End Of Life

Google sent me this "Christmas gift" message three days ago. Yes I had heard the rumors. And it is both sad and surprising. I have been using the OnHub WiFi for several years and it has been great and flawless. After experimenting with several WiFi access points, this one has been the first one to fully cover the house. And I never ever needed to reboot it. It has been invisible. The best technology is invisible - it just works.

But due to the support / end-of-life policy I will have to go through the hassle of selecting / installing / troubleshooting a new device while trashing the perfectly functioning one. This is the insanity of the Internet era.

I can - to some extent - understand the upgrade cycle of devices which do gain significant functionality. Smartphones are among them but even they hardly need replacements every year or two. But WiFi? At some point it is just good enough and replacing an access point just does not make sense.

Vendors really do need to start thinking in terms of the complete lifecycle / upgradeability of devices, not only to reduce waste, but also to reduce the upgrade hassle. New is not always better and there are always chances a tiny but otherwise important feature will be missing after an upgrade.

Before the "as-a-service" / "connected" era, there had been the rule saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". This is not applicable today, as even if a device performs just fine, the "service" part is fully controlled by the vendor and in most cases will be switched off much sooner than expected. The OnHub WiFi being the crown example. It seems an autonomous operation is becoming a very important selection criteria. Not only for reliability but also to avoid premature end-of-life sentences.