The other day, in Ireland, in our innovation center there, one of our team members showed me a forever mouse with the comparison to a watch. This is a nice watch, not a super expensive watch, but I’m not planning to throw that watch away ever. So why would I be throwing my mouse or my keyboard away if it’s a fantastic-quality, well-designed, software-enabled mouse. The forever mouse is one of the things that we’d like to get to.
What made the mouse a forever mouse?
It was a little heavier, it had great software and services that you’d constantly update, and it was beautiful. So I don’t think we’re necessarily super far away from that.
I’m still stuck on, “You’re going to sell me a mouse once and it’s going to have ongoing software updates forever.”
Imagine it’s like your Rolex. You’re going to really love that.
I’m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse?
Possibly.
And that would be the forever mouse?
Yeah.
So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse.
Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again, which is not unlike our video conferencing services today.
But it’s a mouse.
But it’s a mouse, yeah.
I think consumers might perceive those to be very different.
[Laughs] Yes, but it’s gorgeous. Think about it like a diamond-encrusted mouse.
The forever mouse, and the forever mouse could be the mouse that you keep and we just send you software updates, but it could also be the mouse that you turn in at Best Buy and we get it back or Best Buy takes it back and refurbs and resells it, which is another business model. We’re starting to do that but not yet at the scale that we need to.
Are you ready for subscription level replacement parts?
It would be a shame if your scrollwheel would die every 3 months and be a $30 replacement before $10 shipping.
Replacement buttons every year or so…
They want your business forever. They can’t do that for free, they need you to keep paying them regularly.
Covid fucked this country up in so many ways. Most of us are forever renters in fucking everything
This makes the 1776 cosplaying characters extremely funny. Americans are so subservient to anything capital says, and again, have been since Covid
I’ve yet to see a subscription that doesn’t abuse it’s customers. Time and time again predatory practices are employed by massive multibillion dollar companies like adobe, amazon, planetfitness (and all of the f’ing gym memberships…)
This is not to mention all of the predatory landlords who simply live off of the hard work of others akin to slave ownership. Primary housing shouldn’t be an investment. If you want to rent a home the renters should become mandatory purchasers and get proportional equity to how much money you put in it, a system can be divised to sell shares in housing that you can sell out.
Fuck rent. Same goes for the telcos ‘renting’ services to us. We pay for the subsidies to put up the fiber lines anyway, why are we paying again for them? The real costs are a small fraction of what we pay.