It’s not entirely surprising when a company chooses to stop paying for the upkeep and continued development of an app for a product it’s no longer making money on
How much fucking upkeep can an app require to operate a pair of shoes?
Inevitably what happens after 5 years is that someone reports that the app doesn’t work well with a newer version of iOS or Android, and the person that led the engineering on it is gone, because much of your engineering org has turned over after 5 years.
Then a new person jumps into the old project, finds out that it’s had 1 active user last year, then they question why they have to spend a week bug fixing something for one end user.
If something requires an “app” and a connection to “the cloud” for basic functionality, don’t buy it. This sort of abandonment by the manufacturer will always happen. Maybe it will last longer. Maybe it will be next week. But once the company has your money, the last thing they want to do is to spend any of that money providing you with support.
what if you like the feature and are okay with just using it while you can?
Its still stupid. No reason there is no embedded web interface. That is such an easy thing to do. Like routers have been doing for ages.
what if you don’t even know what that stuff is or how to use it even if it were available?
Then it still doesn’t take away anything from you. How would an additional embedded web based control panel impact you negatively? If you don’t use it just don’t use it. But it ensures longevity and makes the device entirely self-contained.
People who bought these are fucking idiots and they deserve much worse then their stupid fucking smart shoes turning into abandonware.
Maybe we wouldn’t have so much shit in landfills if those idiots didn’t gobble up any piece of trash someone wants to sell them.
I could see handicapped people being interested in these. Fuck then I guess right.