Topic: The 1.7.1604 firmware update: was there a good reason for this?

Hello,

Is the reason for the 1.7.1604 firmware update as appallingly straightfoward as it first appears?  That is, the update is strictly concerned with deliberately bricking the Dash, with no other redeeming features?

Or, is there, perhaps, some other, user-friendly explanation for the forced update that I have overlooked entirely?

I ask because I don't recall ever hearing of such a blatant, anti-consumer move on the part of an electronics manufacturer.  I must be missing something, surely?

Re: The 1.7.1604 firmware update: was there a good reason for this?

I think you've about got it.

Cleaning up any loose bits and bytes.

Re: The 1.7.1604 firmware update: was there a good reason for this?

Well, I think that's a *little* unfair.  My understanding of Sony's intent was to turn the device into a simple clock, which is marginally better than just a cryptic error message due to the lack of backend servers.

The "bricking", I think, was just a matter of bad QA - not all devices bricked and it's possible that Sony didn't see that behavior internally.  I think the 1604 release just thrown together too quickly and wasn't tested enough, because dash was, after all, a "dead" product.  To their credit, it's more than many other companies would have bothered to do, even if it was fumbled.

I think the Playstation/OtherOS situation was actually more egregious - the Playstation 3 was an ongoing supported platform that was purchased by many people just for that actively promoted feature, and it was removed from devices that could still support it, citing "security concerns", though the feature had been there for eight years.

TI recently disabled a long-standing feature that allowed the execution of C and Assembly programs on some models of calculators for a similar "security concerns" reason.