Company case

Nest

Three months' notice on a home alarm the customer had paid for

Planned obsolescence Right to repair Internet of Things (IoT)

Nest appears across eight chapters of Tangibles as the archetypal connected home device, from the thermostat that dissolved a gadget into a feature of the home to the design lessons of its packaging and interface. Chapter 19 is where it becomes a warning.

In 2024 Google de-licensed Nest Secure, the home alarm system, with three months' notice. The book files it beside John Deere's parts pairing, HP's consumable authentication and Humane's server shutdown: different mechanisms, one design. The consumer buys an object, the manufacturer retains control of it, and the object stops working when the manufacturer decides.

The chapter argues the Nest Secure shutdown is the template for the next wave of disputes, and that courts are increasingly unwilling to accept that discontinued absolves a vendor of responsibility. Its prescription is a maintainability score before shipping, a written commitment to spare parts and software updates for a defined period, and a decision, made on purpose, about which parts are paired.

The takeaway. Write the support period down before launch, in public. If the product cannot outlive the service, say so where the customer can read it.

Where it appears in the book

Chapter 19 — preview and sources
Chapter 3 — preview and sources

Paraphrased from Tangibles: How Software Turns Hardware into Platforms (2026). Sources for every figure are on the reference pages.

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