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#app#router#more#motorola#phone#web#don#wifi#device#still
Discussion (144 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I am surprised, all the European brands like Miele, Siemens, Bosch, etc. household appliances work fine without an app. Most that we have now do have an option to connect to WiFi, we never connected them and they all work fine with good old buttons like it's 1985.
https://youtu.be/5M_hmwBBPnc
It required a damn proprietary phone app, which I assume was bouncing commands through the internet.
Your best option is to purchase your own cable modem/router and quit renting that garbage hardware from Comcast.
Or kick them to the curb and go cableless using Verizon with a router that's worth paying for.
Nobody wants to admit it, but they are more home decor and geewhiz BS than practical appliance for several decades now. You'll be perfectly fine buying cheap barebones models if you are repair savvy. Choosing colors and materials like black or white and stainless steel is "boring", but only if the surrounding space is already ugly.
I've had the same no name amazon special washer and dryer for almost 15 years now. Reviews were 3/5 stars at the time. People complained about belts slipping and hinges breaking. I just fixed them with parts on ebay. They still look and run like new.
Same for anything else. I don't see the whole "oh you need firmware update to improve the product". 90% of the time it just works.
So what happens if the fridge isn't given internet access ? Or washing machine?
Dishwashers, refrigerators, even (and perhaps especially) cars.
"Just don't connect it to the Internet," is sadly less viable option as time goes on.
HP fixed a remote exploit a few years back. Theoretically someone could use your local wifi printer to install a persistent backdoor on your network. In practice HP uses updates to patch leaks in their cartridge protection (the most complicated tech in the printers). And accidentally sometimes bricks printers...
You probably meant "I want no frills product because of its simplicity, not because its cheap" but when that feedback reaches a PM, they'll only hear "I will pay more to not have a camera or a mic".
I want a very good washing machine with frills, but it want it to wash well and quietly without needing to be configured from my phone over wifi.
Have you ever considered upgrading your refrigerator? Washing machine? Kettle? A router is a transparent appliance to most people.
It's sorta like checking if spare parts are available for your refrigerator or washing machine.
You need to know why you want to spend money, which implies evaluating features, needs and possibilities, virtually guaranteeing that the user learns that OS or firmware updates and OpenWRT exist and are important.
Luckily, many (but certainly not all) continental West-European ISPs allow you to lease a Fritz!Box or you can buy one in a store and hook it up [1]. Perfect router/modem for consumers (not too complicated), can be configured through a web interface, and the hardware and software is developed by a German company.
[1] Many European countries have router/modem freedom, so an ISP cannot block you if you want to hook up your own gear. E.g. quite some tech people here use their own XGS-PON fiber ONT or at least their own router + modem.
Jun 08 00:23:10 zalgor kernel: [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp0s31f6 OUT= MAC=01:02:03:04:05:06:07:08:09:10:11:12:13:14 SRC=192.168.178.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=53621 DF PROTO=2 ... from my German residence right now.
Just the last one, out of gazillions. It's a proprietary protocol for finding their other proprietary stuff in the LAN for home automation, meshing (also proprietary).
It's also almost useless for more complex internal setups.
Rather logspammy if you ask me.
One doesn't have that with other, more technical options. There is also less and less need for the "DSL- (or cable-) modem part, since fibre tends to be plain old ethernet.
Also the ownership of AVM recently changed. I fully excpect ensuing enshittification.
I've considered it, if I can get fiber here I will definitely get one for my segment, and maybe my resell segment too.
More and more IP cameras can't be set up without a phone app. TP-Link's Tapo line is really bad about it. Even some Reolink cameras can't be setup on their own.
Now that high quality, affordable brands like Dahua got banned (w/o evidence), there's less pressure on the survivors to not be awful.
More evidence that this isn't about cost at all, but control. Fortunately, the good old-fashioned "dumb" ones that just have a tiny web server to serve their configuration and viewing UI still exist, seemingly at both the ultra-cheap (unbranded/random brand ones from China based on a reference design, built by companies with no desire to host anything) and ultra-expensive (Axis, Bosch, etc.) ends of the market; the middle is entirely filled with the "smart" "cloud" crap.
You are absolutely correct. However, in regards to a phone app there is likely to be 2ndary pressure from data brokers who firehose cash for any data their phone app collects.
The company doesn't have to go away, the app just has to have issues. At least with web apps, you aren't depending on the manufacturer investing in nearly continuous upgrades to work in the rapidly changing phone environment
A web UI will continue to work for decades. And app will likely not last a year without updates.
I just installed 10 Reolinks and I had to set up a phone app for two of them that didn't have an Ethernet connector. Ick.
I have one Tapo and ran their app from an android emulator. I won't buy another.
At any rate, I think as much as web vs. app, IMO companies should be forced to support their appliances for a certain time period by law (the EU has rolled out a law to require this for some device types). If it was normal for a router to work for 10 years or a washing machine for 20 years, a vendor should be forced to support it for that amount of time since the last sale.
Stop mandating apps that will eventually break or cease being supported. Give us an OOBE that can be run independent of some mobile app.
- it was more clear when buying a product that an app is required to activate/use/etc a device
- that people who rebelled against this kind of nonsense were backed up by others and respected "more power to you!"
On the bright side, maybe someone can get Claude or some other LLM to figure out how to crack it; and perhaps even vibe-code an alternative app.
LLMs are great for this, though the more people use it for blackhat style things, the more I fear they will lockdown LLMs which are useful for reversing things that are legacy as heck and abandonware.
Also, thanks for mentioning! I wasn't aware of this
And at least for connected devices at home, a dedicated app can have lower friction for initial setup for the "I'm not a computer person" crowd than other alternatives do.
(I know, I know. It's terrible. It even feels something like betrayal sometimes. But that's how it be, anyway -- and you and I are powerless to do anything about it.)
Strong doubt. What's lower friction, "visit this address in your browser and login to start configuring" vs. "go download this app, open it, possibly log in and register an account, add 'your' device, and only then start to configure it"?
Let's also not forget the possible chicken-and-egg situation of needing the Internet to download an app to setup your new router to access the Internet...
For a router? This is the device that you will often not have internet access with which to download an app until after it's configured. Many people have wired internet specifically because they live somewhere with poor cellular reception. Meanwhile the device can give out DHCP and use the standard captive portal mechanisms to automatically direct any client device to its configuration page.
I didn't say that I thought it was right, or fair, or just. I didn't say I liked it, or that I agree with it.
In fact, I think it's a pretty ugly state of affairs when a person in an area of poor connectivity needs to climb the hill/go into town/otherwise make plans before they can get their shiny new router to work.
I can accept that things are the way they are, or I can pretend that they're different.
Acceptance seems to be a lot more honest.
Unfortunately the only tech stack that can do this is the web, (serial/remote shell comes close).
In fact I regard this as the major failure of the app method of program deliverance. Why do you need to install them at all? It should be like the web, hit an address load the app. It is why I am thankful that the web was not developed as a commercial project. No for-profit entity would have let it escape their control like that. It would have been designed exactly like the app system for phones is. enforced central blessed "app-stores" and manual install processes.
If the default was something else I suspect people would accept that too, especially if it was lower friction.
I'd say typing a few characters into an address bar (or scanning a QR code) is, at the least, not higher friction than downloading an app and creating an account.
Based on the screenshots I’m going to hazard a guess that it’s because someone forgot to update, or just stopped paying for, the server license.
The insistence they go through a server is why they suck
More info: https://sslinsights.com/code-signing-time-stamping/
opinion based on their support system, correspondence and android updates,
As mentioned in the article, they are products of Premier LogiTech, LLC, who have licensed the Motorola brand name.
Its wifi/bt card broke exactly one year after I bought it. It worked exactly for 365 days. That was 100% hardware failure and planned obsolescence.
Needless to say never bought not even looked at anything Motorola ever since.
In 2011/2012, it was divided into different parts. The biggest were Motorola Solutions (mostly focused 2-way radios and related communications infrastructure; stuff commonly used by public safety entities) and Motorola Mobility (mostly cell phones and related stuff).
Google bought Motorola Mobility. It has been said that this was because Google wanted their patent portfolio. In 2014, Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo: The same Lenovo that makes ThinkPads is also who makes Motorola phones today.
Somewhere along the line, their name also got licensed out for home networking bits. That appears to be the products that the Mashable article writes about. This history is murkier, but it appears that some combination of Premier LogiTech and Boundless Devices (whoever tf these companies are) is responsible for making the Motorola-branded routers in question.
---
tl;dr, the Motorola that makes the radios that cops carry on their hip, the Motorola that makes Android phones that consumers carry in their pocket, and the Motorola that makes home routers are not the same company. Like -- at all.
Conflating them is easy because it is, frankly, a confusing mess.
But still: The shitty software on a Motorola phone is not cut from the same cloth as the shitty software on a Motorola router. They're products of very different companies that share nothing but a common trademark.
https://www.kodak.com/en/consumer/page/support/
(Or Memorex electric scooters. That's also an 'okay then...' license...)
Kodak is in bad shape. They were exquisitely focused on cradle-to-grave film products: Ideally, a person used Kodak cameras that were loaded with Kodak film that was processed with Kodak chemicals on Kodak machines before being printed on Kodak paper using more Kodak machines and chemicals, and all of this but the picture-taking happened within Kodak facilities.
They had their finger on this market for a very long time. But ship that once delivered their bread and butter has sank, and nobody is going to build a new one (not for Kodak, nor for anyone else -- some folks still shoot on film and will continue to do so for as long as it is possible, but it's never "coming back").
Meanwhile, Motorola Solutions (stock ticker MSI) is alive and well. They're still based in Illinois, and they're still doing good work in the 2-way radio space and -- most importantly -- selling radios and back-end gear. They're not in the consumer products game anymore, but it's perfectly OK to make money selling expensive stuff to businesses and governments. (That's a pretty common position; it just happens to be one that isn't particularly visible.)
The situation with Motorola-branded routers is closer to that of General Electric, I suppose: GE licensed/sold their consumer-goods division a long time ago; the GE-branded products on the shelf at the store are, at present, products of Haier. But portions of the old GE still produce things like jet engines and power-generation turbines -- big, expensive stuff for solving big, expensive problems.
The imp gave a nervous cough.
“Good for you!” it said. “You have wisely purchased the Dis-organizer Mk II, the latest in biothaumaturgic design, with a host of useful features and no resemblance whatsoever to the Mk I, which you may have inadvertently destroyed by stamping on it heavily!” it said, adding, “This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect of any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may be substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.”
The imp took a deep breath. “May I introduce to you the rest of my wide range of interesting and amusing sounds, Insert Name Here?”
I think we can make an educated guess as to why. Maybe we could get Claude to reverse engineer it to clean up its own mess.
Now that it's my network to manage, I have to say that while it's a huge upgrade from the TP-Link Deco units we had before, the cloud management just makes it worse. The web UI is slow, probably because every click requires a round trip from my laptop, to a datacenter somewhere, to the router/switch/AP 5m away from me, back to the datacenter, and back to my laptop.
ref:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48425611#48432024
And it's not like a mobile app unlocked some new features that couldn't be implemented in a browser. The app is slow, sluggish, and basic things like adding a DHCP reservation took multiple tries to succeed, each taking an agonizingly long time of watching a spinner.
If you contrast this with my home MikroTik, the UI is less "your grandma could configure it" simple, but it's fast, available over local web, SSH, desktop app, mobile app, and I think also an API, and has every feature I can think of from basic bridging to complex routing and firewalling.
* there was a very basic web UI that I recall had like 1 or 2 settings, don't remember which exactly.
The events in the article are a simple, transient backend malfunction.
So far Apple “just works”. Is it perfect? No. But I can’t imagine fuckup of this magnitude from them.
apple airpods pro 2nd gen 'just don't work' with say samsung phones (s24 in our case) - constant disconnections, pairing fails maybe 50% of the time. Come with apple phone to very same plugs, and they 'just work'. Over effin' bluetooth that chinese plugs for 10 bucks have figured out better.
Wake me up when I can go on filesystem and copy to my computer any damn file I want from the device running unix kernel that I supposedly own, like photos and videos I took, over open standard usb.