Nike just bricked its self-lacing shoes by accident

Jack Morse, Mashable:

This is the future we deserve.

Owners of the newly released $350 Nike app-connected Adapt BB self-tying shoes have taken to the Google Play store to complain that an update left their fancy kicks bricked. That’s right, the self-lacing shoes reportedly no longer connect to the accompanying app — essentially transforming them into regular old shoes (buttons on the side of the shoes means you can still tie them). And people are pissed.

[…]

Regardless, this was clearly not what Michael Donaghu, Nike’s VP of Innovation, had in mind when he penned a 700-plus word treatise on the shoelace throughout history.

“Shoelaces: you had a good run,” he wrote. “But we think we may have finally bettered you.”

Donaghu, it seems, got a little ahead of himself with that pronouncement. But hey, who could have ever foreseen the possibility that a needlessly complicated app-connected and battery-powered shoe might fail?

Now please excuse me while I lace up my decidedly not app-connected shoes and run as fast as I can away from this nightmare future we’ve brought upon ourselves.

Maybe the old rule of ‘wait for version three’ needs to be brought back and applied to the Internet of Things?

And probably just as well it just bricked the shoe, instead of making it go into reverse and squeeze your foot. ‘Bleeding edge’ would take on a whole new meaning!