The Down side of cloud updates, and how to infuriate your customers

Well, this is a new one, how about a Fortune 100 company, Philips, making a IoT product, Hue, with a tenuous grasp on a small market share makes an open product that seems that in spite of a few warts is pretty good, and getting better, decides to change their strategy?

What if it's to delete the "open" part and only talk to own products, Breaking its functionality for users of existing third party products?

From Techdirt: Lightbulb DRM: Philips Locks Purchasers Out Of Third-Party Bulbs With Firmware Update

Well, the customers were furious, with light bulbs that they can't turn on, and hopefully, they'll (safely) light their Hue hub on FIRE, send it back to Philips, buy a third party hub and never buy another Philips product again.

I certainly won't.

Note to "bright bulbs" at Philips.  (get it? snort).  You know the razor blade and handle story.  Well this is what you did.  You sold a handle and a bunch of blades, and someone else made blades that fit the handle, and you changed the handle so the other peoples blades didn't work, even the ones already bought, and the customer still uses.  For some reason, the customer can't have multiple handles, but they can buy a handle from the "other guys", throw yours away, and never buy another blade from you again.

Update:  Philips backs down, also from Techdirt, that was quick - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151216/07562133099/after-spending-day-as-internets-punching-bag-philips-walks-back-firmware-update-that-locked-out-third-party-products.shtml