Pay for your mouse… Forever!

Hanneke Faber, CEO of Logitech wants to sell YOU a "Forever Mouse" that YOU pay... Forever!

This whole process reminded us of another concept that the crypto-bros came up with "Unstoppable-Domains" in which MayVaneDay covered this article exceptionally well. But that's not the same as "Forever" you ask? Well! there are forever domains too! Which is the same scam as Unstoppable. So, there you go!

For the TLDR crowd - Logitech wants to switch to a subscription model for their Drivers. And the reality is NOTHING is forever! Forever violates the laws of life itself. We are self-aware of this so why isn't Logitech? One day this site will be obliterated to ash. After our biological death, the servers will run out of funds and the VPS and DNS will datarot and 404 itself into the sunset. Even our beloved archival services will be attacked by politics or greed and those libraries of Alexandria will burn as well. Then hundreds of years later the next generations of humanity will look upon us as arrogant violent apes laughing at us and then in turn doing the same process all over. Prove us wrong Humanity!

If we interviewed Hanneke Faber, we're pretty darn sure she would walk out or disconnect after 5-10 minutes. Tops.

Read on if you wish to hear more of my diatribes!

What IS the "Forever Mouse"

I will link the Verge article transcript here (External Clear-net Link) for those who want to read it. It's a transcript and like most people interviewing CEOs in the tech industry. There is a LOT of fluff to go through before you get to what the hell Logitech is talking about.

The interviewer is trying to grasp the concept of paying $200 for a product that will get updates 'forever' and that the mouse will last 'forever'.

Imagine it’s like your Rolex. You’re going to really love that. - Hanneke

Well Hanneke, this is difficult to imagine as not all of us have ever owned a Rolex. Regardless of our constraints of imagination. This is still a poor comparison. Rolex watches are supposed to be the very best-engineered watches on the market (Let's go with the Swiss propaganda for the moment and assume it's OLD Rolex. Where it's a Watch that is handed down GENERATION-to-GENERATION! Not forever! but a long ass time!) This CEO is somehow trying to make the connection that although the Forever mouse is "Heavier" (My Corsair M65 mouse is heaver because there are metal weights inside. That's not an indication of quality) the major feature is that of continuous software support while ignoring the hardware aspects of PC mice themselves.

Hardware longevity.

This is the Microsoft Intellemouse 3.0. We used for general and gaming use from 1999 up to 2018. 19 years of service! The Microsoft Intellemouse was not made by Microsoft but subcontracted out to (You guessed it) Logitech. Now did it make it for 19 years without some sort of maintenance? No. We had to take it apart once every 3-4 years to clean the insides out because we're nasty bitches er, general wear and tear of computing for hours at a time. At around year 19, the plastics were beginning to break down with microfractures along the flexible side-buttons and breakage of secure tabs breaking from us taking them apart to clean them each time. If we didn't do any maintenance to that mouse ourselves (which voids the warranty) This mouse would've lasted us 3-5 years before it ended up in the landfill.

Microsoft provided drivers for this mouse back in Windows 98 but after that. We NEVER used software drivers from Microsoft on this thing.

Despite all of this. Logitech should be proud of the Microsoft Intellemouse 3.0. Nineteen years of computing use is a LONG TIME! But guess what? That's 19 years of me not buying a mouse. That's 19 years of not even visiting Microsoft or Logitech websites for them to even allow me to sell myself something new and shiny. Because all four buttons and the wheel work exactly as they should due to the OS adopting the additional buttons for "forward" and "backward" on browsers.

Circling back to what Hanneke is rambling about. She wants the company to not only profit off of the hardware. But the software as well:

I’m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse? - Verge

Possibly. - Hanneke

And that would be the forever mouse? - Verge

Yeah. - Hanneke

So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse. - Verge

Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again, which is not unlike our video conferencing services today. - Hanneke

But it’s a mouse. - Verge

But it’s a mouse, yeah. - Hanneke

I think consumers might perceive those to be very different. - Verge

[Laughs] Yes, but it’s gorgeous. Think about it like a diamond-encrusted mouse. - Hanneke

Dear anyone but Hanneke at Logitech, DO NOT let Hanneke anywhere near the design team!!! Keep her Hellraiser-inspired diamond mouse out of production, please! Humanity's palms will thank you!

The picture above is one of Logitechs competitions which is Corsair. This is the setup we originally went with (and regretted, blog post here, here, and here . Thank god we didn't pay for most of this.) To make software this pretty it requires a lot of development time. As they build this software up. Suddenly a piece of software that is supposed to assist you with your mouse ends up consuming gigs upon gigs of memory and hard drive space because the product wants to be at the front of your desktop. It wants to advertise and it wants to tell you more.

 You've never owned a modern Logitech product S! You're just shitting on this company for no reason with your baseless accusations - Anonymous

The software Logitech wants you to pay FOREVER for.

Just because we've never owned a Logitech product does not mean we've never used a Logitech product.

You would be hard-pressed to be working in any technological career without encountering at least one of Logitech's products. In our case, this company has over 30 of the MX Master 3S series mice and an MX Keys S keyboard. In this company's day-to-day operation. Do you know how much the Logi software is used? It isn't!

The only time this particular company opens this software is to bind the two devices to a single proprietary USB 2.4ghz key to free up a USB port and to cut down on the cross-interference of having two wireless keys so close to each other. After that, the software is closed and forgotten about. Although in logistics defense. You could just get rid fo ALL of the 2.4ghz USB dongles and hook up via Bluetooth. Then you don't need the software at all!

Weight of software.

One of the things about a driver such as a mouse is how much resources it eats up. I've ripped into Corsair on this one and Logitech is not innocent on this either. In Logitech's case. 165Mb of memory usage on just the frontend UX. Close the UX and this goes away. However.

Logitech has a series of background services that are perpetually running if you want them to or not eating up a total of 120 megs. Even if you aren't using some of these options such as Artificial intelligence. This makes us wonder if Logitech is doing the same thing Microsoft Co-Pilot is doing where their AI is equally thirsty for user data and thus, commits spyware motives in the background processes. 120 megs doesn't seem like a whole lot to the average PC user. But bloat is bloat and Logitech can certainly do better if they wanted to.

Between the following directories:

• C:\Program Files\LogiOptionsPlus
• C:\Program Files\Logitech
• C:\ProgramData\LogiOptionsPlus
• C:\ProgramData\Logishrd

Totals out to 1.3GB in size! Why does a program core function need 1.3GB of space on your hard drive just to map buttons, control mouse speed, and communicate via USB 2.4ghz or Bluetooth?

Well, just like Corsair with their knock-off equivalent of Steam. Logitech packages a product with features no user asked for. This circles right back to the Verge changing gears so quickly to Artificial intelligence. A business that Logitech has no reason to get into. You are a peripheral hardware company. Stay in your lane.

What about Ubuntu, Linux,?

Forever apparently is 2-dimensional when it comes to support. So I guess we're shit out of luck.

Blogger help time.

We know the Hanneke is fairly new at their position of running the company. Instead of ragging on all of the things you're doing wrong as a company. How about instead we pivot towards constructive things that a company can do to make things right? You know, In case Hanneke or any other company cares to listen. Or if one of my readers on the dark net decides to get into the business of making their mouse and keyboard. (If you do, leave in the comments below.)

Right to repair.

That's right boys and girls. I'm starting with the very thing large companies despise. The ability to repair their product. Why do they hate this? Because then they're not selling you a $200 mouse! They're instead selling you a $10-30 dollar part. This is why Hanneke is so focused on the software subscription level and calling that 'forever' instead of what counts for Logitech which is the hardware itself.

This is from my Corsair Scimitar blog. Where we miraculously managed to purchase just the plastic shell of this mouse for around $15(USD) and with the removal of a few plastic tapping screws was able to transplant the circuit boards from the old beat-up shell to the new shell. Did Corsair sell this to us? Hell no! We purchased this off of Aliexpress presumably from the plastics injection company that made too much overstock of this part. Replacing this case took about 5 minutes to do and required mostly a simple screwdriver.

In the corporate world. at least at an American small business LLC level. This is ideal. Replacing a case is a repair part and is 100 percent a tax write-off. Not a new purchase that has to slowly be taxed off of the books over 7 years. Now, if that company is large enough they may NOT want to repair it themselves in which case a vendor can come in and exchange keyboards/mice/headsets and refurbish for them. Now suddenly you're helping out local repair shops all across the US which we're rather sure Logitech does not want to do either.

It's environmentally friendly. Throughout the Verges interview with Hanneke, they go through all of the stereotypical talking points about carbon emissions and how they're making strides to reduce their footprint like your typical Californian Silicon Valley business tends to do. The talk is nice but to your customers, your talk is not cheap. How about actually applying those principles? Because by replacing the case of a mouse in the example we gave above. I have saved a circuit board from hitting the landfill. the outside plastics? Mostly ABS and if America had a decent recycling system I could've placed this into the ABS plastics bin.

Replace all of the mechanical parts!

RedDragon, a Chinese keyboard manufacturer started only selling on Amazon. They managed to accomplish this lesson with ease. Anything that has mechanical properties eventually breaks down. Thus, it is possible to design PCBs with sockets allowing end-users to replace mechanical components without the need or skill to solder anything! This can also be possible for mouse buttons as well!

Originally RedDragon did this to sell more mechanical switches to their end-users allowing them to make certain keys stiffer (such as space bars) than others depending on their typing preferences.

In almost every device we've repaired from joysticks, keyboards, and mice, 90 percent of them have always been due to mechanical failure.

Longevity of parts availability.

Just because you CAN repair your product it also means that the parts available to repair your product must be present as well. Currently, since the hardware manufacturer does a terrible job at this. It leads to a lot of people purchasing products from China that may or may not work on your device! The only way to go about this is to find out what happened in iPhone repair.

This means if you want a "FOREVER" mouse. The aftermarket parts must be available... FOREVER! Since we know forever is bullshit. How about instead; We take the Texas Instruments approach to warranty processing and say "Lifetime". The lifetime of the user or the lifetime of the company? That's up to you to decide!

Subscription value.

If you want a subscription to truly have value. At the very least you should take an insurance company model to your products. Even though Logitech has chosen 2-dimensional support of their software by only going to Windows/OSX. Perhaps the hardware aspects of your FOREVER mouse should also have an exchange program so that your mouse is always new. Which... That would increase your carbon footprint responsibility by recycling your old hardware on a company level instead of leaving it up to the consumer. But then you'd be in control of everything and it would reduce having your products fall into grubby hands such as ours now, wouldn't it?

Open source / SDK support.

We understand it might be a pain to support every flavor of Linux out there. So instead, how about you make life a little easier by showing how to access your keyboard or mouse microcontroller instead of sitting back and watching the open-source community reverse engineer it? Or would that take away value from your "Forever" software?

Final thoughts.

The concept of having the 'Forever Mouse' being all about software subscriptions while side-stepping all of the mechanical and generalized hardware issues seems like an almost suicidal view coming from a company that is already underneath immense competition from others in the peripheral market.  Logitech grew its company 50 percent by profiting off of the pandemic. Now that America has declared it over (Rightfully or not) Logitechs CEO is trying to find ways to continue that astronomical growth when in reality it's just not realistic. A subscription service will only be paid if people want such a service. If they want to bind 200+ macros to their mouse or keyboard then perhaps a power user would do so. But the guy running Linux who just wants a good-quality mouse won't. They'll plug or Bluetooth pair it up and be completely fine with default settings.

Some companies actually will not flood their software with a shitty gaming network or artificial intelligence that no one wanted in the first place. One of those is called "RedDragon" and in most cases, if your mouse and/or keyboard is simple enough then you don't even need to install their software at all. Yes, they're Chinese, but so is every other piece of electronics you buy on the market, and thus when you think that way; At least they're honest. As much as many of my friends love their Logitech products for typing stories or playing games. Also, as much as we have personally enjoyed their durability and ingenuity over the years. The next logical step for subscription services is if they can't encourage the user to buy-in to the product naturally. Then they'll force the hardware where you're obligated to use their ecosphere. With as much competition for gaming hardware in general. Hard-locking microcontrollers to software will be the death of Logitech.

The bottom line, Logitech is overplaying its hand in the Mouse/Keyboard market. A market where it's dangerously close to simply MAKE your keyboard and mouse using some Arduino and some PMW3360's. Then 3d print the final shell on a decent printer. At least then you know exactly what's on your firmware instead of it being locked away by some cooperation to black-ice your hardware later.

On that note:

Server protect you.

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