AppleInsider Staff
Google-owned smart home firm Nest announced on Thursday that it has suspended sales of the Protect Smoke + CO Alarm after discovering one of the product's built-in convenience features poses a potential safety risk.
In a letter posted to Nest's website, cofounder and ex-Apple executive Tony Fadell said Protect's "Nest Wave" function, which turns the alarm off with a wave of the hand, may be unintentionally activated. If this were to happen, an alert could be delayed in the case of a real fire.
From Fadell's statement:
We identified this problem ourselves and are not aware of any customers who have experienced this, but the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me and I want to address it immediately.
We feel that the best and safest thing to do is to immediately disable the Nest Wave feature to resolve the issue and remove any safety concerns. While we fix Nest Wave, we have also halted sales of all new Nest Protect alarms to ensure no one buys an alarm that needs an immediate update.
Effective immediately, Nest Wave has been automatically deactivated on Protect units connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi. Owners are urged to turn on Protect's Wi-Fi function so their unit can receive the update.
In addition, the company has halted all new Protect device sales while a resolution to the problem is sorted out. Nest is offering full refunds for new owners who do not have Wi-Fi connectivity to properly update the product.
Fadell's Nest Labs was recently acquired by Google for $3.2 billion, though the Internet search giant said the smarthome product firm's operations would remain largely independent.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
67 Comments
No fucking shit sherlock. As soon as I heard of this feature I thought of this possibility. The most important thing about a smoke alarm is that it goes off when it needs to. Making it needlessly complex is ridiculous. And this is the company people said Apple should have bought? Right.
".......which turns the alarm off with a wave of the hand....."
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"From Fadell's statement:
LOL. $3,200,000,000 This is what happens when shareholders have no voting rights. And it is going to get much, much worse
[quote name="Slurpy" url="/t/177294/nest-suspends-sales-of-protect-smoke-carbon-monoxide-alarm-over-safety-concerns#post_2509765"]No fucking shit sherlock. As soon as I heard of this feature I thought of this possibility. The most important thing about a smoke alarm is that it goes off when it needs to. Making it needlessly complex is ridiculous. And this is the company people said Apple should have bought? Right.[/quote] What is dumb is how easy the logic would be to ensure this didn't happen. Basically any trigger must sound for a minimum time before you could allow it to be waved off. If it had not gone off, it shouldn't be suppressing the alarm at all regardless of a possible wave detection. Shouldn't let a stupid feature make it not safe.
[quote name="Slurpy" url="/t/177294/nest-suspends-sales-of-protect-smoke-carbon-monoxide-alarm-over-safety-concerns#post_2509765"]No fucking shit sherlock. As soon as I heard of this feature I thought of this possibility. The most important thing about a smoke alarm is that it goes off when it needs to. Making it needlessly complex is ridiculous. And this is the company people said Apple should have bought? Right.[/quote]Haters often claim that Apple's products only sell well because of sleek design and/or marketing. If the Nest thermostat and smoke detector aesthetically looked like most thermostats/smoke detectors would the tech media be drooling all over them? And didn't someone file a lawsuit claiming the energy savings weren't anything close to what was promised?