Up in my loft, I have an Atari 2600 games console, which launched all the way back in 1977. Occasionally, I’ll bring it down and put on a few games. It’s always fun to make the kids play ET (launched in December 1982), struggling to comprehend how this could be considered a game (to be fair, that was the opinion at the time).
I mention this because the original iteration of Atari is long gone, but at no point did I get a knock on the door with an engineer, screwdriver in hand, there to take the console and game out of service. Thanks to the beauty of physical media, my Atari 2600 and ET game still work today, 43 years after the game launched. They might break at some point, but it will be due to age.
Back to the modern day, hardware is tied to cloud software and apps to the point that, when a company fails or pulls out of a market, perfectly functioning hardware can be bricked.
No more WeMo
The Belkin WeMo range is a good example of this. Once a leader in smart plugs, the WeMo range also included other devices, such as a motion sensor and some LED bulbs. But with the cloud service shutting down, the bulk of the range will become useless.
According to WeMo’s official statement, a long list of products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app or third-party services as of today, 31 January 2026, when support will also end.
After this, there are five products that will continue to work with HomeKit: Wemo Smart Light Switch 3-Way , Wemo Stage Smart Scene Controller, Wemo Smart Plug with Thread, and Wemo Smart Video Doorbell Camera. You won’t get any software updates for these products, however.
Some of the discontinued products are quite old, dating back to 2015, but some were only launched at the end of 2023. None of the products are as old as my Atari 2600.
To have perfectly functioning hardware but to lose the software layer that makes them work is hugely frustrating, not to mention it could be expensive to replace products with alternatives. It doesn’t seem fair.
Not just Belkin
The issue isn’t just Belkin, but realistically with any company that makes hardware that requires software to work. At any point, that lovely bit of smart home tech could be written off.
Google is, perhaps, the most notorious company for doing this, famously killing off earlier iterations of the Nest Thermostat, and who knows how long the newer models will last for?
There needs to be better exit planning
In some cases, kindly people have taken up the challenge of supporting hardware. There are some open source projects that will get your older Nest Thermostat working properly again, which is good news for anyone who doesn’t want to spend money and has the time and technical knowledge to install the new software.
But this kind of thing should become compulsory. It’s fine if companies no longer want to support a product because it’s old or, because of financial reasons, have to pull out of a market, but breaking perfectly good products should not be allowed.
When Bose announced that its cloud support for SoundTouch speakers would come to an end, it also announced that it would bring a final app update that would support local control without the cloud. And the company is opening up its technical specifications so that developers can build their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features.
Sure, you lose some functionality that was available directly from the speakers, and there will be no updates (security or otherwise), but the basic core features of the product will remain, so you can continue to stream music to them from your phone.
The question is, why isn’t this mandatory? Smart devices should have a default local control mode so that, in the event of a shutdown, basic functionality remains, and tools that allow open-source developers to maintain products should be made available. Simply being able to brick devices so that they’re only fit for landfill is not OK.
