Version History: Harmony remote
6/19/20261 hr 17 min
The Harmony Universal Remote was supposed to be the only controller you needed for all the devices in your life. So what happened? David Pierce is joined by The Verge’s Nilay Patel and John Higgins, as well as Nest co-founder (and current Harmony user) Matt Rogers, to follow the Harmony's timeline from its origins as the "Easy Zapper," through Logitech's acquisition, all the way to its slow death at the hands of smart TVs. And their vastly inferior remotes.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDavid Pierce· Host0:00
Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of IR Blasters. I'm your friend David Pierce, and our regular show is off today, but we wanna play you an episode from the new season of Version History. Version History, if you don't know, is our show about old technology. We tell the story of some of the most important products in tech history. On this episode, it's one of our favorites. It's the Harmony remote, the universal remote that promised to give you one thing to control everything. It's me, Nilay Patel, The Verge's John Higgins, and Matt Rogers, the former co-founder of Nest. Nest, by the way, another episode we're doing this season. But Matt demanded to talk about Harmony. It's a really fun episode. I think you'll enjoy it. Here it is. Around the turn of the century, two guys in Canada had an idea that maybe they could build a product that could simultaneously control your TV, your home theater, your VCR, your DVD player, and everything else in your living room. And that maybe if they could get that product into your living room, all that would be just the beginning. From The Verge and Vox Media, this is Version History, a show about the best and worst and strangest and most important products in tech history. I'm David Pierce, and today it's time for the story of the Harmony remote. [upbeat music] Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's