Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "You will subscribe instead of own and you will like it!" video.

3:00 The fun part is that even if you don't rent the "turn the real wheels more" feature, you still get to pay for all the extra ball joints needed for the feature. That said, according to sources I've seen, the S-class Mercedes does have 4 wheel steering always but the rear wheel rotation angle is limited by the computer unless you pay extra. I fully agree that when you purchase hardware, you should be able to use the all of that hardware. I'm not particulary green but even I think building things that have hardware features disabled is just too wasteful.
58
@Fatty420 I would say that all you need is full warranty for the lifetime of the product for all software that comes preinstalled. That would take care of computers, smartphones, cars, tractors, etc. If the manufacturer wants to avoid covering for warranty, they would have to separate the hardware from the software and provide end users with means to install alternative software. (Of course, law should be written in a way that prevents manufacturer from having hardcoded RSA public key in the firmware that refuses to run software not signed by the respective secret key. Maybe just declare any cryptography in the firmware as the software that needs to be covered by warranty?)
1
@schroedingershat7912 Even though I would like to see all software come with source code, I can accept closed source software. However, closed source software inside hardware is just too bad concept and manufacturers should be made to take full responsibility if they want to go that route. When you force full separation of hardware and software, you cannot cripple the hardware that much anymore.
1
@acctsys If you have already manufactured the part and created all the software, why would you want to sell that product as a crippled product? You could either sell it with all the features on the same price, or stop selling the inferior product and raise the price. However, that wouldn't require you to increase the price to previous premium product, just so that you can still keep the overall profit you want.
1
@jmodified I think you could make even more money by selling more of the better product (the product with nothing disabled) with slightly above base model price – price aware customers would look at the list of included "options" and would accept higher sticker price better. We're not seeing Apple selling software crippled iPhones and they do seem to be making a lot of profit!
1
10:10 I vote with my wallet by purchasing e.g. older smartphones instead of getting new ones. However, I don't know if that really helps to change things because when I use something second hand, the original buyer still gets some money back from his or her purchase. If nobody paid for any second hand smartphones, we might have products with longer lifespans.
1