Proprietary Abuses by Microsoft
-
Microsoft’s Third-Party Accessory Policy Does More Harm Than Good
2023 has been a year of baffling decisions, whether it’s the fact that the industry itself is making more money than ever while suffering unprecedented layoffs and studio closures, or companies like Unity trying to angle for more money than ever. On the surface, Microsoft’s decision to nuke third-party accessories on the Xbox doesn’t sound like the worst decision in the world, but in truth, it’s doing more harm than good.
Over the past few weeks, many Xbox users have been reporting seeing an error message regarding their third-party accessories, with the message noting that the user would only have two weeks to use their current accessory before it’d be blocked from the console. Many assumed this was a malfunction, but a recent update to a Microsoft support page confirms it. The support page states: “Microsoft and other licensed Xbox hardware partners’ accessories are designed and manufactured with quality standards for performance, security, and safety. Unauthorized accessories can compromise the gaming experience on Xbox consoles (Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S).”
-
Microsoft Suddenly Decides To Prevent Third Party Accessories From Working On Xbox
Welcome to the modern world, where the thing you bought that worked a particular way at the time you purchased it isn’t actually fully owned you, which means the thing you bought could work totally differently tomorrow! This dystopia for consumers was perhaps most famously demonstrated to exist when Sony famously removed the ability to install other operating systems on its PlayStation 3 years and years ago, breaking functionality that some percentage of buyers specifically wanted at the time of purchase. Once that happened, a billion other examples came to be, especially in the technology space.
-
OpenAI Signals That It'll Destroy Startups Using Its Tech to Build Products
OpenAI has emerged as one of the forerunners in the ongoing AI race, building on the immense popularity of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to gaining a tremendous amount of influence in the burgeoning industry.
Now, the company has sent out a clear message to other startups in its ecosystem: if you're using OpenAI's products to make a buck, we might soon rip the rug out from under your feet.
Specifically, OpenAI released a new update to ChatGPT over the weekend that allows subscribers to upload PDFs to ChatGPT Plus, letting the chatbot summarize their content. While that may be a boon to office workers who are saddled with poring over endless PDFs, Insider points out that the move is a death stroke for businesses that have built products that use OpenAI's system to help customers process PDFs.
It's a stark reminder that Big Tech's decisions can easily vaporize smaller players — perhaps more so than ever in the ever-shifting field of AI entrepreneurship.