The outrage over Sonos is actually more of a basic communication issue - emailing customers and saying "the products in your system will be classified as a legacy ... This will affect your listening experience" will not work. never good.
While other producers I talked to are easily aware of the Sonos situation, there is an elephant in the room who should care about every smart home producer and consumer - how long people should wait for updates ? And how to avoid angry customers when updates stop?
It's not such a big problem with devices like smartphones and tablets. Most people replace a phone number within a few years. And while people keep the tablets longer, they usually think of replacing the device when it is out of date.
At the other end of the ladder is the PC - much has been done since the end of Windows 7 recently, but the fact is that you can run most Windows 7 and Windows 8 applications on Windows 10 and you may even run applications in a compatibility mode. in Windows 10 back to Windows XP and even older versions.
Smart pain at home
Somewhere in the middle is the future pain point for the smart home. When will a device like a Ring Doorbell 2 or Nest Hello be replaced so that it will no longer be accepted in the applications you need to run?
A potential pain point for end-of-life services will definitely be the smart TV. People are not updating their TVs which, despite what the manufacturers are telling us and while larger manufacturers are using well used and updated systems, such as Android TV or LG webOS, there are many proprietary systems.
How long will it take for a major application to not work on a TV system that is still recent? Applications for transmission services will certainly not be able to support any possible scenario today in half a decade.
No safety net
Now we are so addicted to services and applications - such as Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa or the Google Home app - that we have no safety net when things get pulled.
A recent example is Google Cloud Print, Google's service for printing from multiple devices and operating systems to a home printer connected to Wi-Fi. It ends at the end of life by the end of 2020, without replacement and Google is basically telling users - including Android - "to find an alternative printing solution." Thanks for that.
Google is probably the worst at attracting previously praised services, but the simple fact is that you can't trust someone to provide and support a long-term connected service, application or operating system.
