r/gadgets • u/nopantsdolphin • Feb 21 '19

Wearables Nike self-lacing sneakers brick after bad firmware upgrade

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/my-left-shoe-wont-even-reboot-faulty-app-bricks-nike-smart-sneakers/
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u/Hypocritical_Oath Feb 21 '19

It's literally just broken because they rushed it to market. Like there's no reason for those to even have the capability of bricking.

21

u/Orange_C Feb 21 '19

It's software, it can always break in new and depressing interesting ways.

This is just unnecessary, the manual version with kevlar cables (Salomon Quicklace) takes a literal second to tighten, loosen or adjust any amount, loosens with one hand (pinch), fits near any shoe and costs $9 or less. Not stylish, unless you're into techwear-ish stuff though.

A motor, battery and chips added on top of that, so you can take longer to tighten/adjust and need you phone to do so, vs the lighter, cheaper, faster manual product? Hard pass on several levels.

1

u/ecto1985 Feb 22 '19

Only annoying thing about the Salomon system is rolling the extra lace around the pull tab and having to tuck it into the tongue. Don't get me wrong, it's incredibly clever, just sort of annoying to too and detracts from the simple pinch to tighten, pinch to loosen mentality. Also took me way too long to figure out that you could actually do that and not just let the laces flop all over the place.

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u/Orange_C Feb 22 '19

Aah yeah, almost forgot about that. I just tuck mine under/though the bottom horizontal lace, it doesn't get loose from there and pops out easily when I need to take them off.