by Jason Snell
Wink to customers: Pay us or your stuff breaks next week
A pretty astounding announcement from Wink, the maker of a smart-home system including an app, hub, and accessories:
In order to provide for development and continued growth, we are transitioning to a $4.99 monthly subscription, starting on May 13, 2020. This fee is designed to be as modest as possible. Your support will enable us to continue providing you with the functionality that you’ve come to rely on, and focus on accelerating new integrations and app features. Should you choose not to sign up for a subscription you will no longer be able to access your Wink devices from the app, with voice control or through the API, and your automations will be disabled on May 13.
Companies should do what they can to stay in business. If Wink goes under, its products will also break. (This is the problem with buying any product that requires an app or service to keep it running—app rot is real.)
Ideally, though, a company would correctly price its products in the first place so that it could keep operating—and maybe consider an ongoing subscription tier from the start if single purchases can’t cover all expenses.
It’s the deadline of a single week that I find incredible. That’s either a sign of desperation or malevolence; either one would make me hesitant to pay them a dime.
[via Rob Griffiths]