stop with subscription bullshit.
I understand that they prefer that, but it quickly becomes the only purpose fulfilled by these devices which is not fulfilled by more normal ones, while the main purposes suffer, looking closer to an excuse.
Also the argument of businesses going bankrupt when something is done too well - that's by design. Progress works via removing bottlenecks one after another. Businesses which were located at those bottlenecks die. It's fine, the society doesn't need them anymore. Management and employees have mostly transferable skills and experience. If they earn less, then maybe their work is worth less, since the business failed. Investors lose money, and that's fine, it's the purpose of investment - judge wisely and win, judge poorly and lose.
It still irritates me how sometimes socialist-minded people say that it's bad that in capitalism businesses (and whole industries) fail, and this should be fixed, but then blame capitalism for the results of preventing businesses (or whole industries) from failing.
I have internalized all the leftist arguments heard here, some are fundamentally and practically very true, but sometimes fixing the thing you have would yield results just as good or better as looking for that better thing you don't know where.
OK, I've diverted from the point.
Somehow businesses making nails and screwdrivers don't complain about making too good a screwdriver. Because, well, the good screwdriver still dies after sometime, and the amount of people who need tools grows, yadda-yadda.
This should work the same way in computing, but hype-scamming customers is such a norm there, that doing business the normal way seems the way to bankruptcy to them. They should all fail. We are doing - for the real-life useful output, not for FLOPS and IOPS, - just a bit more than in 90s, but for orders of magnitude bigger cost.