Smart display will soon default to showing ads after three hours.

It’s pretty cool how things we purchase can just lose functionality at the drop of a hat.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    Man, Amazon is giving Google a run for their money on enshittification and product cancellation.

    This is more hilarious because the spy device not only cost more for the ability to show you photos, but it ALSO had a subscription fee to do so on top of that.

    I’m completely befuddled as to what the hell they were thinking, and why they think replacing family pictures with more ads is somehow going to make people do anything other than Ron Swanson these stupid things into the nearest dumpster.

  • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 months ago

    So I bought one of Spotify’s Car Things when they were flushing them after realizing nobody knew fuck all about them.

    The device itself works alright for it’s purpose, but is basically just a fancy way to change tracks or answer your phone. There’s no GPS or messaging integration that you’d get with CarPlay. It doesn’t even tell the time. Still, it works and is useful.

    A few months ago, Spotify sent out emails that, as of December, they will be bricking all of them and to dispose of them via whatever recycling service you have.

    Pretty shitty that we’ve entered an era where companies can just destroy something you paid for because they want to… There need to be laws against this.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    This is a good reason not to buy a kindle, or another one if you have one already. If they’re doing this they’ll just as easily steal the books I bought when they randomly decide to.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      There was a bunch of noise over a book that they rescinded from Kindles a couple / few years ago. I don’t recall the details, but it made headlines.

  • DJDarren@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    We have an older Echo Show in the kitchen. I hate it. It’s genuinely one of the single most ill-conceived, user-unfriendly products I’ve ever experienced. It’s straight up dog shit.

    My wife originally picked it up because Amazon were flogging them for something like £30 as a loss-leader. Figured it would make a useful bedside clock and smart speaker in one. It’s a shitty clock, and absolutely fucking useless on the bedside because it keeps flashing shit up in the dark. You can’t load any photos on to it, so you’re stuck looking at whatever artwork/“tips”/ads it wants to show you.

    I don’t understand how Amazon created a device that looks like a little picture frame, that would be an ideal bedside clock, and apparently at no point did they consider that people might want to use it like that.

    We since got a Google thing that’s essentially the same device (free with an energy tariff), and y’know, Google did a good job with that thing. Just sits in the bedroom being a clock and smart speaker, dimming nicely when the lights are out, never advertising shit at us.

    I use it as a Bluetooth speaker, which also sucks because it’ll randomly refuse to disconnect from my phone even though I did it through my phone’s settings. It’ll be disconnected, then I’ll be sat in the lounge and I’ll hear it reconnect, like some kind of cunt.

    And they’ve programmed it to talk ALL THE FUCKING TIME. “NOW CONNECTED TO YOUR PHONE”. Yes, I fucking know it is, I just told you to do that.

    It is legitimately the worst bit of tech I’ve ever used, and I’ve used a Virgin Media cable TV box.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’m really sorry you have to share a home with that shitty device. Maybe break a window, mess up the place, and throw it away and pretend it was the only item stolen.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
      1·
      2 months ago

      There really should be a Bluetooth setting for “do not auto connect me.” My car does this too, I wear bluetooth headphones a lot and for short to medium car trips it’s not worth it to have to connect and put my headphones back only to pull them back out and reconnect after I arrive, I’d rather just listen to headphones the whole time, but my car waits until I’ve turned on the car and pulled out of the driveway to auto connect against my wishes.

  • MeepMorp@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    In September of 2023, Amazon announced the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition. It looked just like the regular Echo Show 8 smart display/speaker but cost $10 more. Why? Because of its ability to show photos on the home screen for as long as you want—if you signed up for a $2 monthly subscription to Amazon’s PhotosPlus. Now, about a year after releasing the Echo Show 8 Photos Edition, Amazon is announcing that it’s discontinuing PhotosPlus. That means Echo Show 8 Photos Edition users will be forced to see ads instead of their beloved pics.

  • SadSadSatellite @lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    The description of that device and subscription is so fucking stupid I’m not even mad. If you fell for it that hard, you deserve whatever they throw at you.