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r00t writes:
"Taking a page out of Lexmark playbook, the Keurig company, famous for it's one-cup coffee making system, now comes with new and improved 100% DRM. Apparently, Keurig is upset over re-usable third-party 'coffee pods' which allow the consumer to escape the Keurig throw-away models which carry a retail price 5% to 25% more. Keurig's CEO, Brian Kelly referred to the move as 'game-changing performance.' Perhaps this will finally be the year of Linux on the Coffe Maker?"
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DRM: Coming to a Coffee Maker Near You
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Monday March 03 2014, @07:23PM
They must be banking on the Keurig name going forward and that enough people would be willing to lock themselves into that solution and give up any third-party vendors. The CEO says the next version will have "game changing" technology and expects that a large number of current customers will choose to move up to the next version. I don't know if coffee makers are like game consoles. We have a Keurig at work, and it works very well for us. We chipped in and got the cheapest model, and we use third-party K-cups, but I can't see any reason we'd want to change our system and be required to use more expensive coffee.
I understand Green Mountain's patent ran out and now they actually have competition in the K-cup market, so I guess they feel they need some way to lock out the competition again, but my bet is that they'll end up marginalizing themselves to a certain extent. Let's face it though, in that market they are the Microsoft of the 2000's. They can, and will, cut deals with big names. They recently "stole" Starbucks from Tassimo. However, I just don't see them doing themselves any favors by locking out third parties when I would bet the market for inexpensive single-cup makers will take off using the old K-cups. I wonder if they'll be stupid enough to change their K-cup design to not be backwards compatible with their current machines?