Amazon is finally turning its Echo Show into a proper digital photo frame, but you have to pay extra for the privilege. Announced at its fall hardware event this week, the new Echo Show 8 Photos Edition costs $10 more than the standard edition of the new smart display but lets you make your photos the “primary home screen content.”
The Show 8 Photos Edition is coming this Fall for $159.99 and has all the same features as the new Echo Show 8 (third-gen). But for the extra $10, you get a six-month subscription to Amazon’s new PhotosPlus service, which enables this new “enhanced photo mode.”
They can fuck right off with that nonsense. I don’t have any Amazon smart tech in the house and, unless someone figures out a way to hack it, I never will.
Or unless it can be run offline.
They’ve presumably got ways around that, like buffering ads.
You know, it’s kinda unrelated, but I’m really impressed with this seeming bum-rush into enshittifying as a service. I really thought they’d at least wait until the capacity to own things physically and privately (like Blu-rays) had largely been shut down, the supply chains destroyed, and the knowledge lost before they started trying to really twist people’s nipples. Yet, it’s still easily possible for people to just say fuck it and order a Blu-ray instead of buying a digital copy or having a subscription, and they’re cranking up the prices and cranking down the service like they think they’ve got the market cornered.
You know, it’s kinda unrelated
Oh I expect it’s all related. With the leak of Microsoft’s plans to do away with disc drives, you get the feeling like all the companies have reached the point that they feel like they have you locked in and they try and leverage that into getting you on a subscription.
Excuse me, what the fuck?
Oh hell no, that’s it. I’ve bought my last windows machine. Linux, here I come.
Coincidentally, I was just reading an interview with Yanis Varoufakis about his new book Technofeudalism and how we are all serfs just paying rent. It seemed very appropriate for both topics.
I’ve bought my last windows machine. Linux, here I come.
I.switched to Ubuntu a while back and, barring the occasional issue, it has worked out well.
It’ll be a tiny billboard at no extra charge in no time, don’t worry.
