Hardware Openness Finds Its Audience in E-Readers and Steam Machines
Two hardware threads today signal real consumer appetite for open, controllable devices. The Open Book Touch is an open-source e-reader with a touchscreen and light, and the thread includes honest comparisons to Kobo and Kindle Oasis. Separately, Steam Machine sales estimates put Valve's Linux gaming handheld at 12,000 to 15,000 units per week, with commenters calling it more of a budget Mac than a PC given Valve's control of the full stack.
The through-line: both products succeed partly because the dominant alternatives have made hostile moves toward users. Kindle locks you into Amazon's ecosystem. Windows installs LG software silently through Windows Update, which was its own thread today with confirmed reports of unsolicited software appearing in Windows 11. People are paying attention to who controls the device they bought.
The LG Windows Update thread is the darkest version of this story. Razer, Logitech, and Nvidia were all cited as doing similar things. The commenter who suggested silently uninstalling Windows without consent as a workaround got upvotes for a reason.
So what?
User trust in platform vendors is eroding across the board, and that creates real openings for hardware and software that is honest about what it does. If you are building a product that touches someone's personal device, the bar for consent and transparency is rising fast. Treating users as an install vector rather than a customer is becoming a brand liability, not just an ethics issue.