During a recent episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber shed some possible insight into the company’s view on one of its most important products. Saying that “the mouse built this house,” Faber shares the planning behind a Forever Mouse, a premium product that the company hopes will be the last you ever have to buy. There’s also a discussion about a subscription-based service and a deeper focus on AI.
For now, details on a Forever Mouse are thin, but you better believe there will be a catch. The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.
Oh I have a Forever Mouse. Bought a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical in 2001 or so. Still works. Use it with my Raspberry Pi sometimes. Also bought another Microsoft wireless laptop mouse like a decade ago. Still works just fine.
…The Logitech mouse that I bought against my better judgement in 2020 is starting to show signs of fatigue.
Also how the everliving hell do you add AI to input devices? Are they just going to guess what I’m pointing at?
Maybe they mean one with a nuclear battery.
Also how the everliving hell do you add AI to input devices?
They won’t, but they figure there are probably still some investors floating around who will buy that stupid line.
- We will move the mouse for you
- We will enable mouse accel when we think you would want it
- Pre-click the buttons
- Your Logitech Forever Mouse just purchased another Logitech Forever Mouse
Also how the everliving hell do you add AI to input devices?
Think one of those UI’s that move your mouse to an “OK” button, but even worse, and everywhere (…ehm, everywhere it feels like). Add a Crowdstrikeability potential and you’ve got your AI crap. What’s not to love about it? (and by “love” I mean “hate”…)
Logitech CEO can fuck right off.
Reminder that getting a subscription service means moving away from something you buy occasionally to something you pay forever
Not only that, but there’s a 100% chance they sell this shit to you as a forever mouse, then in a few years if it’s not making them money hand over fist, they’ll discontinue it and keep your money.
This is how you lose your fanbase. I’ll never ever pay for something like this.
Businesses could save a lot of money by just firing their CEOs
If anyone’s job could be replaced with ChatGPT, it’s these chucklefucks.
Logitech’s desire to put AI in my IO devices is exactly why I am moving to a different manufacturer. I want solid hardware, not hardware as a service. HP also is trying this with printers and it’s total bullshit.
If I am paying a monthly fee, I’d better not also have to buy garbage hardware. That better be provided for free and replaced when it inevitably fails.
Logitech pissed me off years ago when they didn’t honour a warranty because I bought a flawed product before they extended the warranty on them.
I have not even been tempted by their products because there are so many other peripheral manufacturers out there that put out great products.
Meh, I’m going to hold out for a subscription-based AI-enabled mousepad.
With OneDrive …
premium mouse that receives constant updates
Come on. How many firmware updates can we really expect for a mouse?
I’ve had an m570 for about 10 years. Every time it broke, I fixed it. Why do we need a subscription?
This is not about you, but about them. It’s not that you need a subscription. It’s that they need you to have a subscription.
But they need to convince me that the subscription is worthwhile!
But they need to convince me that the subscription is worthwhile!
They’ll remove any mice from the market that doesn’t have a subscription model and others will follow suit.
Future mouse DLC: “Special promotion! $5 discount on unlocking right mouse button!”
They’ll remove any mice from the market that doesn’t have a subscription model and others will follow suit.
Good luck with removing aliexpress mice from the market
I doubt the open source options will be adopting this strategy either.
I have a ploopy trackball and love it.
If they only had a thumb trackball…
Like this?
How does it compare to the m570?
I use a left handed one, so I can’t really comment on most ergonomic computer accessories.
Damn, I never thought to look there! Thanks!
If you are going to ask questions maybe you are not the target demographic.
Damned straight! I’ll stick with my boring old non-ai grandpa mouse.
Back in my day the mice had a tail, no scroll wheel, and only 2 buttons!
Back in my day, mice had balls.
When I were a lad, we used vi.
We used trackballs and loved them. We greased the mechanism with our forehead sweat as was the fashion at the time.
Not if they and their competitors remove all the other options.
Nah. There will always be companies just selling a mouse.
You wouldn’t print a mouse.
I used an HP dead stock “this ships with every computer we sell” optical mouse for twenty years before it broke.
All my mice are similar ages, even my Logitech wireless.
I did just have a 15 year old one die, but it got used about 8 hours a day all that time.
So Logitech can bill every one of its customers every month.
No sale. It’s ridiculous.
No sale.
Joke’s on you; they’re into that shit. Their techno-feudalist wet dream is to force you into rentals for everything.
This from a company would refused to update their drivers for a USB speaker system for 7, even though it was still actively being sold at store.
I had bought it a few months earlier at a Fry’s on sale. I think the sku was just about 2 years old, just expiring on their support policy, as a new OS dropped.
Their customer support told to me kick sand.
Fuck Logitech. Their Mice are the only thing I’ve continued to use because they are actually reliable. But now they’re trying to enshitify that behind a subscription, so that’s it.
How many firmware updates can we really expect for a mouse?
Almost none, why the hell would a mouse ever need firmware updates except to fix fuckups? It has one job, translate clicks and movements into signals for the computer.
The Instant Pot was a product so good that customers rarely needed to buy another one. The company went bankrupt.
Man, we had to replace the fuse on ours four times before we gave up on it; I don’t think ‘product longevity’ was a major factor in the brand’s downfall. It also did a shit job of cooking rice.
I also highly doubt Logitech’s ability to make a “forever” mouse with how many I’ve had to RMA due to faulty left click switches. Get your product design, supply chain, and QA in order before you start trying to tie people down with wholly unnecessary and unwanted subscriptions. Shitty ent seeking MBA vampires fucking everything up for everyone.
Oh see I didn’t interpret the forever mouse as a single product, more likely they’d like to use even cheaper switches and components and make RMA/replacement normal under the subscription. New mouse every year for just $14.99/month - what a deal! Right, guys? Guys?
The Instant Pot is actually great at cooking rice using the pot-in-pot method: put a plain metal bowl with your rice and water (usually 1:1 ratio) in the Instant Pot on a wire rack and add about 1 1/2 cups of water to the Instant Pot. Steam for 10 minutes for white rice. Perfect every time.
We just got a rice cooker instead
Instant Pot didn’t simply go bankrupt. It was busted out by private equity.
Fuck that, no thanks! How about you build repairable mice that can last forever instead?
With open source firmware. Preferably QMK + VIA.
User-serviceable switches would be so nice…
And I don’t want to buy it. Not everything needs to be a subscription.
Not everything needs to be a subscription.
More like “[almost] everything needs not to be a subscription!”
Yep. Products should never need subscriptions. Only services. Things like Photoshop even, absolutely shouldn’t be subscriptions.
And they wonder why we pirate.
Or an app.
MaaS?
I’m curious what monumentally terrible ideas they have for adding machine learning or LLM features to HIDs.
I’ll go out of my way to avoid ever owning any of them, but I’m curious.
Damn Logitech, you’ve been my go-to for peripherals for a couple of decades now
Don’t fuck this up
You know they will, just making a good product isn’t enough, they need to somehow sell us more bullshit so they can make infinitely more money than ever all the time. So Logitech will absolutely go through with something like this
I don’t see the point of this. Why would a mouse need constant software updates? I could plug in a 20 year old mouse and it would work just fine on my PC, no updates needed.
But like. AI. Ya know? Predictive mouse algorithm to make you clicky more gooder
There is no point… This corporate parasites justifying their new scam.
