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Recently, I got to own one of these, the Lego 42095 remote controlled stunt racer. It’s an awesome little race car, but that is not why I got it. I got it because I need the remotely controlled engines, and this set has an infrared remote control, two engines and a battery box.

I totally like the simplicity of it, but unfortunately, LEGO discontinued it. The Power Functions system was succeeded in 2018 by the Powered Up system which works based on Bluetooth technology for the remote connection to a controller or to a phone with an app.

I’ve had a bad experience with Bluetooth as it was used in the Mindstorms NXT 2.0 system. When I had to replace my Mac laptop, the new one could not communicate over Bluetooth anymore because the standard had changed, so I had to use a cable to program the control brick. With the current Powered Up system, we may run a similar risk in the future. The standard may change again and the newer phones may not connect anymore. Fortunately, the Powered Up system still has it’s own remote controller which should still be able to communicate with the Powered Up hub bricks.

Another beef that I have with Mindstorms is that Lego stopped maintaining the software. In fact, I am currently unable to install it on my M1 Mac. The app doesn’t exist in the App store anymore. Fortunately, I have an installation disk and a working drive ( ! ) However, the installer app seems to be a 32 bits version, whereas Macs have moved on to 64 bits in 2018. So, I ran out of luck. This makes my Mindstorms set completely useless. Including the motors and the sensors, because, typically, Lego changed the shape of the connectors of Mindstorms’ successor, which is called SPIKE Prime.

I am pretty sure, that when it comes to software and connectors, the Powered Up and SPIKE Prime systems will go down this or a similar road.

The LEGO bricks from 50 years ago are still compatible with the current bricks. This is what makes it so valuable: it does not loose it’s usefulness. Unfortunately, we can not say this about regular software. Unless it is maintained, which is not something that LEGO nor any other company is very good at, it looses its value because of ( what we call ) progress and innovation in the IT sector.

50 year old bricks which costed around 10 cents per piece, are still useful, but my Mindstorms NXT 2.0 system of several hundreds of Euros is good for the scrap heap after 10 years. This is why I like the Power Functions system. It’s elements work completely stand alone. Sure, they can break, but they won’t be lost due to upgrades in the rest of the world.