All your IoT devices are doomed

RV_ · July 13, 2016

OK for the term explanation IoT means the "Internet of Things" and they are doing some strange things with the things they sold, sell or will sell to us.

Excerpt:

Until we look to emulate the open models of Wi-Fi and PCs, IoT will always be a source of never-ending e-waste.

First, it was Aether's smart speaker, the Cone. Then, it was the Revolv smart hub. Now, it appears NetGear's connected home wireless security cameras, VueZone, is next on the list.

I'm sure I've left out more than a few others that have slipped under the radar. It seems like every month an Internet of Things (IoT) device becomes abandonware after its cloud service is discontinued.

Many of these devices once disconnected from the cloud become useless. They can't be remotely managed, and some of them stop functioning as standalone (or were never capable of it in the first place). Are these products going end-of-life too soon? What are we to do about this endless pile of e-waste that seems to be the inevitable casualty of the connected-device age?

The problem is not as simple as IoTs and the companies supporting them going belly-up. In fact it's more along the lines of the vendors themselves being willfully negligent in providing a path to community support for these devices and penalizing their early adopters.

Despite its rather high-profile shuttering, Revolv's parent, Nest (a subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet) is solvent, albeit in the midst of some cultural turbulence in the wake of its founder leaving the company.

NetGear isn't going out of business. It's just financially inconvenient for them to maintain VueZone, because they've replaced it with Arlo, which, while arguably a superior service, is a forced obsolescence move that is going to put a foul taste in their customers' mouths.

It isn't just IoT either. It is anything that is dependent on cloud services -- which provide an update mechanism.

This includes very mainstream products like Apple's iPad, which has earlier models that are about to find themselves unable to update to iOS 10.

For example, the iPad 2 -- one of the most popular models affected -- was on sale from March 2011 to as late as March 2014. It has about a 17-percent share of the extant iPad population.

Without the iOS 10 update, there is the risk that those older iPads might not be able to update third-party apps from the App Store at some point in the future. Developers may be forced to drop legacy device compatibility in their apps due to Apple's stringent OS version compatibility policies that have presented similar issues in the past.

They won't become "unusable", but a lot of functionality is in jeopardy. And there are a lot of these devices in existence. If you take into account the other models affected along with the iPad 2, such as the original iPad mini and the iPad third-generation, that accounts for about 40 percent of all iPad devices in the wild that cannot take an iOS 10 update.

As an industry, I think we need to step back and think about the realistic lifetimes of IoT and smart devices, and what can be done to extend their lifetimes when they are at risk of abandonment.

The expected lifetime of an IoT device should probably be based on the type of device. I like to think of these devices as belonging to three, distinct groups: endpoints, hubs, and clients.

An endpoint is a device managed by something else. These are devices that if unmanaged should still be able to function without a working cloud service. Examples include light switches, light bulbs, lighting fixtures, alarm system and sensors, smoke detectors, sockets, thermostats, fans, air conditioners, and video cameras, as well as major home appliances like refrigerators.

For the most part, endpoints are single-purpose devices. Because of their simplicity, there should be the expectation that they are also the longest-lived, with service lives of 10 years at least.

For that service life to be a reality, the management protocols need to be open. Many endpoints today use Wi-Fi as their communications mechanism, but others on the market are starting to embrace Bluetooth Low Energy.

While the Wi-Fi (as well as the overlaying TCP/IP protocol stack) and Bluetooth Low Energy specs are open in and of themselves, the management APIs and profiles used by these endpoints are not. You also have manufacturer-specific differences in the way they implement their management protocols over other wireless communication standards, such as Zigbee and Z-Wave."

Believe it or not there is much more in the article, and more explanations to bring you up to date on what IoT is and means to us all, here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/all-your-iot-devices-are-doomed/?ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=19724681974700635514865380622813

DJW · July 13, 2016

RV

Thanks for the link. I read the whole article but am not sure I understand why my iPad 2 and iPad 3 will not be able to upgrade to IOS 10 when it comes out? We don't use the cloud services for anything. Is it because the 2 and 3 will not take the upgrade or something to do with using the cloud?

Thanks

Dennis

RV_ · July 13, 2016

Sorry Dennis,

I don't do Apple just pass along articles my friends with them might find interesting.

Try this article about Apple support: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/06/goodbye-a5-ios-10-ends-support-for-iphone-4s-ipad-2-and-more/

DJW · July 14, 2016

RV

Thanks that link did the trick. The was the answer I was looking for. I am not a Apple user either. Linda has had 2 iPads a Gen 2 and now a Gen 3. I have her old 2nd Gen that I use 1 app on. That is Carista which allows me to customize the settings on our Lexus LS 460L.

Thanks again

Dennis