One of the tragedies that we see in the world is the sheer amount of perfectly good hardware that is essentially bricked because it is no longer supported with software updates and cannot engage in the contemporary world. As quoted from an article in IEEE Spectrum:
I recently did some Marie Kondo–inspired housecleaning: Anything that didn’t bring me joy got binned. In the process, I unearthed some old gadgets that made me smile. One was my venerable Nokia N95, a proto-smartphone, the first to sport GPS. Another was a craptastic Android tablet—a relic of an era when each year I would purchase the best tablet I could for less than $100 (Australian!), just to see how much you could get for that little. And there was my beloved Sony PlayStation Portable. While I rarely used it, I loved what the PSP represented: a high-powered handheld device, another forerunner of today’s smartphone, though one designed for gaming rather than talking.
These nifty antiques shared a common problem: Although each booted up successfully, none of them really work anymore. In 2014, Nokia sold off its smartphone division to Microsoft in a fire sale; then Microsoft spiked the whole effort. These moves make my N95 an orphan product from a defunct division of a massive company. Without new firmware, it’s essentially useless. My craptastic tablet and PSP similarly need a software refresh. Yet neither of them can log into or even locate the appropriate update servers.
You might think that a 15-year-old gaming console wouldn’t even be operating, but Sony’s build quality is such that, with the exception of a very tired lithium-Ion battery, the unit is in perfect condition. It runs but can’t connect to modern Wi-Fi without an update, which it can’t access without an update to its firmware (a classic catch-22). I’ve wasted a few hours trying to work out how to get new firmware on it (and on the tablet), without success. Two perfectly good pieces of electronic gear have become useless, simply for want of software updates.
Devices being bricked due to a lack of support isn’t new, and it’s certainly not a trend that’s slowing down. Back in 2020, we reported on Sonos’ despicable end-of-life strategy for its products – an irreversible “recycle mode” that they encourage customers to use. Unfortunately, this “recycle” mode actually bricks devices and renders them unusable, guaranteeing that owners and e-waste recyclers are forced to landfill them instead of reselling or reusing the products. This strategy came to our attention after Sonos announced that they would stop supporting newly labeled “legacy products” (some which were produced as recently as 2015). The underlying problem with the announcement was that keeping functional legacy products in your sound system would mean that products still supported by the company would no longer receive software updates.
Sonos’s approach highlights common consumer concerns with investing in expensive, service-dependent hardware. Ultimately, Sonos customers do not know when a product will be intentionally deprecated, requiring another significant monetary investment or creating garbage for the landfill. Want to continue receiving updates for your system of expensive speakers? You’re forced to ditch the old hardware and upgrade to the new, regardless of whether or not you actually needed to make an upgrade. Of course, there was nothing that prevented these speakers from functioning perfectly well, other than the Sonos team’s lack of interest or inability to support them.
Currently, Apple is the company we’re aware of with one of the best support policies – and it’s even better because it’s actually written down for users to see, unlike with Sonos. For example, Apple guarantees that repair services and parts can be received for a minimum of 5 years from when Apple last distributed the product, or 7 years to adhere to EU regulations (and possibly even longer now with regulatory changes that are in the pipeline). Macbook battery replacements have a 10-year support guarantee after distribution. Apple has also stated that the goal is devices will receive five years of software support after release, plus exceptional security updates for longer. They have beaten this guarantee so far – the iPhone 6s/6s+ can use iOS 15, which is 6 years of software support and counting.
The author of the IEEE Spectrum article referenced above might not agree that this limited support lifetime, even though it is clearly spelled out, is any better than what other companies have done. Instead, the proposal is ubiquitous software support:
Does this mean Sony and others should still be supporting products nearly two decades old, like my PSP? If that keeps them out of the landfill, I’d say yes: The benefits easily outweigh the costs. The devilish details come in decisions about who should bear those costs. But even if they fell wholly on the purchaser, consumers would, I suspect, be willing to pay a few dollars more for a gadget if that meant reliable access to software for it—indefinitely. Yes, we all want shiny new toys—and we’ll have plenty of them—but we shouldn’t build that future atop the prematurely discarded remains of our electronic past.
We are sure that some of you will say “there has to be a suitable support line to draw somewhere, and forever isn’t it.” Maybe you’re right. Is it reasonable to expect manufacturers to support products forever? At some point, teams would simply be burdened with supporting existing products and would not have the capacity to be able to build new ones.
You might also ask yourself, “is it reasonable to expect updates and support for a Palm Pilot [or any other old piece of tech] in today’s world?” Some of you might say no, but there is still a community dedicated to preserving the work and history of Palm OS, making tools and applications available to Palm users even today.
Perhaps this points us to one potential route: open source the software and tools when you’re done and give the community the option to continue. We can sense the pushback even now – “but what about my IP? I’m not going to release that for people to use, especially since we’re still using it on existing products!” I have no sympathy for this argument – to protect your IP, you have an excellent option: continue support.
Of course, we cannot simply expect large swathes of companies to take this course of action on their own. Incentives or regulations need to be in place to shift the behavior on a large scale. But the option is still there for those of us who are interested in shifting the norm and supporting our customers.
As engineers, programmers, and product designers, we often let ourselves get wrapped up in the creation of new products, forgetting that we need to support these products for a 5-20 year period after their release. Having a plan to end-of-life your product matters especially as you initially design it. Communicating your support plan clearly to your customers will also help them make better decisions when they make a purchase.
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I agree, open source it at end of life. Better yet, have the source code placed in some sort of escrow service when the product is released, with an automatic release date and/or condition. I suspect for a lot of companies, even if they wanted to release the source code they would have trouble finding it!
How about using subscription models to finance a longer support? I would pay a reasonable fee to have my devices updated for a longer time.