In one of the dumbest moves since BMW tried to make Apple CarPlay a subscription service, Toyota in their infinite wisdom has apparently decided that it’s a great idea for them to charge a subscription to let owners of Toyota vehicles start their cars using the key fobs:
A Toyota spokesperson confirmed to The Drive that if a 2018 or later Toyota is equipped with Toyota’s Remote Connect functions, the vehicle must be enrolled in a valid subscription in order for the key fob to start the car remotely. To be clear, what we’re talking about is the proximity-based RF remote start system, where you press a button on the fob to start the car while outside of it within a certain distance—say, from your front door to warm up your vehicle in the driveway on a cold morning before you get in. Your fob uses radio waves to communicate with the car, and no connection back to Toyota’s servers is needed. But the function will not work without a larger Remote Connect subscription.
This is frankly mind blowingly stupid. Why? It’s not as if I’m trying to start my car from my phone or Apple Watch. I can see them wanting to charge for that and I wouldn’t bat an eye if they did try to make a buck or two from that. But I’m talking about using the factory supplied key fob that is based on an RF radio. This tech has been around since the age of the dinosaurs. There’s no way on God’s green Earth that they should make you pay for that. In short, this is a very cynical attempt by Toyota to make a few bucks on a recurring basis.
All this does for me is ensure that I will never purchase a Toyota product. Just like I removed BMW off my list of cars that I would like to own. And I am going to go out on a limb and say that many other consumers will feel the same way.
Roku Users Livid As Roku OS 10.5 Breaks HomeKit, AirPlay, & More…. And No Fix Is In Sight
Posted in Commentary with tags Roku on December 18, 2021 by itnerdHell hath no fury like a scorned Apple user. And a situation where Roku drops Roku OS 10.5 on Roku device owners, which then promptly breaks HomeKit support and AirPlay support illustrates this. Reports of this can be found on Roku’s own forums and Reddit, and what makes matters worse is that Roku’s support people appear to have completely lost the plot by seemingly providing rather useless troubleshooting advice. That has led to lots of people being beyond mad. And take it from me, getting Apple users mad is the last thing that a company should ever do. But the problems extend beyond Apple users. Another thread on Roku’s own forums as well as a story on TechCrunch illustrate that 10.5 breaks other functionality.
To be fair to Roku is allowing users to roll back to Roku OS 10.0 which works fine. But this was being handled on a one to one basis rather than the company simply rolling back all Roku users to a stable version that works. At least until TechCrunch posted their story. All of a sudden these instructions appeared to allow users to roll back to a stable version. What’s interesting about this post is that this problem supposedly affects “A small portion of users”. Many of whom if you browse their forums complain about silence from the company when it comes to these issues. Which when a company does that, is never, ever going to end well for said company.
This is the time of year where people buy a lot of electronics including new TVs. And if someone uses the search engine of their choice to find out what the best brand of TV is for their money, I am pretty sure that they will find lots of complaints about Westinghouse, TCL, Sharp and Hisense TVs that are powered by Roku OS. Which means that sales of Westinghouse, TCL, Sharp and Hisense TVs will likely take a dive. Because people will just avoid Roku powered TVs and make a move towards Android TV products.
The bottom line is that Roku released a version of their OS that is buggy, buggy, buggy. And now their users are paying the price. There’s no end to this in sight, and the lack of real, detailed, and honest communication is hurting Roku’s cause. Frankly, the longer this goes on, the more likely that Roku who sells more streaming devices than anyone else is going to lose that marketshare to others such as Google. And they will only have themselves to blame.
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