If you’ve tried to buy a floor lamp, odds are that you saw the trendy vertical pillar of LEDs meant to stand in the corner and reflect light backwards off of the wall. It’s nifty and futuristic looking – but it’s also controlled by an app, not a remote. Well, that’s fine, right? You download the app, pair it, and then… you also have to make an account to use this thing. Okay. So they have your email now. Great. You will need to occasionally log in to use the physical lamp standing in your living room. What happens if the company goes under? Do you lose control of your lamp? Are you going to have to jailbreak your standing lamp to keep using it if the app itself goes away?
The lamp is the most ridiculous possible thing to account-lock, but the truth is, everything wants an account. I have a metronome app on my phone, and after two years of very happily just using it as a metronome, it wanted me to make an account and upgrade for other features. What? Why? And then, when shopping for laser cutters online, you marvel at how affordable the technology has become… and then you realize that the cheaper ones want you to download an app off the app store to control them. Once again: you make an investment into a piece of equipment with a triple-digit price tag, and you’re relying on an app never being banned off the app store or suddenly requiring you to start paying for access to the equipment you already bought.
We could simplify all of this with single sign-on, the way Microsoft does with its subsidiaries and partners, which comes with its own cons. Most large brands (Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.) have smart home offerings that integrate with other products, so Alexa or Siri can change the thermostat setting or turn lights on or off given those are also smart products. But, if you can’t use Apple or Google any longer for whatever reason (and adblockers can get your account in trouble with both, for example) then what? Ultimately, the choices are: decentralized products using separate apps that each individually could go out of business, sell your data, or experience a serious breach, vs. one centralized location for products that won’t be going out of business or facing a serious breach any time soon, but could still decide to stop supporting the app, and sell your data.
What are we doing here?
There is a saturation point where businesses run out of moneymaking ideas, and yet they must still make more money. Companies like Arizona Iced Tea, which are collectively owned (and relatively debt-free) are actually a pretty rare exception to the standard business model of today, which gets a bit of a headstart with investor money but then starts running on the treadmill of debt to keep operating. Notice Netflix prices going up? Notice Uber and Lyft are no longer as great as they used to be? Notice any service seems to have a very brief period of being awesome before the quality starts sucking? New businesses run like this on purpose. There is no real illusion that these will last beyond a single generation, if they even last a decade.
Book a call with us: https://outlook.office365.com/book/WebsiteBooking@elixistechnology.com
