On this we can agree, though I dont think your Tesla analogy was great. It doesn't take a genius to look at a device that's only function is to spin in a circle, and say "this has absolute no reason to have a remote kill switch in it for the manufacturer to revoke my access whenever they want. Maybe I will buy one of the thousand identical products that do not do that." What's the saying? A fool and his money...

"I can buy an iPhone, but I can't use it as a phone without my subscription to Verizon, so I see nothing wrong here." Has to be the most smooth brain take on anything that I've ever seen. Yes, without paying your Verizon subscription you can not use Verizon services, this is fine, but the phone is not a Verizon service. The phone is your hardware that you own and works independently of Verizon. Now imagine Verizon locks you out of all features on your device whether it connects to a Verizon server or not, this sounds a lot more like extortion than subscription.

This is actually where they get some credit in my eyes, they're in the middle of a lawsuit because a bunch of small children were killed and/or injured by their treadmills. So I understand them overstepping with safety precautions to prevent unauthorized used, but there's no way it takes more than 30 minutes to apply that same line of code to non-premium accounts. Functionality should've never been down for more than a day and it reeks of either severe incompetence or maliciousness at this point.