As end date for Hive IoT announced, is the end of cloud connected stuff in sight ?

I hope not mapj1 ! I have tons of cloud connected hardware in my house. 

Thankfully I don't own any Hive products but we did have a similar issue a couple of years ago with Sonos who first announced they were stopping support for their older products but then backtracked rather sharpish after the flood of outraged customer feedback. I do have a number of Sonos speakers around my home, three of which would have ceased to work if they had stopped supporting them. 

I wonder if Hive will also reconsider given the feedback their customers have been giving them?  The amount of e-waste a decision like that causes is probably more an environmental issue than keeping it going surely? 

I hope not mapj1 ! I have tons of cloud connected hardware in my house. 

Thankfully I don't own any Hive products but we did have a similar issue a couple of years ago with Sonos who first announced they were stopping support for their older products but then backtracked rather sharpish after the flood of outraged customer feedback. I do have a number of Sonos speakers around my home, three of which would have ceased to work if they had stopped supporting them. 

I wonder if Hive will also reconsider given the feedback their customers have been giving them?  The amount of e-waste a decision like that causes is probably more an environmental issue than keeping it going surely? 

At the risk of going all Grumpy Old Man this is why I try to avoid cloud based systems as much as I possibly can. It's a great business model for the supplier - it ties you into their products and services which is a much better business model than selling bits of electronics where it's very difficult to make much margin. But as soon as the supplier decides there's a more profitable market elsewhere it's going to jump - leaving you, as you say, with e-waste.

I deliberately chose a non-smart TV when we recently upgraded our TV (much to our children's annoyance that now they've left home we've finally bought a largish HD TV - mainly though because of our failing eyesight!!). I can plug our £25 Roku box in and if Roku go bust or change markets I can plug someone else's small cheap box in, rather than having to risk scrapping a valuable (in environmental as well as cost issues) TV screen. But it was pretty difficult to find one - I got it by buying a "last year's model".

I wouldn't like to guess how this will all pan out, my instinct is that we are now so used to throw-away electronics that it will be taken for granted that this is just how life is. it's a very different way of thinking to the way I grew up with. Rather than buying a chunk of engineering to own and use it, it's buying a chunk of engineering that gives you access to buy into an ongoing service: the chunk of engineering itself being as disposable as a train ticket.

Part of the answer probably is to toughen up the WEEE directive so that at least the cloud service provider has an environmental responsibility to proactively manage the e-waste it creates if it effectively obsoletes it (although I don't see this happening in practice as I'm sure Apple etc would lobby very hard against it!) The other side, as you say, is that depends how much the companies mind upsetting their consumers...and the last 30 years have shown that their marketing departments have been very successful in convincing us (or most of us) that it's a great idea to progress by throwing our perfectly good electronics away after a year or two... 

Oh dear, I have gone GOM...

"I used to live in a small town in the deep south of Italy called Potenza. It’s the ankle of the boot, an odd place, destroyed by the 1980 Naples earthquake and rebuilt, so some of it looked historic and some of it a concrete carbuncle. Half the houses were up a small mountain, half down the bottom.

One year a politician running for mayor rather excitedly promised to build an airport to boost the town’s reputation and fortunes (it is the poorest region in Italy). He won and delivered on his pledge despite pleas that no one really wanted to fly to Potenza.

They were right — I never saw a flight land or take off.

That mayor lost the next election, but the new one promised an overhaul of the road system and promptly splashed out on high-tech traffic management.

But the vastly expensive contract went to a dubious firm and when the traffic lights were turned on they went haywire, causing huge jams. They were switched off and never worked again.

A third mayor then came in and built an escalator network linking the top of the town to the bottom. Its hundreds of meters of travelators were fun to ride but no one used them — they were all driving, particularly because there were no traffic lights holding them up.

History is full of the follies of politicians who are often so blinded by the virtues of their scheme that they fail to hear practical concerns. Which brings me to smart meters: the outdoor escalator system of UK policy.

In theory smart meters are a simple and sensible idea. In a cost of living crisis they should really be having their moment, helping you to see what energy you use and to budget and cut back.

Right from the start though there were problems. The displays stopped working, meters malfunctioned, those who switched tariffs found that their meters went dumb. Millions were wasted on installing redundant technology.

But the completely justified concerns of consumers were dismissed as technophobia by the regulator, Ofgem, and Smart Energy GB, the propaganda body packed with zealots who cultishly cheerlead for this scheme. If they had actually stopped and heard about the genuine problems, some of the expensive mistakes could have been stopped.

Instead Smart Energy GB spent tens of millions on advertising and bungled communications, and acted aggressively towards journalists who reported households’ legitimate complaints.

You can trace all the problems with smart meters back to Ed Miliband, who capitulated to the lobbying of British Gas when he allowed suppliers to be put in charge of installation, not the networks.

British Gas’s demand was purely one of self-interest. It even said this would allow it to obtain a competitive advantage which it would use to “acquire and retain more customers”

Other suppliers such as Scottish Power pointed out that actually what would happen was that, without one single standard technology installed by the networks, the scheme would run into trouble. How right that has proved to be.

British people are not technophobes. We have embraced digital innovation far more than our European neighbours, yet their smart meter programmes have been faster and less troublesome because they did not put self-interested suppliers in charge.

But we are where we are.

Three things need to happen now. First, Smart Energy GB should be wound down: it’s a pointless and expensive body.

Second, energy companies should immediately replace all displays and/or meters that are not functioning, as they are legally obliged to do. Where customers have run up bigger bills because displays are wrong then energy suppliers should be liable and Ofgem should begin fining them.

Finally, installations should stop until all tech is up to date and standardised.

It’s time to stop chucking good money after bad and fix this broken project before it becomes another folly of vain politicians.