PELOTON BRICKS BIKES

Internet of Things has a problem

IF YOU HAVE a Flywheel exercise bike, you’ll have noticed it has stopped doing all the fancy Internet functions—no more live streaming classes at home. Flywheel launched its Peloton rival in 2017, and has an avid following. However, it has lost a case of patent infringement with Peloton, which claimed that Flywheel had copied its Leaderboard, where users are ranked against—which it had. After that, the service was no more. Peloton is offering some comfort: It’s offered to swap your Flywheel bike for a refurbished Peloton one. You’re out of luck if you bought your bike with finance, though, in which case you now own a rather expensive ordinary exercise bike. Flywheel still runs studio sessions, but the at-home service is dead.

This isn’t an isolated event. Earlier in the year, cable company Charter decided it didn’t want to run its Spectrum smart home security service any more, so switched it off, and walked away. All its devices were proprietary, so everything was dead, leaving your house dotted with dumb sensors and cameras. Customers were offered discounts on similar products from Amazon or Adobe, but nothing like a full refund. Last December, Sonos bricked speakers destined to be upgraded, much to people’s annoyance, as they had to throw away perfectly good gear. In 2017, Logitech killed its Harmony Link service unless you upgraded, and a year later it bricked those upgrades if they connected to other devices. In 2014, Google killed Revolv’s smart home hub, after it bought the company two years earlier. Occasionally, it gets personal; a Garadget smart garage doors customer left an unflattering online review, and found his service suspended.

As an increasing number of devices get connected, you become vulnerable to the whims and fortunes of the companies you bought them from. Hardware comes with a warranty, Internet services do not.