Nike’s self-lacing Adapt BB shoes aren’t playing well with Android phones
How do you know you’re living in the future? When your shoes have technical problems. Owners on Google Play and CNET report that Nike’s Android companion app for the self-lacing Adapt BB has some teething troubles, most notably a buggy firmware update process. In some cases, the updates have bricked people’s shoes — yes, that’s something we just said. You can still wear the shoes and force-restart them, but that’s not really something you should worry about with a $350 pair of kicks.
We’ve asked Nike for comment. The iOS app doesn’t appear to have the same problems.
There’s a good chance Nike can address this before long. All the same, it illustrates a growing problem with the rise of connected devices: you can run into technical headaches with footwear and other goods that you wouldn’t have thought twice about in the past. Self-lacing connected shoes can be beautiful when they work, but particularly frustrating when they don’t.
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