It is true that there has been a shift in the concept of “ownership” and device lifespan with the smarter devices being created now. It used to be that you would upgrade over time as you were drawn to the new features of newer devices or your old devices slowly broke down.

But now, manufacturers are blatantly doing something we’ve suspected for some time, deliberately “killing” your old product to force purchases of new products.

It is a slippery slope. When a device is tied to a service that is being shut down, you can’t expect that it will keep magically working the same forever. But, it seems like a more customer-friendly approach would be to create devices that can continue to work in a reduced capacity or be linked to a different service vs. deliberately disabling them into a worthless scrap heap.