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Bose should not receive praise for this move. Bose only took this action after community backlash. In an older version of their end-of-life announcement, most f

• fortran77 8mo ago
  I believe that if someone (or some company) changes their ways we should accept that and not condemn them forever.
  • nish__ 8mo ago
    Honestly. Bro needs to chill. Big companies don't really do anything unless they recieve backlash. That's just how it works.
• filoleg 8mo ago
  > Bose should not receive praise for this move. Bose only took this action after community backlash. They received the backlash, they responded to it by properly addressing the criticism and doing the right thing. It should be praised. Especially since it wasn't some PR-centric damage control, but an actual direct address of the specific points their original approach was criticized for. Compare Bose's response to that of Sonos (another large techy audio brand). Sonos had an absolutely massive backlash recently (within the past few years iirc) in regards to deprecating software support for their older speakers that I'd read about everywhere (including HN) for months and months. Afaik, it didn't lead to Sonos doing the right thing in the end (unlike the scenario at hand here), despite the online outrage being way more widespread than in the Bose's case.
  • pixelready 8mo ago
    Yeah, it’s good to see a sensible response to community pressure here. While I take the point that they only conceded after pressure, at least they did concede. I’ve upgraded their brand in my mind from “planned obsolescence e-waste villain” to “cares about PR and will do the right thing while being watched”. I think the only truly trustworthy companies regarding end of support handling in consumer tech are those whose brand is explicitly tied to openness / repairablity ala home assistant, framework laptops, etc… Sadly those tend to be niche companies already focused on power users, but any other firms should be considered guilty until proven innocent of enshittification (forced bricking, closed source, subscription creep, privacy violations and data brokering).
  • wwweston 8mo ago
    And some people have been advocating for Apple to do something similar with old iPhones and tablets for a decade, and there’s no sign. Their privilege but not great for the world.
    • daseiner1 8mo ago
      Would you elaborate? Because my understanding is that Apple has offered outstanding support for older devices in terms of iOS support for quite old devices.
      • awesome_dude 8mo ago
        Whilst the support might be "outstanding" - the discussion is what happens once devices are no longer supported.
        • astrange 8mo ago
          You can't release all the documentation just because the entire phone isn't supported. Many of the components come from other suppliers and aren't obsolete, and you can't just reveal all your suppliers' IP.
• dijit 8mo ago
  And? When presented with information that you're acting in bad faith, if you choose to change: that is praiseworthy. It's very brave to take that in, and not worry about "brand damage" or "appearing weak". It's brave to even challenge yourself when someone tells you you're wrong. It's entirely admirable. It's the default human behaviour to double-down.
• fainpul 8mo ago
  > transformed the devices into dumb-speakers/amps Isn't that still gonna happen now? From [1]: What will no longer work: • Presets (preset buttons on the product and in the app) Of course Bluetooth and AirPlay continues to work, but isn't that what a "dumb speaker" is? [1] https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life
  • JonathonW 8mo ago
    Bose's original plan was to remove all WiFi-dependent functionality (no AirPlay and no Spotify Connect)-- while they wouldn't quite be "dumb speakers" at that point (since Bluetooth would've still worked), it would've turned them into pretty much just overcomplicated Bluetooth speakers.
  • thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    > Isn't that still gonna happen now? No, if you read farther down the announcement, they also say this: > Open-source options for the community > We’re making our technical specifications available so that independent developers can create their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features. The documentation is available here: https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/SoundTouch-Web-API.pdf https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/... So, they're going to strip the "smart" functionality from the app that Bose provides, but they're letting people continue to use it if they want to.
    • fainpul 8mo ago
      I've read that document. As I understand, the "smart" capabilities are exactly the presets. Those need their server to function. Do you see anything saying otherwise?
• tw04 8mo ago
  > Bose should not receive praise for this move. Remind me of any other vendor in recent history that end of lifed a hardware product and then open sourced it whether they got backlash or not. Because I can’t think of a single one. So yes, Bose absolutely deserves praise.
  • ToniCipriani 8mo ago
    Arguably HP open-sourced webOS, but they did also got backlash because they killed that entire product line without warning.
    • cogman10 8mo ago
      They killed the product line almost immediately after release. And they fired basically everyone they acquired from palm. It was a real shitty move.
      • w4der 8mo ago
        It is a pretty sad story, and one that has been rather well told: https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-inside-story-pre-postmortem https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-insi... https://www.philmckinney.com/i-convinced-hps-board-to-buy-palm-for-1-2b-then-i-watched-them-kill-it-in-49-days/ https://www.philmckinney.com/i-convinced-hps-board-to-buy-pa...
        • cogman10 8mo ago
          I worked at HP as an intern during the saga. I even got to attend a training by the Palm team... Which wasn't great. My impression just from that training is that WebOs was extremely mismanaged. The training was billed as a "how to write apps for WebOs" and it instead was an hour long meander by the Palm employee about how different the company culture is and how hard it became to do anything. I had the distinct impression they didn't even know that the training was supposed to be before being assigned to do it. I think that's indicative of everything. HP had this product that they were trying to shoehorn into the most bizarre places. At it's core it was a mobile Linux os which used html/css/JavaScript as the main user experience engine. And HP was trying to put that on printers and rack mount displays. The one place they didn't seem to care putting it was the mobile devices it was designed to target. They simply half assed the launch of a product.
• banannaise 8mo ago
  Don't punish the behavior you want to see. Would we rather they defaulted there? Sure. But it's arguably an even better signal to see that they're willing to listen to their customers even when there is no direct financial incentive for them.
  • fragmede 8mo ago
    Their financial incentive is negative. They were hoping to force everyone to buy new speakers, driving sales. But if the community is able to get open source firmware to run spotifyd on them, there is a non-zero (not everyone, but it's non-zero) amount of people that will just not buy new speakers from them.
    • bell-cot 8mo ago
      > Their financial incentive is negative. They were hoping to force... Maybe? People stuck with Bose bricks might show a preference for non-Bose replacements. People who thought Bose speakers would stay useful longer might prefer Bose, or be willing to pay for a more expensive Bose speaker model. (Yes, I agree that some PHB's at Bose were almost certainly imagining that their customers would be forced to re-purchase Bose speakers. I'm questioning the validity of their initial assumptions.)
      • x0x0 8mo ago
        From talking to friends and family, so n=10-ish, non-computer people have not realized that sticking computers in things means they die on computer lifetimes, not appliance lifetimes. No more switches that last for the life of the house; no more speakers that your kids can do modest maintenance to and keep using.
      • BizarroLand 8mo ago
        And, if I, a non-Bose customer, hear that Bose open sourced a previous version of their speaker, which gives me some confidence that a present purchase might be somewhat future-proofed, then I am more likely to buy a new Bose product vs a competitor who does not provide sources.
• nkrisc 8mo ago
  Well they still did it, thus praise (though less effusive than if they had just done it initially).
• tverbeure 8mo ago
  Is the world a better place before or after Bose decided to change course?
• arjie 8mo ago
  I've got a simple formula in life for when people do things beneficial to me: I praise them for it and encourage them to keep it going. If someone does things antagonistic to my interests, and then corrects course in reaction to objection, they can be sure they're going to be rewarded. This has worked for me. If your belief is that some other tactic works, then I can see why you'd do that. For my part, carrot + stick has always worked better than stick + more stick.
  • EdwardDiego 8mo ago
    It works on dogs, children, and adults, the inability to praise the good because they did something bad prior feels like more of the online black/white moralism that used to characterise Twitter dogpiles.
• rvz 8mo ago
  There is no winning or redemption after getting cancelled it so seems.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• IgorPartola 8mo ago
  Why should Bose not get credit for this? If you are saying that people should treat them the same regardless of whether they listen to their consumers or not, then why would they ever bother listening to the consumers? Also remember that there is no believer like a convert. A community helping guide a company towards open source culture could make for a very strong ally. Then again I know nothing about Bose’s open source culture so take it with a grain of salt.
• thiht 8mo ago
  Ugh, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
• ranguna 8mo ago
  Bose: does something bad. People: complain. Bose: undoes what they did and does something slightly better. You: complain. I'm not sure I get the logic here. Slowly but steadily I'm comprehending why companies are getting tired of some people. No matter what companies do, people will always complain. Don't get me wrong, there's always room for more improvement, but a slight complement for their slight improvement won't hurt anyone + a change in tone from complaining to suggesting improvements would be a nice bonus.
• damion6 8mo ago
  Well maybe they should receive praise for changing their mind. I get your point but they could have doubled down.
• monooso 8mo ago
  I don't understand this attitude. Bose listened to feedback, and responded in a positive way. That's a good outcome for the community, and refusing to "praise" Bose's actions just because they didn't originally do what you wanted is petty and churlish.