John Deere brags about sabotaging competitors & customers on hot mic - they’re PROUD of it!
I’ve never had need for a tractor, but if I did, I wouldn’t buy their shit.
I’d be all about the Lamborghini tractors.
“Yeah I drive a Lambo.”
Sounds like another industry in dire need of competition. Makes sense that they’re fighting tooth and nail to keep a deathgrip on what they’ve still got (for now).
There’s plenty of competition; the problem isn’t the proprietary firmware, it’s the expensive parts. You can still fix 99% of a machine yourself, you might have to get a tech out to put a CANbus ID into the computer so a new part that you put on works.
But it still comes down to the fact that the competition don’t make as good/productive of a machine, and parts availability, even if they are expensive, is key. I’ve paid $1000 for a part I could make myself on a mill, but it would take me a day and I’d lose $100,000 of lost production on that machine because rain is coming.
Very interesting to hear a user’s perspective.
This is probably the first time I’ve made a comment like this on a thread about Deere that hasn’t been downvoted into the basement. People don’t want to hear about what the ground truth of this situation is, they want to hate a company that they haven’t ever actually dealt with.
Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see Deere stop some of their practices, particularly using opensource software like Linux to power their devices and then selling them at steep prices to farmers that sometimes barely have enough money to fix a tire on one of these machines. But the “unrepairability” of Deere equipement is massively misunderstood by most of these armchair warriors, including Rossman.
On the plus side, the uproar has given us the ability to go buy a diagnostic computer from Deere now for the low, low prices of $26,000. It takes a lot of $100 tech visits to make that pay.
I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that right-to-repair replaces repair options from the OEM, but it’s a critical option to have in a functional product support ecosystem and Deer’s trying to cut it out entirely.
That’s fair, there’s definitely more to it than just having the capability when you’re also dealing with weather and other factors that impact your deadlines. I’m not a fan of equipment manufacturers who exploit their stranglehold on their customers even though I see why it happens.
There is competition - New Holland, Massey Ferguson, Case IH, etc… The problem is that despite all the anti-consumer nonsense John Deere still tops the lists as the best option.
I’ll move my goalposts a bit then. The industry needs more significant competition for that top spot. It’s not an area I know much about though, just what I’ve picked up from discussions like this about how they respond when people get the crazy idea that they own the equipment they paid for.
query because I am not a farmer: Is Deere tops because they make products that are superior / better bang-for-buck, or is it just hometown advantage of no shipping/delivery overhead, tarrifs/taxes/import fees etc?
Honestly I don’t know. All three I listed are American or have American production facilities (New Holland was founded in PA, and still has a facility there, but is owned by an Italian company).
Deere has the most massive dealer network in the U.S./Canada. So when looking for a part farmers have an easier time finding them. In other places of the world the competition is much more fierce and they don’t compete as well.
As for quality of equipment, Deere makes stuff about average. It’s not terrible but it’s not great.
Other companies have specialized in some things and make vastly better equipment.
New Holland/Massey F has the best swathers and bailers.
Kubota has the best small tractors.
CLAAS has the best choppers and combines.
Deere has the most massive dealer network in the U.S./Canada. So when looking for a part farmers have an easier time finding them.
I have no doubt that this is caused at least partly by the decline of keeping spare parts on the shelf in a warehouse, something most companies did before everyone shifted to ‘just in time’ inventory management because it saved money up front.
But as it turns out ‘just in time’ doesnt work so great when a farmer needs a part right this moment since it relies on ordering then shipping only whats needed.
It probably made Deere’s dealer network look pretty good by comparison since they (presumably) stock parts that another farm store down the road doesnt carry.>
There’s also legislation ( at least in Canada) that requires a manufacturer to have parts for machines less than a decade old to be readily available. A “machine down” order is 3 days or they can explain to the ag minister why they can’t comply.
I wouldn’t trade our 569 for anything else. We’ve had Case and Heston balers, they’re kinda meh and break way more often than if seen on our Deere’s. As for the rest, well parts availability is king.
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TIL Kubota is the Brother Printers option for tractors. Good to know!
Are brother printer still good? I thought they started doing the ink DRM thing and other bullshit too.
Sorta. My old MFP Brother apparently has a firmware update available that makes it aware of the toner brand and I just ignore it. It’s not as bad as HP where a low level of ink turns the machine into a brick.
I have a brother color laser from 2013 that’s still printing awesome. toner cartridges are $200 for all 4 colors, but I only replaced them in 2015, 2019, and at the beginning of this summer - getting a few thousand pages out of each, conservatively. it’s not a glossy photoprinter, but if you just need high res document prints, I cannot recommend it enough. wifi, cat5, driver is built in to windows 10/11, works fine with android and linux too.
I run a multifunction colour Brother as well. I’ve used it with Brother and various other brands of toner without issues. It will keep printing even if a cartridge is empty. Finding consumables is easy. It runs great from Linux (duplex scans and prints), Windows and mobiles through the LAN. It’s a great machine. You can even override the “low toner” alarm and basically double the life of your cartridges (maybe shake them a bit beforehand). You just swap them out when the quality visibly degrades. I think I bought it for about 400€, it was well worth it.
yup. I never thought I’d feel evangelistic about a brand of printers but holy hell did everyone else race to the bottom of the shit barrel in this entire category. so here we are, praise brother lol, they’re COMPETENT.
My 5 year old brother color laser is awesome. Cheap to run and toner doesn’t dry out, and it doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night and clean (i.e. use up) the ink.
However having seem comments like this, I think I will hold off on any firmware updates.
They only seem popular on high subsidy farms.
Yeah I don’t know how anyone could compel themselves to buy one. Do they really have that much of a monopoly on the industry? Is their tech that much further advanced? I genuinely don’t know.
What is the best, more ethical alternative? Growing up my dad had New Holland and we liked them. Eventually I’ll be going more rural and choosing a route to take and it sure as shit won’t be John Deere.
One? Probably not. A fleet of 5-20 to tend a thousand or more acres, I can see that. They’ve basically got the things able to run on autopilot for many processes
& :)
EAT THE RICH CAPTIALISM SUCKS
Every mobbing bicth is a loud mouthed sunt.
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Nice try on inserting political circle jerk comment into a non partisan issue.
“Way to politicise this political issue!” - Morons everywhere
This is inherently a political issue, because partisan policies enable this sort of abusive behavior from John Deere in the first place.
If you can’t see that, then you don’t understand the full breadth of the situation being discussed, and probably should avoid commenting on it. There’s no point in popping into a conversation to say “I don’t understand anything that’s going on, but here’s what I think about it anyway”, because nobody cares for uneducated opinions. Unless you’re just fishing for an internet argument, in which case I recommend maybe just sticking to a Roblox forum or something else that’s more to your speed.
Which side is fixing it for you?
what do you fail to understand about what i said… or is that ass just too cozy inside…
Governor Hochul sabotages NY right to repair bill, right on schedule
Thats Another video from Louis
Get educated instead of shilling your brain dead politics, boy
so you don’t understand the direct causal relationship between Republican politics, and deregulation… that’s what you’re telling everyone here… that your head is too buried to see that…
you need to understand that when you speak, it mostly just sounds like farts, son… you need to try to speak more clearly…
this is why no one needs to take your concerns seriously…
Keep on doing the circle jerk clown
maybe reality is sad because when you open your eyes, all you see is the inside of your own colon
Why is u this hurt?
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Corporations would have us all subscribe to the oxygen supply if they could.
Take apart all the things. Reverse engineer their shit. Create open alternatives. Fuck all these monsters. John Deere, Apple, Samsung, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, everybody included.
There’s a CEO in The Corporation (2003 documentary) who literally argues that everything should be monetized. Including air…
Prime Oxygen - coming to Amazon prime by 2032!
Corporations would have us all subscribe to the oxygen supply if they could.
Elon Musk’s X Mars Colony, coming in 2040.
He watched Total Recall and thought “What a great idea!”.
Meanwhile, Valve: Here’s how you can rip apart our handheld computer, we don’t recommend it, but it’s yours so who gives a shit?
Damn right, I haven’t bought a console since the PS1 but I bought a Steam Deck just because of its hackability. I have plans for it beyond just gaming. Robotics control and FPV streaming is one thing I have in mind.
I already wanted a Steam Deck, but was saving up for one of the higher tiers. Then I found out how relatively easy it is to buy the cheap one and add an nvme drive. So, now my savings goal is a lot closer.
EDIT: Fixed some typos
Also, here’s our distribution platform where you can buy your games but have no physical medium, so if the game gets pulled you could lose access to it even though you won’t get your money back.
Valve might be better, but they are far from perfect.
Ah yes the games that I have stored on my PC that mostly don’t have DRM and that I can play in offline mode even while running another game on a different PC. Yep those are the ones that I can lose access to?
Do you have any games from Steam which you can play without Steam installed?
Steam has DRM free games
I’m wondering if they, or you, happen to know some examples.
Yup. Plenty. I haven’t proven it for every game I own but I know it works for Titan quest and other random ones I’ve tried.
That’s cool to know, thanks.
Has a game on steam ever been withdrawn from people who have bought it? I’ve certainly heard of cases where a game gets pulled from the store and people can no longer buy it, but never where already purchased things have been revoked.
In addition there are games on steam that you can just copy to make a backup of it and it will run fine (I know kerbal space program was like this for example). In those cases you have exactly the same amount of control as you would have for owning a disc, but with all the benefits of digital distribution.
In my experience this happened with a game called Rochard. It’s no longer for sale, but I can download it from Steam whenever I want.
Steam games gets pulled all the time which is perfectly fine. They were talking about cases where the people who bought it would lose access to it, which I haven’t heard of either so I don’t really see why some are bashing steam for something they could do but haven’t done yet.
If your favorite game gets pulled, so long as it’s not a requirement to be connected to the internet to use it, just pirate it. There is no better option if you purchased a game and it gets removed than to just flat out pirate it instead of buying a new copy, if you ask me. Just save your money in that case instead of going to another platform selling it.
Yes, but that misses the point. Mine was a criticism against the illusion of property Steam (and other platforms) create. I know i can pirate stuff, but still Valve has the power to delist or remove stuff from their platform at any time, without need to reimburse.
It ain’t digital property, it’s just long term online renting.
You’re not wrong. But… these tough moments are where I tend to lean on Voltaire’s, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” to paraphrase
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Didn’t see any insulting part of either of your messages, so… All good I guess?
Anyway, that saying doesn’t mean where things are should remain acceptable. You’re right that corporations (being made up of supposed humans) don’t like to improve or change once they’re making profit, we’ll collectively need to keep pushing for better. But that’s a given, and based on history, has always been the case.
Still, I agree that pushing binary around beats physical media in theory. I don’t like the lack of control once you’ve got it, but as with all things, a company builds a taller wall, someone builds a taller ladder for lulz.
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They’ve already stated that if they were to ever go out of business they would remove the DRM from their games so you can just download them and have them.
valve might be better, but are you actually whining about digital distribution? it’s saving gigatons of co2 emissions on physical delivery alone.
PAY ATTENTION: PUTTING 1s AND 0s ON PLASTIC DISKS SO THEY CAN GO TO A STORE AND SIT ON A SHELF FOR MONTHS BEFORE SOMEONE BUYS THEM AND DRIVES THEM HOME IS A MIND NUMBINGLY STUPID WAY TO DISTRIBUTE 1s AND 0s.
You want a physical copy? Kickstart the physical edition. Complaining that valve setup a digital distribution system that actually works is so fucking dumb it makes my brain hurt.
You’re not wrong, but they also don’t make it easy to print those 1’s and 0’s to physical media once you have them.
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They stopped carrying a few games to buy but because I own them I can still get them.
Also Valve: we’ll make some proprietary components that have major failure points, and then not offer replacements for sale (and if we do, at exhorborant prices).
I’m talking about their VR headsets.
Don’t get me wrong, I love them as a company. But while they’re pushing new industries, hardware is an after thought.
proprietary components
ridiculously stupid take. There are no open standards and commodity components for new inventions to adopt because the damned tech is new.
absurd.
There are no open standards and commodity components for new inventions to adopt because the damned tech is new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Virtual_Reality
There’s been open source VR hardware/software since at least 2015. Development is slow, but still active.
Where did I say I was complaining that they use proprietary components? My complaint is about the availability of said components, which is made much worse by how badly they wear.
Something on which we can all agree.
“Dammit Cohagen, give these people air!”
Spacebaaaaallllls! 🎶
A canadian startup is already selling canned air.
Folks in places like china are buying it up presumably due to the air pollution they have. This article says they already cleared 300k in sales and are expanding their product lines to offer ‘flavoured air’.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-vitality-air-sales-update-bottled-air-1.5073762
Wow. Thought The Lorax was supposed to be a warning, not a guideline to go by.
To be fair, there is a use for it. If your at high altitudes, it may be needed. Hopefully no one should need it to deal with pollution though.
In this particular case its intended literally as portrayed in the Spaceballs movie which is what makes this whole thing appalling.
But yeah, theres other use cases for bottled air.
Maybe companies that manufacture and sell oxygen tanks can get in on the game by driving out of town 20 miles and bottling that air out there and marketing it as ‘Great Outdoors’ bottled air
In areas with bad air, 20 miles is not “out of town.” But companies that bottle oxygen already have the equipment to purify the air even in the middle of that smog.
Meant as a tongue in cheek joke, but sure
I’m sure those competitors will successfully sue them for <1% of their yearly profit in damages, plus they’ll suffer a single employee’s salary amount in fines.
Eat. The. Fucking. Rich.
Sounds like a screamy no context statement in vague cannibalistic threat form, fed made.
Remove barriers to the creation of new firms.
Make a new tractor company
you have to already be rich for that. instead, eat the rich.
Your have to be rich yourself to get away with reading the rich.
Not necessarily. A bunch of us could band together and fund a bunch of folks who are good at building shit and just commission them to design and build new tractors that are easily repairable – preferably electric too – and then sell them. And this effort could be incorporated as a non-profit, which itself legally can own businesses and those businesses could sell them at a profit, and kill off John Deere’s shitty-ass company and any other shitbirds that want to take away consumers’ rights to own their own products.
I love how you’re getting downvoted for stating something actionable rather than some catchy nonsense that doesn’t actually solve anything.
Because it’s idiotic and non-actionable. I didn’t down vote him though. I say go ahead and try it, see how far you get. John Deer has lots of money, it’s not like they wouldn’t act to stop you. They’ll sue you into oblivion and they won’t even need a case with merit to drive your little startup into the ground. They’ll just outspend you, not to mention they’ll have consolidated supply lines that you’ll need and that they will not share. The first rule of capitalism is that competition is not to be tolerated.
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That’s a very defeatist attitude
If someone challenges you to a fist fight, don’t fist fight them. They want you to fist fight them because it gives them advantage. They’ve trained and prepared for fist fights their entire life. You are doing them a favor by fighting them by their rules. You have to fight them on your terms, playing your own game. Whatever your game is, that’s the way you have to face them. harrass, sabotage and disrupt. Failing that, guillotines are a very fun game indeed.
taking on a business, with business is like wresting a pig. You’ll both get dirty and the pig likes it.
That tells you all you need to know about how other people really are.
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Why in the world would I doxx myself just to win an argument?
You’re a prat.
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You’re incorrect with your item number one, as far as being able to take an invention from the drawing board to actual product ready to be sold.
Under the right conditions it can be done for a lot less is what you’ve stated.
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Look up Edison Motors. A literal logger in Canada is beating out every truck company with investors. People are excited and lining up to buy them (logging companies anyway).
What he’s doing with logging trucks can be done with tractors.
You should look up all the companies that failed to do that, then look up survivorship bias.
What is it? 90% of companies fail in under 3 years?
I get it. Still cool to see someone try and try well.
Wow, that’s a cool little company. Also, “Stealing Tesla’s Ideas”, ha.
Related to the sibling comment, good ideas are rarely the whole story to a company’s success. Execution (and luck) matter.
I’m going to need to read up more on them. The jump from “regular truck drivers who do repairs” to “so we put a locomotive drivetrain in our truck” is too big and I think it’s really the key to them getting off the ground.
Louis Rossmann in his natural habitat.
In the ever-evolving tapestry of socio-economic structures, where the dance of individualism meets the collective force of organized entities, corporations have emerged as titan-like presences, wielding significant influence and power. The philosophical foundations of free-market capitalism, deeply rooted in the ideas of thinkers like Adam Smith and further cultivated by the likes of Friedrich Hayek, argue for the intrinsic virtues of an unbridled market, where entities, be they individuals or corporations, pursue their objectives with minimal constraints.
Now, let’s venture into a provocative postulate: the idea that corporations, these monolithic embodiments of collective human ambition and capital, should operate with an unfettered hand, devoid of any shackles or constraints. At its core, this suggestion is an amplification of the quintessential libertarian ethos, where the individual’s—or in this case, the corporation’s—right to autonomy and self-determination is held paramount.
By extending this principle to its logical zenith, one might contend that corporations, as amalgamations of human effort and ingenuity, should be granted the latitude to navigate the vast seas of commerce and innovation as they see fit, unencumbered by external impositions. This isn’t merely a statement about market dynamics, but rather, a deep philosophical reflection on the nature of freedom, responsibility, and the interplay between order and chaos in our socio-economic landscape. It’s a call for a pure, unadulterated trust in the self-regulating mechanisms of the market, with the underlying belief that in the grand crucible of competition and innovation, the best outcomes will naturally emerge.
