How long will the original PupPod Wobbler be supported?

The original PupPod Wobbler was designed in 2015 in an effort to make smarter products for the dogs we love. We had a vision to build software-driven user experiences for dogs, but needed to test the idea with very limited investment. So we leveraged "off-the-shelf" components and modules to bring our idea to market. This is a very common approach for technology startups.

We used a Bluetooth module called the Light Blue Bean from a company called Punch Through Design. Punch Through Design stopped supporting THEIR module years ago. Here's their official announcement and an article from Sept 2019 covering the announcement, but Punch Through Design actually stopped advancing THEIR code a year or two earlier than this release.

From the Punch Through Design website:

"Updates to your OS may change Bluetooth functionality, and therefore, may break the functionality of the Bean apps. We understand that this might be a bit of a shock..."

If Google, Apple, Facebook, or any other software component, such as the development tools or 3rd party libraries, in the original PupPod Wobbler software stack makes a change that breaks the original PupPod app, it will be impossible for PupPod to fix the issue. This is not a choice. It will be impossible.

Our team has a long history with software development so we anticipate a day will come where the app breaks and this day will be completely outside of our control.

We also recommend that PupPod customers keep the PupPod app locally on their phone. iOS provides a feature that removes infrequently used apps from local storage and re-downloads the app when it's needed. But when the PupPod mobile app is removed from the iOS app store, it will be impossible to download the original PupPod app. This is an iOS limitation which is outside of PupPod's control.

It's now 2020 and the original PupPod Wobbler design is over 5 years old. All technology products go through a lifecycle and the wind down is referred to as the "end of life" phase. Due to circumstances outside our control, the PupPod Wobbler is now in the "end of life" phase. To be proactive, we spent the last two years redesigning the PupPod platform so we have much more control over all the software components. We've also offered our early customers an amazing deal to migrate to the new PupPod Rocker, which includes many new scenarios that were not part of the original PupPod Wobbler.

As an early stage technology startup, we are doing our best to support our early customers and continue building cutting edge mental stimulation products for dogs. We hope all our early customers will migrate to the PupPod Rocker so you are not impacted when the original PupPod Wobbler app breaks.