Amazon Shuts Down Halo Division, Discontinues All Devices (theverge.com) 26
According to The Verge, Amazon is shuttering its health-focused Halo division. All three Halo products will be discontinued and portions of the Halo team will be laid off. From the report: "We have made the difficult decision to wind down the Halo program, which will result in role reductions," Melissa Cha, Amazon's VP of smart home and health, told staffers in an email obtained by The Verge. "More recently, Halo has faced significant headwinds, including an increasingly crowded segment and an uncertain economic environment. Although our customers love many aspects of Halo, we must prioritize resources and maximize benefits to customers and the long-term health of the business."
"We continually evaluate the progress and potential of our products to deliver customer value, and we regularly make adjustments based on those assessments," Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt told The Verge in an email. "We recently made the difficult decision to stop supporting Amazon Halo effective July 31, 2023. We are incredibly proud of the invention and hard work that went into building Halo on behalf of our customers, and our priorities are taking care of our customers and supporting our employees." The company says it will refund customers who bought a Halo devices or accessory band in the last 12 months. "All unused prepaid Halo subscription fees will be refunded, and users will no longer be charged," adds The Verge. Early adopters, like myself, are out of luck.
In related news, Amazon kicked off another round of layoffs today, impacting its cloud computing and human resources divisions.
"We continually evaluate the progress and potential of our products to deliver customer value, and we regularly make adjustments based on those assessments," Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt told The Verge in an email. "We recently made the difficult decision to stop supporting Amazon Halo effective July 31, 2023. We are incredibly proud of the invention and hard work that went into building Halo on behalf of our customers, and our priorities are taking care of our customers and supporting our employees." The company says it will refund customers who bought a Halo devices or accessory band in the last 12 months. "All unused prepaid Halo subscription fees will be refunded, and users will no longer be charged," adds The Verge. Early adopters, like myself, are out of luck.
In related news, Amazon kicked off another round of layoffs today, impacting its cloud computing and human resources divisions.
PR speak (Score:4, Insightful)
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I just wish that one day a VP would just say, "It wasn't selling well and we've decided to quit throwing money at it."
Agreed. Much better than "We're incredibly proud of this thing we're shitcanning."
Re:PR speak (Score:4)
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I'd argue that Amazon is also not doing themselves any favors.
Because, you see, I've definitely seen enough "servers shutting down, services ending" for hardware devices people bought that should be able to operate without said remote services that I'm extremely cautious about ever buying any of them, if I expect normal appliance lives out of them (IE 10+ years).
While I'm definitely unusual, I can see that there's probably a much larger pool of people getting burned, or hearing about others getting burned,
Gee, your glorified watch needed "the Cloud" (Score:2)
Who would've guessed it'd stop working for no particularly important reason one day and you'd have to throw it on the landfill?
I just bought a $30 aluminum moko pot to make not-really-espresso on a stove burner. Wonder if it'd make better coffee if it needed Somebody Else's Computerâ?
Re: Gee, your glorified watch needed "the Cloud" (Score:3)
And I wonder when /. will finally get Unicode (TM)
We got your data... (Score:1)
...so we don't need the service any more.
This is why (Score:2)
Any and all products that are tied to the internet/cloud is complete garbage and should be avoided at all costs.
Not just smart devices, but OS's like Windows 10/11 and things like steam, and really any and all IoT/cloud crap.
Things like phones, well given without a network a phone can't be a phone anyways, but still pisses me off that I cant select a non google provided for storage/etc.
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What's an (Apple?) Halo? (Score:3)
I'm typing this on my Mac Mini, with my Macbook Pro sitting next to it. My iPhone 13 and Airpod Pros are in front of me. So is the iPad I bought about 10 months ago. I have an old iPod on the shelf here, too.
I've been programming since 1973 so have used many computers. I used the Apple II when it was new, but the first computer I owned myself was the Mac SE.
Now, the last time I was in immersive 3D VR was about 45 minutes last night before bed. (I'm just guessing this might have something to do with VR because I saw the word "band" in the article. However, I do not have an iWatch or other fitness device, if that's what it's about.)
I don't have any idea what a "Halo" is and have never heard of it. I suspect that fact may have something to do with the product's cancellation.
Re: What's an (Apple?) Halo? (Score:2)
Yes, I was confused by the story too: I was wondering what on earth Amazon had to do with Microsoft's Halo franchise. Having since read about the Halo wristband though, and I can see why it wasn't successful.
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Sheesh, GAL
Can we jailbreak it? (Score:3)
Where's the news for nerds? I want to know if we can jailbreak these devices. If so, I'd love to get my hands on a "bricked" fitness band for real cheap. All these other comments about "the cloud" and "the economy" are just super boring, NPC type responses we see in the comments for literally every story, and I wish they'd stop.
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is it really that expensive to maintain? (Score:1)
If they stopped selling new devices and simply kept the software frozen... They (Amazon) literally offer the data centers the back end can run on and they still get the benefit of the data collected and all it would cost is the surplus capacity in a data center to maintain access for existing customers. So instead of F'ing tons of clients and shitting on their brand and any prospects of someone trusting them for support for their own devices past 1 year, they could have spun the unit down intelligently. O
Re: is it really that expensive to maintain? (Score:2)
Can't they sell it instead of just killing it? They are burning customer trust by killing products.
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Unfortunately (Score:2)
Master Chief could not be reached for comment.
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I believe that this t (Score:1)
OMG (Score:1)